What To Do In Case of Identity Theft

If you believe you have been the victim of identity theft, the first thing you should do is isolate the account you believe to be the problem. Once the account is isolated, you’ll need to contact your credit provider and let them know you believe your account has been breached. They’ll place a freeze on the account which means it cannot be used at all. If the thief attempts to use the card again, the authorities will be notified as to their location.

While this is the proper method to go about halting identity theft, if the thieves have been sly and you haven’t noticed their spending, you have a much bigger mess on your hands. Since you might not be able to tell your spending from theirs without receipts, you could be liable for their charges, unless your credit card company has adopted a 0% liability policy. Most credit cards offer this feature standard, but there are some that don’t. If you are unsure if your card comes with this feature, you should contact the card company and verify.

If your card does not offer this feature, there could be very little you can do. This means you would be liable for all the charges the thief has racked up over however many months of having your identity. Since you want to prevent things like this from happening to you, the best thing you can do is make sure you’re protected by having an identity theft protection company watching your credit 24 hours a day, since you cannot.

These services will monitor your credit to ensure no fraudulent activity can take place, which means you’ll never have to worry about fraudulent charges sneaking their way into your credit report without your prior knowledge.