Credit Report

Credit report has become the main focus of attention in the fight against identity theft and fraud detection. As I continue to write articles about identity theft and consumer awareness about the significance of this crime and how to fight it, I can’t stop being "shocked and awed" about the focus of all advertisers and solution providers on the internet in the fight against identity theft. If you look around carefully on the Internet and read about the solutions provided to fight identity theft, the majority of them sell copies of your report or monitoring services. Although I fully agree that we have to check and monitor our report to detect any potential and unauthorized use of our identity to setup new accounts or change the terms of the exisitng ones, report monitoring should be part of the overall strategy. It appears that the major focus in the fight against identity theft is “detection” rather than “prevention” and less to do with consumer awareness about risks of personal information mismanagement such as dangers of owning too many credit cards or excessive information sharing. Like I said, I agree that timely identity fraud detection through report monitoring and our subsequent actions will put a stop to the unauthorized use of our stolen identity, but it should not be the major focus but rather be part of the overall solution strategy which is to reduce its occurrence in the first place. This way, our focus will shift from defensive damage control to offensive prevention.

In addition, report monitoring will not help consumers detect the unauthorized use of their existing accounts. Consumers most likely will detect unauthorized charges on the existing accounts when they review their account statements, which may be 30 days away from the last statement date, which is plenty of time for identity thieves to max out on the credit account limits. You should review your account activities online, which is what I do to detect any unauthorized transaction on a timely basis. If your mails were being illegally forwarded to some other place due to an address change at the post office, you will not detect the unauthorized charges through the review of your statement because you will not get your statement, but rather you will detect the fraud when the bank contacts you to ask for a prompt payment of all charges. You must remember, that your liability for unauthorized charges is limited only when you contact the bank promptly within a predefined period upon the discovery of unauthorized charges on your statement. Otherwise, you might be responsible for all charges. In addition, health identity theft and other crimes may not be detected through a review of your credit report unless of course such frauds and crimes lead to financial and credit consequences reflected in your credit report.

That being said, learn all you can about your report, what information it includes and excludes, how it can be used to detect identity theft, how to check its content, how to monitor it, how often, what to look for, and what to do after you detect an unauthorized activity. Sign up for a service to help you manage and automate the credit monitoring and change notification process, which should be part of an overall strategy and not the main focus in the fight against this crime.

Identity theft and fraud detection articles

Beneficiary Change An unauthorized beneficiary change can lead to the disappearance of many assets including retirement accounts. Learn about the risks and what you can do to protect your assets.
Credit Monitoring Credit monitoring is a good process to detect identity theft and unauthorized transactions; however, it is not a total solution for identity theft.
Account Disappeared An account disappeared from the list of your online accounts can be a sign of fraud. You need to understand and consider the causes and what you need to do next.
Activate Account Alert You can activate account alert to monitor account activities real time and quickly detect potential account fraud.
Online account monitoring benefits. Consumers should consider online account monitoring to detect identity fraud and account errors.
Fair Credit Reporting Act or FCRA - Your rights and their responsibilities. FCRA provides consumers certain rights when it comes to their credit report and consumer reporting agencies as well as companies which may buy your credit information from these agencies have also certain responsibilities.
Identity theft notifications and what they mean. You have just received an identity theft notification letter from a company. What are you supposed to do now?
Learn about the reports. Learn all about your credit report, what it is, how it's created, used and why.
What is in your credit report? Know what credit information is included in your report.
Get your free report. Take advantage of the new law and order your free credit report today without buying any service.
Using reports to detect credit fraud. Use the information in your report to detect potential identity fraud.