Credit identity theft is one of the top crimes that pose the biggest threat on your finances and reputation. As it damages your credit scores and reports the most, it is really something that everyone should take part in defeating.
And as this crime doesn t discriminate its victims, everybody can be hit by its consequences. This means that your location does not determine whether you d be a victim or not, as you personal information can be accessed from anywhere in the globe.
Fortunately, there are a couple of measures that you can do to protect yourself from identity theft. By closely monitoring your credit report and conducting an identity theft check, you can be able to quickly take actions when there are irregularities that can lead to identity theft. You can also subscribe to different agencies various products that can help in early detection of credit identity theft.
However, these methods in preventing the crime from doing you any harm are not entirely guaranteed to work every time, possibilities of the methods failing are still high. Plus, in some cases, detection only happens late, and that the damages have already took effect. This is why learning about how you can recover from being a victim of credit identity theft.
To do that, here are steps on what you should do in case of credit identity theft.
Step #1: Conducting an identity theft check. By checking your financial records, you can spot errors that are possible signs of identity theft. May it be errors on your address or new, unknown, accounts, reporting it right away will help you confirm whether you ve been victimized or not.
Step #2: Report errors to consumer reporting agencies. Complaints can be forward by phone, mail, internet, or by going to their offices straight away. By disputing errors, you can have better chances at saving your credit report from being damaged.
Step #3: Report the possible identity theft incident to the companies where the new accounts have been made so they can be closed, and you will not be charged from the purchases made. This is important, because you wouldn t want the companies to continue reporting about how you re not paying your dues when in fact, the transaction was not even made by you.
Step #4: Report the incident to the police. By filing an identity theft report, the police will make sure that you will not be held responsible for the purchases made under your stolen identity. This, too, will prevent the company where the bogus transactions were made to collect and demand payment from you for the malicious account.
Step #5: Report the incident to the Federal Trade Commission. Being the agency responsible for this field, they can make the best action in helping you stop the thieves from damaging your finances and your reputation.
However, also keep in mind that completing clearing yourself from the damages of identity theft can take a pretty long time. You may still need to bear with some of the effects the crime can bring you.
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This article has been provided by http://www.free-credit-reports.com , where you can compare credit report and identity theft protection services with this comprehensive chart of all credit report and credit score service providers.
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