Identity Theft Time Is Mainly What You Lose
Although financially you might not be on the hook if your identity is stolen, you will be on the hook for hundreds of man hours you’ll need to correct the problems created all over the place.
Just last year 9 million Americans discovered their identity had been stolen, a number that continues to grow each year. Technology has left us much more vulnerable than in the past, because someone, thousands of miles away, with the right skills can hack into credit bureaus, medical records, banks, credit companies, and your very own computer. Identity theft has racked up more than $20 billion dollars in fraudulent purchases but who pays?
In most cases, you won’t be financially responsible for any money. However, in a few states you may be responsible for the first $50. However, you will be faced with the loss of a great deal of time as you get your identity back and things all squared away, and time is money!
If you suspect that something is going on and that you might be the victim of identity theft, you need to contact the police immediately and file a police report. That’s a key element to eliminate your responsibility for the financial losses.
Next, you need to begin to contact every single creditor and tell them to suspend credit and not to authorize any future purchases on you account. That means department stores, Visa, MasterCard, banks, travel, petro, and financial institutes.
The credit card companies don’t care about your identity theft until it shows up on their doorstep, which is why over 90% of all reporting of identity theft comes from victims rather than the card issuers.
It can be quite sometime before it even comes to your attention. If you ask for your free credit report yearly this might be when you catch it. Or it might be when you find yourself being threatened with legal action for delinquent payments.
You may not be on the hook financially for the purchases but you can expect to spend 600 or more hours of your time to clean up your credit report and get the credit history repair under way. In fact, sometimes it takes years to finally get things straightened out and removed from your credit report.
You’ll need copies of your police report, and you might even need an accountant, and/or lawyer. You’ll be paying them their regular fees to help you straighten out this big mess so you aren’t haunted with bad credit that’s not yours for years.
Chasing down information, calling to try to correct mistakes, and the ongoing repetition of the same thing repeatedly, can become very frustrating, so before your identity becomes stolen do your part to try to reduce your risks. You might also consider the services of one of the many excellent paid services. A little bit of time now will save you a lot of time in the long run.
