Joseph Farinaccio

Fixing a Stolen Identity Involves More Than Making a Few Calls

How to fix the problem of a stolen identity

Fixing a stolen identity not only involves calling credit reporting agencies and creditors who issued fraudulent accounts. You must also turn your attention to the full range of companies where you have accounts.

Writing and calling financial companies is important. Also contact service vendors ... including cell phone providers, auto / health / life insurance companies and even utility companies.

If you're a member of a professional organization of some kind then you should contact them. And if you have any type of sports membership (like a gym) then you might even want to contact them as well.

Why all of these organizations?

Identity thieves often use personal information taken from valid associations to open fraudulent accounts elsewhere. For example, if an identity thief is able to obtain information about your accounts with health or life insurance companies then they could change or alter data within these records, and then use the information to obtain new policies with other companies.

If your account(s) with these companies doesn't yet appear to be affected by fraud, you won't need to necessarily include everything in your correspondence that would typically be sent to those already affected by the identity theft. However, if fraud issues eventually surface among these companies then any affected accounts will have to be closed, and new ones opened with fraud alerts attached.

When fraud issues appear you always want to request that any information related to the identity theft be sent to you immediately. You can also ask the same information be sent to the police.

And speaking of police, if you contact your local police department you must insist that they file a police report for you. (Filing a police report is important because this report is usually required by credit reporting agencies and creditors alike before they remove instances of fraud from your credit report).

Right now, it's important to alert service providers and other companies of the fact that you're a victim of ID fraud. Request that a "fraud alert" be placed on the account(s) you have now. This includes establishing a new username and password when possible.

It takes time to repair a stolen identity. An identity stolen today could take many hours to fix in coming months. Failing to go beyond making a few phone calls may keep the affects of ID theft around longer than it should be ... leaving opportunities for the fraudster to open new credit lines in your name.

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