One excellent way to protect against identity theft is to use a credit bureau fraud alert. In this article, we will discuss what fraud alerts are and how they will help you prevent identity theft.

A fraud alert is something that is put on your credit report to indicate that you suspect that you might become a victim of ID theft. If you are concerned about your identity, then you are entitled to ask that a fraud alert be placed on your credit report with all three of the major credit bureaus. This is a free service that you are entitled to do to protect your identity. A normal fraud alert last for 90 days, at which time you can renew it for another 90 days.

If you have actually been the victim of identity theft, then you are allowed to put an extended fraud alert on your account with all three credit report bureaus. You will need to provide the credit bureaus with proof of you being an identity theft victim, via a police report. Once you supply the credit bureaus with this proof, the extended fraud alert stays on your account for seven years.

The purpose of either type of a fraud alert is to cause companies that are in the process of issuing credit in your name to contact you first to verify that you are indeed asking for a new line of credit to be opened up with your personal information. This way, if somebody is in the process of committing ID theft with your personal information, they will not be successful as the issuing company must first contact you to confirm that you want to open up a new account.

You can see how useful of a tool fraud alerts are in ID theft protection. Yes, they may be a bit of an inconvenience if you are actually trying to open up a new line of credit account. However, the amount of heartache that you will be saving yourself from having since you are doing your best to protect identity, is well worth the minor bit of aggravation having a fraud alert on your account may cause.

There are identity theft companies, such as LifeLock, that will put the fraud alert on your account every 90 days for you, so that you don’t have to worry about remembering to do so. This is just part of the service that LifeLock offers you to help with stolen identity protection. Check them out to see what they can do for you!

Related posts:

1. Ten Best Practices to Prevent ID Theft
2. LifeLock Strikes Back to Defeat Identity Theft
3. Identity Theft Statistics
4. Anybody Can Become a Victim of Identity Theft
5. Arizona Leads the Nation in Identity Theft