What can we do if our identity is stolen?

 What can we do if our identity is stolen?

      It is not at all strange to find hundreds of cases of identity theft, something that has not stopped growing over the years.

      It is necessary to protect all of our private information as much as possible, although it is also necessary to be alerted to changes or notifications of which we are not aware.

  From 2019 to 2020, cases of identity theft doubled.  No wonder 80% of people think they should do more to protect their personal information.  But once that happens, what can we do if our identity is stolen?

  What do we do if our identity is stolen?

  Understand the broken range

  It is very likely that we will find out that our identity has been stolen after doing some damage.  They may have used a credit card or changed something on a particular account.

  The first thing to do is run a credit report.  We will have access to information about our name, including credit accounts, inquiries and recent addresses.  Here we must pay close attention to any kind of information that we do not know.

  We will also have to check email, messages (SMS), and even notifications from applications that we have installed on our devices.  We must pay close attention to those emails where it is indicated that the password has been changed, for example.

  Contact the affected companies

  When we are clear about where our identity is being used, what we need to do next is inform the affected companies.

  We will have to call the official direct line of each one, we will never answer an incoming call, we communicate with them;  This is very important, many thieves represent certain companies.  In this sense, it would be ideal to record the entire call.

  Request a Fraud Alert or Freeze or Ban Accounts

  A scam alert asks companies to confirm your identity before credit is approved.  This is an additional step that complicates the thief situation.  Fraud alerts last for a year and can be renewed.

  A credit freeze is another thing we can do.  This restricts access to the credit report and we must unfreeze to apply for credit.  The credit freeze takes effect in one day and does not expire.

  Another option is to contact the credit card issuer and ask for the card to be blocked, with an explanation of the reasons.  In general, the lock is instant so the thief will not be able to use it again.  At the moment we can order a new card.

  Check and secure other accounts

  Once you have secured the key accounts and submitted the relevant reports to the police.  The next step is to review and update any other accounts we have.

  Once a thief has enough information to enter an account, basically everyone can be at risk, and the average consumer is estimated to have around 90 accounts online.

  And here we must begin with an audit of financial accounts, including: banks, credit cards, insurance and investments.  We must be very attentive to suspicious transactions, credit requests, or any type of activity that we did not request.  Suspicious transactions can involve companies with whom we don't really remember whether we purchased a product or service.

  It is also important to check other Internet accounts: e-mail, social networks, subscriptions.  The idea is to look for anything out of the ordinary.  The best thing you can do is create a new email, that no one knows, with a complex password and connect the most relevant services to this new account.