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Greetings,

I have been relocated by my company to the US and lived there for a few years. Now I'm back home. Being away I'm suspecting that I'm more susceptible to identity thefts.

I'm looking for a few good steps to take considering I'm not very active financially. One thing I did and been happy about us opt out of credit card offers for 5 years.

What other precautions would you recommend I take?

  • would it make sense to sign up for the banks identity protections programs?
  • how about freezing/locking credit?
  • I've heard that there are banks that will allow one to mandate asking for a PIN on top of the social security number when using phone banking, anybody willing to share experience with that?

Thanks!

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  • I don't have any experience with bank identity protection, but i think those are just an insurance. If something happens they help you to restore the history, but they don't actively prevent it.
    – Vitalik
    Oct 30, 2010 at 2:45

1 Answer 1

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  1. Put a freeze on your credit

  2. Check your credit report from one bureau once every 4 months via annualcreditreport.com. The service is free and you can get only one report from a bureau each year, hence the spacing out

  3. Check your credit regularly from another free service CreditKarma.com

  4. A way to get your credit scores for free from all three bureaus without paying extra

All these are online services and can be checked from outside the country. (Don't check them from a public computer though!)

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  • The annualcreditreport.com is the actual official free credit report. Don't use the services that give you a score.
    – user102008
    Mar 19, 2013 at 18:31

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