Learn about identity theft and how you can protect yourself.

1. IDENTITY THEFT
Protecting your credit

2. Identity Theft
Do you :
Receive several offers of pre-approved credit
every week?
Not shred them before putting them in the
trash?
Not have a PO Box or a locked, secured
mailbox?
Not checked your national credit score with the
three national credit providers shown on the
next slide for more than two years?
If you answered yes to any of these questions
then you are putting your identity at risk for
theft.

3. Identity Theft
HOW SERIOUS IS THE PROBLEM? – The last federal trade
commission survey that was taken in 2002 gave us the statistic
that 12.7 % of individuals, or one in eight people surveyed had
experienced some form of identity theft. Keep in mind that this
figure has increased dramatically over the past 5 years. This
was in 2002 when many people had not heard of identity
theft, unlike now where we have commercials and insurance
agencies trying to make us more aware of the problem. The
challenge is, as a society, even though bombarded with
information; we are not fully knowledgeable about the depth of
the challenges faced when your identity is stolen.
(getidsmart.com, 2012)

4. Identity Theft:
Identity theft is not a “victim less crime”. It happens to
people every day.
Hopefully it will never happen to any of us.
But as the last slide pointed out the number and
incidents of theft are growing.
In the next several slides we will look at the steps you
should take after you realize that you are a victim of
identity theft.

5. Identity Theft: What to do first if it happens to
you…
Report it to the Authorities First: Promptly report the fraud to
local law enforcement, the Attorney General’s Office and the
FTC.
File a consumer complaint with the Attorney General’s ID
Theft Unit by phone at 1.800.382.5516, or online at
www.IndianaConsumer.com/IDTheft.
File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission by
contacting the FTC’s ID Theft Hotline by phone at
1.877.ID.THEFT (438.4338), or online at
www.consumer.gov/idtheft.

6. Identity Theft
The next step is to go the these credit agencies
and tell them that you suspect you are the victim
of identify theft.
Equifax: 1.800.525.6285 (www.equifax.com)
Experian: 1.888.397.3742 (www.experian.com)
TransUnion: 1.800.680.7289
(www.transunion.com)
Place a fraud alert on the report.

7. Identity Theft
To prevent additional accounts being opened by the thief in your
name,
Ask that a “security freeze” can be placed on you account.
Here is a general summary of the information found in the Indiana
Consumer .com agency’s brochure on “security freeze”.
1. According to Indiana Law, you will not be charged a fee to
either place or remove a “security freeze” on your account.
2. The amount you are responsible for if theft has taken place will
depend upon how soon you file a I.D. Theft Affidavit. To limit
the amount that you will be responsible for, the report of illegal
activity and the affidavit should be filed within two weeks of the
discovery of the illegal use of credit.

8. Identity Theft: Sites worth knowing
about
There are a lot of great sites that you should know about as you learn
more about identity theft. We will look at each one in the following
slides:
1. Privacy Rights Clearing House.org www.privacyrights.org/
2. Identify Theft Resource Center www.idtheftcenter.org
3. Indiana State Attorney General Consumer Fraud
4. Request your free every twelve month credit reports from:
www.annualcreditreport.com

9. Identity Theft: Privacy Rights Clearing
House.org
Privacy Rights Clearing House.org www.privacyrights.org
What makes this such a good site is the amount and quality of
information available for the user.
Topics that can be researched include; background checks,
banking and finance, harassment and stalking, insurance, junk
mail, public records, social security, and telephone privacy.
Each of the topics has accompanying fact sheets about the topic.

10. Identity Theft: Identify Theft Resource
Center
The Url is: http://www.idtheftcenter.org/
This resource offered a toll free number for no cost victim
assistance. It is 1-888-400-5530.
It includes pages in Spanish and Chinese.
Sections of the site include: financial, child, smart phone,
governmental, medical and social network identity theft.
The sections include resources, solutions and fact sheets.

11. Identity Theft: Indiana State Attorney
General Consumer Fraud
This page contains the ID Theft Victim Kit and the ID Theft
Complaint.
Both are in PDF format so they can be easily printed out.
The ID Theft Victim Kit describes step-by-step how to go about
reclaiming your identity. It also lists the Indiana Laws that protect the
victim and which Federal agencies that might need to be contacted
depending on circumstances.
The page title is: Identity Theft Unit
The Url is http://www.in.gov/attorneygeneral/2413.htm.

12. Identity Theft: Annual Credit Report
This is the URL for this site: https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp
You will never receive an email directly from the Annual Credit Report
Request Service. To ensure that you are visiting the legitimate site, type
https://www.annualcreditreport.com directly into the address bar on your
browser. It is very important that you are on the right page, since you will
have to answer “challenge” questions in order to see your credit history.
This site also uses VERISIGN to verify that you are on the correct site
and not a fake site.
You are entitled to ONE free credit report each year from the three credit
reporting agencies. If you choose to look at one report every four months
from a different agency each time, you will be able to keep track of your
credit history without paying a dime. By using these reports, you can see
who has been requesting a report on you and who, in your name has
requested credit. If you did not request credit then someone posing as
you most likely did.

13. Identity Theft: Lexus/Nexis Full Disclosure
Report
Remember that each year you can request a free copy of your credit
report. It is possible to request one report from a different agency each
quarter of the year . So that you can get a complete picture of who is
requesting credit information about you.
You should also know about other information that is kept about not only
your finances but also about your job history and related civil/legal public
reports.
The Fair Credit Reporting act also allows you to request and look at these
reports as well.
A good example of the full data file kept is the Lexus/Nexis Full File
Disclosure report. This will cover other information available.

14. Identity Theft: Lexus/Nexis Full Disclosure Report
The information on this report may be found on the Privacy Rights Clearing
House web site.
On a fact sheet called:
Fact Sheet 6b:
"Other" Consumer Reports:
What You Should Know about "Specialty" Reports
The amount of information in this report is very detailed, it covers the following
areas:
The results of a national criminal records search of your name and personal
information.
Government records and public information about you such as real estate
ownership records, bankruptcies, professional licenses and historical addresses.
It reports (one for personal auto insurance and one for personal
property/homeowners insurance), each of which summarizes insurance loss
history information about you provided to LexisNexis Risk Solutions by
participating insurance companies.
If you would like to receive this report, on the fact sheet is the information on what

15. Identify Theft: Final Thoughts
If you are lucky, you will never have to deal with this problem if you
take the precautions recommended on the first part of this
presentation. But if trouble should arise, now you know where to
go to find the information that you will need to “fix” the problem.