Question
What is a Fraud Alert? How To Do A Fraud Alert?
Answer
Imagine standing in line at the grocery store one day buying groceries and your credit card is declined. Up until that point you have never had a problem on your credit card. What happened? Your credit card company noticed some extra activity on your card and placed a hold on your card until you called them to check in on the card. You had a fraud alert on your card.
What is a Fraud Alert?
Protecting yourself from an identity thief is not a sure thing. If you find that an ID thief has invaded your life, there are things that you can do to turn your situation around. One of the things that you can do is request that a fraud alert be put on your credit report. This will alert any potential new creditors to call you before opening any new credit accounts or making changes to any of your existing credit. This should keep an identity thief from being able to open any new accounts. Sadly, by law, creditors do not have to call you when you put a credit alert on your account before they extend credit on your account.
How To Do A Fraud Alert?
You simply need to call the Credit Bureau Fraud Department of one of the three credit bureaus to get it started. You only need to call one and not all three.
- The Equifax fraud line is 1-800-525-6285
- The Experian fraud line is 1-800-397-3724
- The Transunion fraud line is 1-800-680-7289
Once you know that you are victim or suspect that you are victim of ID Theft, make sure that you get a full complete copy of your credit report. Contact every creditor for fraudulent accounts that have been taken out on your credit report. Do not leave it up to anybody else to fix your credit report. Take it into your own hands.
You will want to speak to the fraud department of each creditor to alert them that a fraud has taken place. You will want to follow up each conversation with a letter regarding the account. You will also want to file a police report in the jurisdiction of where the fraud has occurred.
The last thing you want to do is keep a written record of all correspondence and telephone calls with the creditors.
