How To Put A Fraud Alert On Your Credit Report

You should ask for a copy of your credit report, and do so as soon as you are convinced that you are the victim of fraud. If you put your credit report in the back of an envelope, making it completely enclosed, then you will be easy to disappear if the envelope gets lost or stolen. Once you've secured your credit report and realize that you are the victim of fraud, you should immediately contact the credit card companies in which you have accounts. You should also contact the police. Financial transactions that you didn't authorize could be the work of some person trying to steal your identity. Keeping your credit alert status not only protects you from unauthorized charges, it also safeguards your credit history by ensuring that an account of someone with an identical name as yours doesn't get turned into the black books of the criminal syndicates who use identity thieves to swindle identities.

An identity thief only needs your credit card information or the credit card address to make purchases. The real story is that identity thieves are more likely than not very skillful at obtaining credit card information. Once they have it, they can use it for a number of days before the credit card company notice the transactions. This doesn't mean that someone has stolen your identity, it just means that you can catch the suspicious transactions and credit card activity.

To add to that the most innovative techniques used by identity thieves are those that involve the stealing of the PIN and the signature of your card that was used previously. All these means you put it to good use. Yes, you have to ensure that all your cards have new PINs. This means you should diligently print out the new PIN on a separate piece of paper. No matter how genuine the PIN appears to be, even if a thief has genuine intentions to use a PIN that has been printed on the card, you should not divulge it to him. Once the PIN is written out, you should initiate a call to your card issuer to notify them of the PIN changes. After doing this, you can use an ATM to extract the new PIN from a post office or popular bank, and cut it into the next card that has that card connected to it.

Next, after obtaining the new PIN, you should blindly write a new PIN on a separate piece of paper. If you have previously induced the right checks of an envelope, you can use two or more separate envelopes to get what is known as a two-in-one receipt. Use each envelope. To change the PIN once, use the two-in-one receipt to change a new PIN and use a new PIN on the second card. Once, again, you can use the second card at a later date to make purchases. When you've made a payment, you can call your card issuer to request that there be no new charges on a card that you've already paid off.