Fourth Step: The Credit Bureaus

     With a renewed purpose and feeling like progress had been made I set out in contact the other two credit bureaus Equifax and Experian. Not expecting much more than I received from TranUnion I was surprised by a simple electronic system for placing the fraud alert on your account from both Equifax and Experian. The links to place the fraud alert are always displayed in the smallest print on the bottom of the sites, but with my research I already had the information. The biggest caveat is that the fraud alert is only for 90 days and you need to manually renew it unless you go through an number of manual steps to make it last for 7 years. I think that this should be a requirement for them to provide automatically as it will only cut down on the rampant fraud, or at least make it last for a year. What a fraud alert does is place a note on the credit report that requires the credit bureau to call the number you register and verify your identity and approval before anyone can pull a credit report and  no credit report means no credit account. The links to setup the Fraud Alerts are below.

Experian:
https://www.experian.com/consumer/cac/FCRegistration.do?alertType=INITIAL_ALERT

Equifax:
https://www.alerts.equifax.com/AutoFraud_Online/jsp/fraudAlert.jsp

    The difference that I found between Experian and Equifax is that Experian included a credit report when you placed a fraud alert automatically and equifax required you to request it separately. The credit report that I received from Experian was alarming because it had a few inquires to organizations that I know I didn't do. I am a little frustrated from the fact that my last inquiry on my report before the 6 I had between 8/9 and 8/11 was last July 2009 when I refinanced my mortgage. 6 reports in 3 days should have sent up a red flag somewhere, but it seems like the responsibility for oversight is on the credit lenders themselves not on the bureaus that actually have the data. Maybe there are protocols that I am unaware of, but it seems like the credit bureaus should have a responsibility or a system for notifying you without you having to sign up and pay for a service. I now have a starting point, but at the same time an unnerving feeling that with the number of lookups on my credit report and Discover was not even one of the them, there are going to be a number of accounts that I didn't open out there.

     Now my priorities have shifted to acquiring the rest of my credit reports and reviewing the inquires to compile a list of credit card companies I need to call to see if a card was opened in my name.

Task Completed:

1. Placed Fraud Alert on my Trans Union credit report
2. Called local police to start the process of filing a police report.
3. Researched google to figure out next step.
4. Placed Fraud Alerts on Equifax and Experian and reviewed a my first credit report