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Credit Fraud and Your Credit Profile

Your credit is a precious and oftentimes valuable commodity. Unfortunately, there are crooks who try to defraud you and your creditors through various strategies, which can vary from using stolen credit card to using your personal information to apply for and obtain a credit card or loan.

If someone uses your personal information maliciously or runs up a bill on a credit card stolen from you, your credit history can be permanently damaged, even without you being aware of it unless you check your credit report or discover that suddenly you are being rejected for credit.

How do you know that you may have been a victim of credit fraud?

  • If your credit line has been suddenly lowered
  • You have been repeatedly denied credit, even though you have never had problems obtaining credit before and there have not been adverse events in your financial situation
  • You suddenly get bills for credit cards or loans that you did not take
  • You find out that you have credit accounts that you have never requested

Fortunately, when you are a victim of such crimes, there are things you can do to protect yourself.

If you have been a victim of credit fraud or you suspect that you credit information is being used fraudulantly, you should contact the Fraud Victim Assistance departments at all three credit bureaus and explain to them what happened. They will add a Security Alert to your credit profile. Addition of Security Alert to your credit file will protect you in the following ways: whenever a creditor requests your credit profile as part of the process of granting credit in your name, they will be directed to call you to verify that you are indeed applying for credit. This will protect you from con artists who apply for credit in your name and then run up gigantic bills. In this type of scam you will not be aware that a credit line has been opened in your name untill you get a bill from the creditor.

In addition, you will receive a complimentary copy of your credit report and instructions for reading it from each of the three credit bureaus to make sure that there is no false information on your credit files.

Here are the phone numbers for the Fraud Victim Assistance departments at all three credit bureaus. If you are a victim of fraud or suspect that you may be, you need to contact ALL three companies.

    • Equifax: 1-800-525-6285
    • Trans Union: 1-800-680-7289
    • Experian: 888-397-3742

     

What Else You Should Do.

In addition to calling the Fraud Victim Assistance departments at all three credit bureaus, you should also talk to credit departments of all companies where you have been a victim of fraud. Explain the situation, request an investigation. Pnce everything is settled, request a letter stating that you are not responsible for the debt. You should keep a file with records of all your conversations including company name, title and name of the person with whom you spoke and the date of conversation.

In addition, if your Social Security number has been misused or you lost your card you should contact the local agency and inform them of this. This also applies if your driver licence has been lost or stolen.

We would like to thank our readers for suggesting addition of this section. If you have other suggestions and tips, please let us know.

Information and other eligibility requirements to obtain your free credit report can be found here.

If you are ineligible, you can still obtain a free credit report by following instructions here.

To obtain credit reports from all three companies at once, go here.

If you want to obtain a paid credit report, follow this link.

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