The McShane Companies

IDENTITY THEFT ACTION STEPS

• Contact each of the three credit bureaus and tell them to place a credit freeze, which prohibits the report from being shared with potential creditors. Credit freezes are free.

        EQUIFAX- www.equifax.com 1-888-766-0008

        EXPERIAN- www.experian.com 1-888-397-3742

        TRANS UNION- www.transunion.com 1-800-680-7289

• It is recommended victims request a fraud alert, which tells businesses to check with you before opening a new account, from at least one of the big credit bureaus.

• Review your credit report. Make note of any account or transaction you don’t recognize. This will help you report the theft to the FTC. Victims can get a free credit report via www.annualcreditreport.com.

• If someone steals your identity, you have the right to remove fraudulent information from your credit report. This is called blocking. Once the information is blocked, it won’t show up on your credit report and companies can’t try to collect the debt from you. If you have an Identity Theft Affidavit (described below), credit bureaus must honor your request to block this information.

• Report the identity theft to the Federal Trade Commission at https://www.identitytheft.gov/Information. This is an important step to ensure you have proper paperwork in place to support your claim of unemployment fraud. “Lenders will take that in lieu of a police report or in combination.”

• For helpful general information, please visit https://www.identitytheft.gov.