Identity Theft. Protect Yourself

[TulsaFan-inTexas]

With the recent and increasing flurry of identity theft taking place in America, does anyone on this forum protect themselves from identity theft?

In the last few weeks, personal information for millions of people has been lost/stolen. My wife's purse was stolen about two years ago and the ordeal we went through to reclaim our good name was a not so minor nightmare.

But, there are ways to protect yourself; the measures don't cost any money and are effective.

Call all of the credit reporting bureaus (equifax, etc) and have them put a fraud alert on your account. All you need to tell them is that you have reasonable suspicion that someone has been trying to tamper with your identity. With all of the identity theft happening these days, this in itself is a reasonable cause for suspicion.

The fruad alert instructs any entity issuing credit in your name to contact you by phone for approval before actually opening an account. If they don't contact you, the account cannot opened. For example, if someone is fraudulently trying to use your SSN to open up a mobile phone account, the service provider has to contact you by phone before the transaction can be concluded. I've had this done and it works to perfection. The fraud alert only lasts 90 days so you will need to contact the credit reporting bureaus every 90 days or so if you wish to keep this going.
A bonus to the fraud alert is that you'll get a credit report from each of the credit bureaus free of charge where you can examine it closely for any suspicious activity.

Below are some websites (I hope this is okay with the admin) with tips on ways to better protect your identity. In additon, there is a company called lifelock (I won't give their website because it could be construed as spamming?) that conducts these services for a fee and will also insure you against identity theft.

http://www.privacyrights.org/identity.htm

http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/