Scams and Identity Theft - More suggestion for taxpayers to help protect themselves against scams and identity theft: Federal laws give you the right to one free credit report per year from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus – Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. You can request your reports at AnnualCreditReport. I recommend staggering your requests so that you receive a credit report every four months. Start with Equifax, for example, then four months later request from Experian, and finally from TransUnion. You can repeat the same process every year – just make sure you remember which bureau you started with. A new report every four months should be enough monitoring for most people. The reports should include all of your credit activity, but there may be some discrepancies between the bureaus so be aware of that. Check with your credit card company as well. Some companies include identity theft protection with your account. You can sign up for notifications whenever someone makes a big charge or tries to change your account information, too. That lets you respond to fake charges faster. A tactic some people like to use is a credit freeze. This prevents new creditors from accessing your credit report. That means it’s less likely that an identity thief will be able to use your name to open an account. A credit freeze usually costs $10. Companies that you already do business with you can still access your reports and the freeze can be lifted temporarily for another $10 charge. You can lift it for a specific creditor, too. If you can prove your identity was stolen, the fees for credit freezing and removal are usually waived.
Posted on: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 17:05:26 +0000
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