Written on July 29, 2010 at 8:49 am by

Tools for ID Theft Victims

Filed under DoD News {one comment}

By Carol A. Kando-Pineda, this post is a follow-up to Carol’s two recent blog posts, “Deployed? Get an “Active Duty Alert” and “ID Theft, Take Control“

The Federal Trade Commission has these resources to help you assert your legal rights and clean up some of the problems identity theft causes.

FTC’s Identity Theft Complaint Form. When you file a complaint, it helps law enforcement officials across the country and around the world in their investigations. It also can help prove the crime took place. You can use the standardized printed ID Theft Complaint with a police report to create an Identity Theft Report. That’s a police report with more than the usual amount of detail: it has enough about the crime for the credit reporting companies and the businesses involved to verify that you’re a victim, and to know which accounts and inaccurate information resulted from identity theft.

You also can use an ID Theft Report to block fraudulent information from appearing on your credit report and to make sure that the same debts do not reappear on your credit report. And it can prevent a company from trying to collect debts from you that result from identity theft, or from selling them to others for collection. You need an ID Theft Report to place an extended fraud alert on your credit report.

The ID Theft Affidavit may be required to absolve you of the debt incurred by an identity thief who opened a new account in your name, or to get application or transaction records from a company the identity thief dealt with. If you don’t need the records — or you just need to have a specific debt absolved — you may want to ask the company whether they’ll accept the ID Theft Report without the ID Theft Affidavit.

Get other tools for victims at ftc.gov/idtheft.

Check out these other posts:

  • http://www.dodlive.mil/index.php/2010/07/episode-45-weekly-afps-news-roundup-for-july-29/ Episode #45: Weekly AFPS News Roundup for July 29 | DoD Live

    In the AFPS podcast for July 29: Coverage of remarks made by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Navy Adm. Mike Mullen during a 10 day trip to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan; Adm. Mullen also commented on the leak of classified documents by the organization Wikileaks; a trip by Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn to Guam ahead of a realignment of U.S. troops there; an announcement by Defense Secretary Robert Gates that the U.S. is ending a ban on military relations with Indonesian special forces; an interview with the director of the new Defense Department Office of Operational Energy Plans and Programs; highlights from the annual meeting of the Military Child Education Coalition; and, news you can use to help catch identity thieves.

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