Hey gang, just some friendly reminders from me, the recent victim of fraud on my cellular phone account. (Probably no long term problems, but LOTS of hassle.)
1) If you call in to any of your accounts and they ask you for minimal information (name/address/last 4 digits of SSN) in order to process changes, ASK THEM if you can put a security PIN number on your account. I don't know why they don't ask you, but they often don't.
2) At least, get your free copies of your credit reports. Go to annualcreditreport.com, where you can get one copy from each company once per year, so if you space the three requests out over 4 months, you're kind of covered.
3) If you don't need to have your credit checked very often, consider freezing your credit with all three companies. In Maryland, it costs $15 each time you freeze and unfreeze ($5 each company), so only you can decide if this step is worth it to you. A very small benefit of being the victim of fraud is that I can freeze and unfreeze for free, since I will have a police report.
As they used to say on Hill Street Blues, "be careful out there"!
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