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September 20, 2005

Credit report can be protected with Active Duty alert

Your credit report can have special protection when you are deployed anywhere in the world. Obviously you don't want to think about identity theft crooks while serving your country.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act allows you now to have a special "active duty alert" in your credit report. It requires creditors to contact you in order to verify your identity before granting credit in your name.

If contacting you is impossible, you can assign a personal representative to place or remove an alert. Active duty alerts on your report are effective for one year, unless you request that the alert be removed sooner. If your deployment lasts longer, you may place another alert on your report.

Here are the contact information for three credit reporting agencies:

Equifax: 1-800-525-6285; www.equifax.com
Experian: 1-888-EXPERIAN (397-3742); www.experian.com
TransUnion: 1-800-680-7289; www.transunion.com

Contact just one agency (I would recommend TransUnion) with the request to place active duty alert. The contacted agency must contact the other two, so they put the alerts as well. If your contact information changes before the alert expires, remember to update it.


 
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