Has Your Identity Been Stolen? Make Sure You Check!
Christmas 2006 update: I hate thinking this is an 'evergreen article' but my mother-in-law who is nearly 90 just had her identity stolen and is now making sure she shreds all her paperwork before discarding. With the shopping frenzy of the holidays, the risk to consumers for identity theft is particularly high this time of year.
A couple years ago when my husband and I were refinancing our home I discovered my identity had been stolen. Oh yeah, I had also been turned over to collections for medical bills due to a misfiling of a bill at a surgeon's office six months prior and didn't know about any of that mess either, including that the bill hadn't been paid. It took me 18 months to get all the corrections on my credit report. I shudder to think how crazy things would have gotten if I had not discovered this via the refi process. Here are some tips so you can avoid a similar fate and to help you keep aware of issues important to creditors:
suObtain copies of your credit report from all 3 major credit bureaus: Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. General wisdom indicates this should be done annually. Different creditors report to different agencies so you may have significant differences between the various reports. If you have been turned down for credit on the basis of your credit report, you can obtain a copy for free, otherwise you will have to pay a fee.
NOTE: If you correct mistakes with one credit bureau, the mistakes will not automatically be corrected with the other bureaus.
If you have been, rightly or wrongly, turned over to a collection agency, credit bureaus need to hear from the creditor/payee when the issue has been resolved. They will not take your word for it, even with the relevant documentation and the collection agency does not inform the credit bureaus how issues get resolved. In my case, my doctor's office submitted a bill under old insurance information that had not been removed from my chart. I was in collections for over six months and never did get a notice this had happened even though it had been reported to two of the collection bureaus. Once cleared, the credit agencies listed simply that I had paid the bill (actually, my HMO did) so it appeared that I still had a hx of bad debt. Insist that the billing institution write a correction to send to the credit bureaus. Interestingly, my MD office did not tell the collection agency when the medical bill was paid so that also required I connect them to resolve the issue.
Get a shredder. Shred anything that has account numbers and/or personal info. This includes offers for pre-approved credit cards and balance transfer checks.
Planning on making a major purchase or curious about how you rate in terms of credit strength? Every American who has ever used credit has a FICO score. The lower your score, the higher a credit risk you are deemed to be and the higher the interest rates you are likely to pay. Scores range up to 850. You'll want to be over 720 to qualify for favorable rates.
To learn more about identity theft, visit the Federal Trade Commission.
Other helpful links:
To learn more about this author, visit Wellspring Coaching.
Comments