It is rather unfortunate that with the introduction of an online presence, came about the vice of e-theft. In America alone, as reported by Javelin Strategy & Research in 2017, over 16.7m Americans were casualties of ID theft.
And with such an alarming figure, there is every need as to why you should take considerable measures into securing your personality online. However, given that not everyone is knowledgeable about the right way to achieve this, we’ll be looking today at what you can do, if you happen to become a casualty of personality theft. So, what’s the first thing to do when your personality is compromised online?
File a Forgery Alert
Once you discover any suspicious activity on your online personality or data, your first port of call should be to file an Initial Forgery Signal to any reporting agency online. The reason why you should do this is that most business enterprises in America, often have to run through your data, before they could make way for new lines of W. And if in the process of doing that, they find a forgery signal on your statement, in most cases, they will try to reach out to you for an ID verification process, thus temporary freezing your account and making it very hard for the cyber attacker to have access into your account, or open a fake account using your personality.
Freezing your Account
If you want to spice up the security, there is a feature known as freeze. Account freezing is more like buying a full right to a property or company. In other words, when you make a freeze, you automatically own the sole right to have access to your account. As such, intruders and even the card agency that owns your card, will not have access to check your account without receiving an authorization from you. But, the longevity of this feature often depends on the state, and sometimes it’s often being charged at a rate of $10/month.
Now, once you’ve filled an initial forgery signal, and activated this feature, you’ll be given the permission to go through your data from the agencies you complained to. Once you’re at your data page, you can either choose to cross-check it there online, or ask the agencies for a copy of it, so that you could carefully have a run-down of the data offline.
By the time you’ve gotten your data copy ready, meticulously go through every transaction, one after the other. Now, what you should be looking out for is a sign of any unauthorized transaction carried out without your consent. If you find any of such transaction, then you’ll need to make an ID theft complaint.
Initiate an ID Theft Complaint
By filling this complaint, you’ll automatically alert the local and federal bureaus on the suspicious activity that is going on in your account. Now, It’s important that you do this, in order to avoid paying for a debt that wasn’t made by you, although it is in your account. In other words, the authorities will communicate with your card company, and stop them from including the unauthorized transaction as part of your balance. If you wish to file a complaint like this, you can do so by logging on to the Federal Trade Commission official website, the agency responsible for protecting consumers against online robbery. When you file a complaint with them, you’ll be given an FTC Identification Theft Affidavit, of which you can choose to print for record sake.
File a Police Complaints
After you’ve gotten your FTC affidavit, the next thing you should do is file a complaint to the police. However, it’s best that you place a call through to them before going over there, so that you’ll know what form of documents you’ll need to verify your account. Now, once you’re done making the complaint either online or in any police station near you, all that is demanded of you is to pen down the police complaint number.
Notify your Bureaus and Enterprises
Having your Affidavit and police complaint at hand, it’s time for you to send a notice to your Bureaus and Enterprises. Thus, for every unauthorized or suspicious transaction you find, you have to file separate complaints for each and every one of them to your bureaus. And once you’ve done this, you’ll be contacted through mail or call on what next you’ll have to do. At this point, your account and online personality will most definitely be in safe hands from cyber attackers.