If people steal your identify and apply for any credit (and obviously they will not pay for it), your credit score will take a major hit and it will take a lot of effort to recover. It is important to take some effort to manage it.
First, monitor your credit periodically. There are three companies that keep your credit history : TransUnion, Experian, and EquiFax. The good thing is that you are entitled to get one free credit report per year from each of them. So, setup a schedule and use it wisely. On 1/1, 5/1, and 9/1 of each year, get a free credit report from
- www.annualcreditreport.com
choose one of the three, and rotate over time.
Credit report is self-explanatory. Things you are looking for are whether you have a clean record of accounts in good standing (i.e. no late or missed payment) and whether those loans / accounts are truly yours (nobody else tried to use your identify to borrow).
Most of the identify theft is from credit card, so manage it carefully. Go to the credit card company (or bank) website, and use their alert funtion to setup alert about misusage (it varies, but use as much function as they apply). Focusing on using one credit card. The more they learn about your spending habit, the better they are in detecting misusage. For example, I travel a lot, and my credit card company pretty much knows which counties I usually go. Once I was oversea and their is a charge on my credit card from Florida. My credit card company immediately sent me an email, and we were able to prevent that (they issued me a new card to pick up at one of their oversea branch on the same day.)
As the main point of this whole session, spend time to do your homework (in this case, manage it) and you will do well.
