Identity theft, being one of the fastest growing crimes in today s society, is something people should be wary of. Not only can it damage your reputation, but it can also affect your livelihood as well.
However, no one is really safe from being a victim from this crime. No matter where you live a small town or a big city you are vulnerable to being a victim. Good thing that there are measures that you can do to detect the signs of credit identity theft through your credit reports.
But this does not mean that you are already safe once you ve detected that someone s already pretending to be you for free stuff. More or less, you can only detect the crime once it has already occurred, which will also mean that it has done some damage on your accounts and reputation already. This is why you still need to know how you can recover from being a victim of credit identity theft.
The first step in recovering from being a victim of this crime is to conduct an identity theft check thoroughly. By rummaging through your personal and financial records again, you can be able to know for sure if there are inaccuracies that mat show that you are, indeed, have been hit by the crime. With the use of your financial records, this may be done easier, giving you a better edge on beating the crime.
Once you re already certain that the inaccuracies and errors in your reports are not just typos or caused by human errors, you would need to alert the authorities right away. Place an alert on your reports with the major consumer reporting agencies so they can take proper actions immediately. You can do this through phone, the internet, or by heading right away to their offices.
You would also need to alert the companies where those new accounts have been opened. This is because they are, in fact, victims like you as well. You can also place a fraud alert on these companies and ask them to close the newly opened accounts for you. You may, however, need to complete the company s fraud dispute forms or send them a letter, informing them that you did not open that account in their company and that your identity has been used by someone else.
Filing an Identity Theft Report with the police is another thing that you should do, as doing this can give you better protection. This report will also require the companies to stop reporting the information caused by credit identity theft, so it can t add further damage on your records.
After the police, you would also need to inform the Federal Trade Commission about the crime. This government agency is the most responsible in this field, so, you are really required to file this complaint with this agency if you really want efficient actions to be taken on your case.
Just remember, though, that you need to be patient as recovering from credit identity theft takes quite a long time. Processes may take months at the very least, so you may still be hassled.
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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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