Identity Theft Credit Repair

Author: Andy Mitchel | Filed under: Identity Theft Recovery | Tags: Identity Theft Credit Repair | No Comments »

While the legal process for identity theft credit repair can be quite lengthy, recovering your identity is very much possible along with regaining a sense of normalcy in your life. The objective of credit repair is to completely remove all the fraudulent charges against you. This can be accomplished by combating the charges and proving to financial institutions and credit bureaus that you were a victim of identity theft. When successful, your financial standing and credit score will improve as a result of the the negatives being removed from your file.

Victims shouldn’t waste anytime contacting all creditors and informing them of the situation. This means telling them that any purchases in their name shouldn’t be authorized and their credit should be suspended. Call any financial institutions that you have accounts with, such as banks and credit card companies.

Identity theft victims have the right to contest any items on their credit report that are either inaccurate, misleading, or unverifiable. The credit bureau has 30 days to verify all of the details. If they can’t, then all the charges must be removed. They have to prove that you actually paid for all the items.

Victims will receive in writing all the results of the investigation and changes made to their credit reports. Information that has been removed from a report can never be returned unless evidence surfaces that verifies that the charge was not fraudulent. Upon request, a notice must be sent to anyone who has seen a report in the last six months to explain changes that have been made. Updated reports can be sent to any employers whom victims have been with in the last two years.

Identity Theft Prevention

A credit monitoring service or insurance should be considered by anyone who has been a victim. Sometimes a stolen identity can get passed around to other criminals, so you are still at risk. Many services are available that provide identity theft protection, such as Identity Guard and Lifelock. You can obtain a maximum of $1,000,000 insurance from Lifelock to cover damages that occur to your records as a result of being a victim.

A credit monitoring will also the bear the burden of recovering your identity, saving you a great deal of time and headaches. The best services, such as Identity Guard and Lifelock, will manage the situation and work to remove the blemishes from your credit.

Credit monitoring can be done on your own by requesting credit reports periodically. However, this will only give an update of your credit every so often and ultimately won’t recover your identity if it’s stolen. Doing all the monitoring yourself can require a lot of work and time. Meanwhile, credit monitoring services will not only watch over your credit around the clock, they will also take care of the restoration process as well.