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| May 06, 2008 7:23 pm |
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Organization Tuesday: Will the Real TBC Member Please Stand Up? (Identity Theft Recovery-Part 2) |
Julie Bestry
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Recovering From Identity Theft
Last
week, we talked about what we can do, on an individual basis,
to
prevent ourselves from being the victims of identity theft.
But,
just as in the real world where all the locked doors and alarm systems
can protect us only so
much, in the world of cyberthieves and dumptster divers,
our precautions may not always be enough.
Identity
theft is not merely inconvenient, and identity thieves do not just
steal our money or purloin the time it takes for us to get our finances
back in order.
The Privacy
Rights Clearinghouse reports that the average victim
of identity theft spends 175+ hours recovering losses and restoring his
or her good name, but lost time is actually the least of your worries
if you become a victim.
Upwards
of 9.3 million Americans are victimized by identity theft each year,
and that number is growing as new technologies present ever-increasing
opportunities. Usually,
thieves make a few
purchases using a stolen credit card number and then move on to the
next victim. Keeping organized records and quickly alerting the credit
card company means you will suffer minimal financial loss.
However, in the most dangerous cases, identity thieves create an
alternate version of "you"—causing
untold damage. If someone steals your identity and then uses it to
procure services at a hospital, depending on the thief’s diagnoses, it
could prevent you from getting health or life insurance later on in
life. And these bad guys don’t merely ruin your credit rating
and
keep you from getting insurance, passports and jobs. You could even get
arrested if
someone commits
a felony using your forged identity.
ID theft is happening
more often regardless of our own preventative
measures. Preventative organization
is still your best shot at guarding against identity theft, but because
more than 2.4 million Americans (involving 226
million plus data records)
have been left open to identity theft
through computer
hackers of major companies and universities,
defensive moves aren't
enough.
Organization must also be your key move after
the criminals strike, so use these tips as a checklist to towards
recovery of your good name.
1) CALL
THE AUTHORITIES
- CALL one of
the three CREDIT REPORTING AGENCIES to issue a 90-DAY
FRAUD ALERT and get a free copy of your credit report to see how
pervasive the problem is.
| Equifax |
800-525-6285 |
| Experian |
800-397-3742 |
| TransUnion |
800-680-7289 |
- CALL your
CREDITORS.
Close all tampered credit card accounts and have them marked as "closed
at consumer's request". Make sure you aren't held responsible for
fraudulent accounts opened in your name. If your checks are stolen,
call your bank AND Telecheck:
- CALL the
POLICE.
Filling out a detailed crime report allows you to extend your fraud
alert from 90 days to 7 years and helps you officially correct records.
This is your main insurance against arrest and prosecution if someone
steals your identity and commits crimes.
2) PUT
EVERYTHING IN WRITING
- Keep a LOG
BOOK
of every conversation. Every time you call a credit agency, creditor or
the police, write down the date and time of the call, the name of the
person you talked to, their badge or ID number and their contact
information. Note what they promised to do.
- Follow up
every call with a CERTIFIED
LETTER confirming the details of your conversation. Fill
out your lenders' FRAUD
FORMS and send copies of the police report.
- File a
COMPLAINT with the Federal Trade Commission.
- Fill out an
ID THEFT AFFIDAVIT, available online:
3) MAINTAIN
EXCELLENT RECORDS
Keep a special section in
your filing system
for logs of phone calls and copies of your letters, affidavits and
fraud forms. Keep copies of anything the agencies, creditors or police
send you.
OPEN YOUR MAIL
as soon as it arrives and check every bill for accuracy; then organize
files for each account, dating back at least a year, to track and
verify transactions.
4) REMEMBER
THAT THE BEST OFFENSE IS A GOOD DEFENSE
NEVER GIVE OUT YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION via phone or computer unless
you initiate the contact and it is SECURE.
Use the free web site AnnualCreditReport.com
to check all three of your credit reports every year. Investigate
anything odd.
DON’T CARRY your Social Security Card in your wallet. Protect your
Social Security Number as if it’s worth a million dollars.
SHRED
convenience checks and anything containing personal account information
before discarding.
Call 888-5-OPTOUT
to get off mailing lists for pre-approved credit cards so no one can
steal the offers from your mailbox and apply for credit in your name.
Keeping
organized helps prevent ID theft, alerts you to a crisis sooner and
helps you recover your finances, your legal standing and your good name
after the fact. Fight back, and be careful out there!
========================
Originally, I'd planned to move on to dealing with business identity
theft next, but we should target one more issue of concern to us as
individuals...medical
identity theft. We've already seen a shameful
amount of breached
privacy of celebrities
in recent months. While we may feel secure in the notion that
nobody would be as interested in our gall bladder surgeries as the
medical histories of Farrah Fawcett or Britney Spears, the truth is
that supposedly
trusted medical professionals easily accessed private
information for fun and profit. It's not much of a leap to
imagine that if they could profit from our medical identities,
that the bad guys would do that, too.
I'll be taking a break
from posting next Tuesday (5/13/08) as part of extended Mother's Day
travels, but I'll see you back here in two weeks to talk about
organizing our own medical records for safe-guarding our personal
well-being and protecting our medical identities. Until then,
please take the time to put the advice in this post (and last week's)
to good use and request (and examine) your free credit reports to make sure everything is as it should be.
--
Julie Bestry, Certified Professional Organizer®
Best Results Organizing
"Don't apologize. Organize!"
organize@juliebestry.com
Visit http://www.juliebestry.com
to save time and money, reduce stress and increase your productivity
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