Identity Theft

If you find yourself as the victim of an identity theft crime, you have lost more than just some money and a truckload of time working with the credit bureaus and possibly even lawyers to straighten the mess out. You feel violated, and feel like you have lost some of your security. It is not pleasant, and you have this nagging fear that since it happened to you once, it can happen again. Some people have even resorted to seeing a psychologist because that basic sense of trust has been lost with banks, department stores, and anybody else where a financial transaction is involved.

The FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act) has established policies and procedures that must be followed for correcting reports on your credit report. They also require that your credit report only be made available for certain legitimate business needs. When you dispute the accuracy of information on your credit report (which you should do anyway, regardless of whether or not you are the victim of identity theft), there are procedures that the credit bureau must follow by law. When you are disputing information on your credit report, be aware that you need to be checking all three of the major credit bureaus, since they do not share information between them, and information reported by one credit bureau may or may not reflect the same information at another one.

When you dispute information with the credit bureau, be sure to do it in writing, and note the time and date of your letter. Some people even send their dispute letters by registered mail to ensure that it is received. If you dispute via phone, there is always a chance that they could say they never talked to you, and it is then their word against yours, so do it in writing.

While all this is being straightened out, there are undoubtedly creditors out there where the thief opened accounts, and those accounts are growing more seriously past due with each passing day. The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act prohibits debt collectors from using deceptive or unfair practices to collect overdue bills that a creditor has forwarded to collections. What most consumers don’t realize is that you should send a letter (recommend using registered mail) to a collection agency telling them to stop. Once the debt collector receives your letter, they cannot contact you again, by law. While this does not get rid of the problem of the debt itself, it will stop the additional unnecessary pressure of savory and gruff debt collectors from hounding you for a balance that was the result of identity theft.

Even if the account has not gone past due, close the account immediately and explain why you are closing the account. If the thief tries to re-open the account, there will be a flag in the creditor’s system telling them about the case of identity theft, and the thief should not be able to re-open the account.