First off, most identity theft comes about when a group or person has stolen your personal information. This personal information usually goes beyond just stealing your name, mailing address, and phone number. In most cases they steal your personal credit card information and other potentially damaging information.

The first thing you will want to do the moment you discover your identity has been stolen is contact every business you have an open account with. Begin with the accounts that could cause the most damage. For most people this would be credit cards.

Contact your credit card company and inform them that your identity has been stolen and that you need to close your accounts immediately. Your credit card company will have no problem in doing so, and are bound to do so by law when identity theft is in question.

You will then want to ask for specific copies of every charge that has been made to your account since your identity theft has occurred. You will want to go through each billing statement line by line to see what purchases are legitimate purchases that you have made, and which ones you suspect were made as part of the identity theft.

After you have detailed which charges are fraudulent, you will want to present them to your credit card company so they can remove such charges from your billing.

Once you have closed your most damaging accounts you will want to continue the process by closing any other smaller accounts that could potentially cause you damage in the future.

It will then be time for you to involve the law. Once you have reported the identity theft to your credit card companies and other billing agencies, you will want to call you local police department to report your identity theft. Most police stations will either do this over the phone or will have you use an automated service or website to report the theft.

Once you have filed a police report you will want to place a fraud alert on your credit report. To do this you will need to contact the credit bureau’s directly.

You can contact Equifax at: 1-800-525-6285 or via their website at: www.equifax.com .

Experian can be contacted at: 1-888-397-3742 or via their website at: www.experian.com.

Trans Union can be contacted at: 1-800-680-7289 or via their website at:
www.transunion.com.

You are also entitled to receive a free copy of your credit report from each of these firms after filing a fraud alert.

You will then need to file an online complaint with the Federal Trade Commission. You can do so via their website at: www.ftc.gov or over the telephone at the following number: 1-877-438-4338.

Protect yourself and cover all necessary bases.