Saturday, March 22, 2008

Steps You Can Take Against Identity Theft

In certain circumstances you can ask for a freeze to be placed on your credit score when there has been an identity theft attack that will stop anyone else accessing the information apart from yourself and your current creditors who have already had access to the information.

This will stop any lenders having access to your account to set up new loans for the identity thieves and without the ability to steal money from you they move on to their next victim.

There is a dedicated identity theft hotline that is set up at the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) and you should contact them immediately if you find you have been a victim of identity theft.
They will help you with information on how to protect your identity and how to improve your credit score.

The police should be notified as they might be able to catch the culprits from the information that you have on your file with the paper trail of their activities and the people the thieves contacted in their attempts to get money.

Make sure that you keep copies of any correspondence you have with the police and anyone less when trying to clear up these matters as this will help you to repair your credit score.

Contact all your current creditors and explain the situation to alert them to any problems and make sure that all your current financial arrangements are safe by changing access passwords and if necessary closing accounts.

Keep all your correspondence with your creditors on file for future reference if required.

Your creditors will need to know what has happened as they might see that your credit score has dropped and this will cause them concern for the money you owe them.
The sooner they are advised of the situation, the fewer problems you will have where they might reduce the amount of credit they had previously allowed you to have access to.

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