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

First Step: TransUnion

     The first step that Sandy from Discover Card told me to do was call TransUnion and put a fraud alert on my account There are three major credit bureaus Equifax, Experian, and Transunion in the whose job it is to track our credit history and help define our credit worthiness to potential creditors. Why we need to have three is beyond me as it just makes everything more difficult and costly, but I guess that's capitalism so I prefer that to having a single bureau system or something managed by the government...
     I will discuss the other two bureaus later in the story, so I want to focus on TransUnion as that was my first call as directed by Sandy. The number 1-800-680-7289 is an automated system that is the only way TransUnion allows you to electronically apply a fraud alert to your credit file which is the first step you need to take. So after going through the prompts and entering in all of my information they then try to sell you on their credit monitoring service before they allow you to complete the call. It is an extremely long message that you have to listen to and then select (1) I want it or (2) I do not want. At this point I didn't know enough to figure out if I needed to pay a monthly fee for some service so I selected (2). I was then appalled by the second sales pitch using both scare and guilt to try to get me to buy their product again. It is another long message that I then had to hit no again. This made me sick to think of how many consumers they have scared into purchasing a service at a very vulnerable time and you know that the only reason they ask twice is because it must work. I will be filing a complaint with both the BBB and the FTC as I feel that in their message it makes it seem like in order to protect yourself you need to sign-up for their service which is false. It is completely free to put a fraud alert on your credit file and 3rd party companies are no longer able to do it for you so even if you pay for lifelock or similar service you still need to do this important step yourself.

Task Completed So Far:

1. Placed Fraud Alert on my TransUnion credit report (at least I think I have, but I didn't buy their service so I am not sure)