Protect Your Credit - Step 1
Identity theft is a reality. I have worked hard to keep my credit clean and don’t really want to loose it because of some looser who goes through my mail. I started looking at a few services like lifelock.com. Digging into it a little I found there are a lot of things you can do yourself, you just need to take the time to do it. If your don’t want to keep track of it, plunk down the $99 bucks for lifelock, but I wanted to do it for myself and my wife, so it was going to be $200. I figured I would try the DIY approach and see how much work it really is.
Step 1: The first place to start is to stop getting all the pre-approved credit card offers in the mail. A majority of these come from the credit reporting agencies, who sell your name to credit card companies. They have this nice little website that lets you opt out for 5 year, or permanently….its the law.
https://www.optoutprescreen.com
If you do a permanent opt-out be sure you PRINT OUT AND RETURN THE FORM. The link to do this is buried in the first paragraph. If you don’t print and mail it, they will set you up for a 5 year opt out instead of a permanent. If you do this at this one site, all of the agencies will be notified.
Step 2: Put “Fraud Alerts” on your reports with the leading credit agencies. More to come on that. I understand these have to be renewed once a quarter, but I bet it is easy, and outlook with make it easy to remember with a recurring task (also good for remembering important birthdays).
Time Spent So Far: 30 minutes.