IDENTITY THEFT
Protecting your credit
Identity Theft
Do you :
Receive several offers of pre-approved credit every
week?
Not shred them before putting them in the trash?
Not have a PO Box or a locked, secured mailbox?
Not checked your national credit score with the three
national credit providers shown on the next slide for
more than two years?
If you answered yes to any of these questions then
you are putting your identity at risk for theft.
Identity Theft
HOW SERIOUS IS THE PROBLEM? – The last federal trade
commission survey that was taken in 2002 gave us the statistic that
12.7 % of individuals, or one in eight people surveyed had
experienced some form of identity theft. Keep in mind that this figure
has increased dramatically over the past 5 years. This was in 2002
when many people had not heard of identity theft, unlike now where
we have commercials and insurance agencies trying to make us more
aware of the problem. The challenge is, as a society, even though
bombarded with information; we are not fully knowledgeable about
the depth of the challenges faced when your identity is stolen.
(getidsmart.com, 2012)
Identity Theft:
Identity theft is not a “victim less crime”. It happens to people
every day.
Hopefully it will never happen to any of us.
But as the last slide pointed out the number and incidents of
theft are growing.
In the next several slides we will look at the steps you should
take after you realize that you are a victim of identity theft.
Identity Theft: What to do first if it happens to you…
Report it to the Authorities First: Promptly report the fraud to local law
enforcement, the Attorney General’s Office and the FTC.
File a consumer complaint with the Attorney General’s ID Theft Unit by
phone at 1.800.382.5516, or online at
www.IndianaConsumer.com/IDTheft.
File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission by contacting the
FTC’s ID Theft Hotline by phone at 1.877.ID.THEFT (438.4338), or
online at www.consumer.gov/idtheft.
Identity Theft
The next step is to go the these credit agencies and tell
them that you suspect you are the victim of identify theft.
Equifax: 1.800.525.6285 (www.equifax.com)
Experian: 1.888.397.3742 (www.experian.com)
TransUnion: 1.800.680.7289
(www.transunion.com)
Place a fraud alert on the report.
Identity Theft
To prevent additional accounts being opened by the thief in your name,
Ask that a “security freeze” can be placed on you account.
Here is a general summary of the information found in the Indiana
Consumer .com agency’s brochure on “security freeze”.
1. According to Indiana Law, you will not be charged a fee to either
place or remove a “security freeze” on your account.
2. The amount you are responsible for if theft has taken place will
depend upon how soon you file a I.D. Theft Affidavit. To limit the
amount that you will be responsible for, the report of illegal activity
and the affidavit should be filed within two weeks of the discovery of
the illegal use of credit.
Identity Theft: Sites worth knowing about
There are a lot of great sites that you should know about as you learn more
about identity theft. We will look at each one in the following slides:
1. Privacy Rights Clearing House.org www.privacyrights.org/
2. Identify Theft Resource Center www.idtheftcenter.org
3. Indiana State Attorney General Consumer Fraud
4. Request your free every twelve month credit reports from:
www.annualcreditreport.com
Identity Theft: Privacy Rights Clearing House.org
Privacy Rights Clearing House.org www.privacyrights.org
What makes this such a good site is the amount and quality of
information available for the user.
Topics that can be researched include; background checks, banking and
finance, harassment and stalking, insurance, junk mail, public records,
social security, and telephone privacy.
Each of the topics has accompanying fact sheets about the topic.
Identity Theft: Identify Theft Resource Center
The Url is: http://www.idtheftcenter.org/
This resource offered a toll free number for no cost victim assistance. It is 1888-400-5530.
It includes pages in Spanish and Chinese.
Sections of the site include: financial, child, smart phone, governmental,
medical and social network identity theft.
The sections include resources, solutions and fact sheets.
Identity Theft: Indiana State Attorney General
Consumer Fraud
This page contains the ID Theft Victim Kit and the ID Theft Complaint.
Both are in PDF format so they can be easily printed out.
The ID Theft Victim Kit describes step-by-step how to go about reclaiming
your identity. It also lists the Indiana Laws that protect the victim and which
Federal agencies that might need to be contacted depending on
circumstances.
The page title is: Identity Theft Unit
The Url is http://www.in.gov/attorneygeneral/2413.htm.
Identity Theft: Annual Credit Report
This is the URL for this site: https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp
You will never receive an email directly from the Annual Credit Report Request
Service. To ensure that you are visiting the legitimate site, type
https://www.annualcreditreport.com directly into the address bar on your
browser. It is very important that you are on the right page, since you will have
to answer “challenge” questions in order to see your credit history. This site also
uses VERISIGN to verify that you are on the correct site and not a fake site.
You are entitled to ONE free credit report each year from the three credit
reporting agencies. If you choose to look at one report every four months from a
different agency each time, you will be able to keep track of your credit history
without paying a dime. By using these reports, you can see who has been
requesting a report on you and who, in your name has requested credit. If you
did not request credit then someone posing as you most likely did.
Identity Theft: Lexus/Nexis Full Disclosure Report
Remember that each year you can request a free copy of your credit report. It is
possible to request one report from a different agency each quarter of the year .
So that you can get a complete picture of who is requesting credit information
about you.
You should also know about other information that is kept about not only your
finances but also about your job history and related civil/legal public reports.
The Fair Credit Reporting act also allows you to request and look at these reports
as well.
A good example of the full data file kept is the Lexus/Nexis Full File Disclosure
report. This will cover other information available.
Identity Theft: Lexus/Nexis Full Disclosure Report
The information on this report may be found on the Privacy Rights Clearing House web site.
On a fact sheet called:
Fact Sheet 6b:
"Other" Consumer Reports:
What You Should Know about "Specialty" Reports
The amount of information in this report is very detailed, it covers the following areas:
The results of a national criminal records search of your name and personal information.
Government records and public information about you such as real estate ownership
records, bankruptcies, professional licenses and historical addresses. It reports (one for
personal auto insurance and one for personal property/homeowners insurance), each of
which summarizes insurance loss history information about you provided to LexisNexis Risk
Solutions by participating insurance companies.
If you would like to receive this report, on the fact sheet is the information on what is
required to request it.
Identify Theft: Final Thoughts
If you are lucky, you will never have to deal with this problem if you take
the precautions recommended on the first part of this presentation. But if
trouble should arise, now you know where to go to find the information
that you will need to “fix” the problem.