Lost my wallet – Help with identity theft prevention?
My wallet had my driver’s license, social security card, and credit cards in it, yikes. I am going to cancel the credit cards, but it was really stupid of me to have the SS card in there. Are there any free internet sites that allow a person to monitor what accounts are made in a persons name? Any other helpful advice to make me worry about it less? Thanks.
Directly call each of the three credit bureaus to issue a freeze on your account. Stop at the DMV in your state and inform them as well. The only free site would be annualcreditreport.com and get your credit reports free from each of the 3 bureaus per year to monitor for any fraudulent activity.
The best thing to do is a pull a report from each of the bureaus every four months. Once the year is up, you can start over again from the first bureau and always have pretty current accuracy.
I’m hesitate about using any of the services that require you to pay. You can take care of any of the steps those companies normally would without having to pay.
As long as you’re proactive and get it taken care of, there shouldn’t be any problem or long term consequences.