How to Restore Your Credit After Identity Theft

In 1998, The Federal Trade Commission appeared before the Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Government Information of the Committee of the Judiciary, United States Senate.The FTC highlighted the concerns of consumers for financial crimes exploiting their credit worthiness to commit loan fraud, mortgage fraud, lines-of-credit fraud, credit card fraud, commodities and services frauds.

With the rising awareness of consumers to an international problem, in particular through a proliferation of web sites and the media, the term "identity theft" has since morphed to encompass a much broader range of identification-based crimes. The more traditional crimes range from dead beat dads avoiding their financial obligations, to providing the police with stolen or forged documents thereby avoiding detection, money laundering, trafficking in human beings, stock market manipulation and even to terrorism.

According to the non-profit Identity Theft Resource Center, identity theft is sub-divided into four categories:

Financial Identity Theft, using another's name and SSN to obtain goods and services, Criminal Identity Theft, posing as another when apprehended for a crime, Identity Cloning, using another's information to assume his or her identity in daily life and Business/Commercial Identity Theft, using another's business name to obtain credit.

Identifying information includes name, social securit number and date of birth. Consumers who are the victi of identity theft or fraud are instructed to contact the following organizations:

The fraud department of each creditor, or utility service that provided the identity thief with unauthorized credit, goods or services. Close the accounts and follow up in writing and send copies, not originals, of any supporting documentation. Send all correspondence via certified mail return receipt requested and maintain accurate, up to date records. Consumers can also request an identity theft affidavit or they can use the FTC's offical affidavit available at their website www.ftc.gov.

The National "big three" credit reporting agencies.

Equifax- 1-800-525-6285

Experian - 1-888-EXPERIAN

Trans Union - 1-800-680-7289

Consumers can ask each of the credit bureaus to place a fraud alert on heir credit reports and request free copis of their credit reports. When the consumer completes the identity theft affidavit they should send each credit bureau a copy to help the investigaton of the disputed account.

Your local police department. Consmers are suggested to have a police officer take an incident report of the incident. A police report may be necessary by some creditors to complete their investigation process.

The Federal Trade Commission. It is suggested that consumers call the Identity Theft Data Clearinghouse to report the incident at 1-877-438-3228

When you have submitted all the necessary forms and filed all the necessary paperwork, you should exercise your right to place a written 100 word entry into your credit report from all three credit bureaus, explaining that you have been the victim of identity theft. Once you have done all of the above and your credit reports reflect your statement explaining the fraud, it is time for damage control.

This is accomplished by the usual credit repair techniques of disputing negative information forcing the credit bureau to submit proof of the debt in a timely manner. They will be provided 30 day to do this by Federal law and if they fail to do so, the account must be deleted from your credit report.

The best time to make the dispute is during the busiest mail time of the year, between Thanksgiving and New Years Day.During these busy times there is a better chance of the credit bureau not having enough available resources to comply with the time requirements and will be forced to delete the contested items.

Always remember; "know the rules before you play the game."