Hi I was wondering if it looks bad on your credit report to have a fraud alert on it. Here is my situation. I got a weird call Saturday from a woman verifying my personal information for some kind of credit card. She called really early in the morning so I was kind of confused when she called. She had all my info right except for the last 4 digits of my SSN. I asked her what this was about and she kept saying my credit card application. I hadn't applied for a credit card, so I asked her which bank she was calling from and she kept repeating that she just needed to verify my information. I told her I wouldn't do that and I wanted to talk to her mgr. She hung up at that point. The caller ID showed unavailable so I'm not sure where she was from. I told a friend of mine about it and she recommended that I call all 3 credit reports and ask if their where any recent inquiries. Only Equifax had an inquiry from Providian. I don't know whats going on but I do know that I now have VERY good credit and have rcvd a lot of pre-approved Platnium cards in the last 6 months or so. I'm just afraid that if I do decide to accept one of these deals, that when they see the fraud alert they will no longer want to do business with me or worse yet, a fraud alert might lower my credit score. If anyone knows of any negative consequences for having a fraud alert on your credit report, please let me know. Thanks Beth p.s I got a call today from a computer generated voice that said "We just want to verify your phone number" , then it hung up. Caller ID showed unavailable.
Good question. I asked this a ways back, but no one gave me a definitive answer. I am very much looking forward to any answers too.
I also got one of those computer generated calls to verify phone#, couple days after applying for Citibank. I wonder if it was them?
You certainly did the right thing. What I've seen before on fraud alerts is that they don't affect your FICO score, but they do turn "off" automated approvals, etc. That is, anyone who you apply to for credit will have to manually take a close look at your report, and YOU will have to prove that YOU are really the person who applied for credit. Under the right circumstances, I guess this could be a good thing. "Ask Max" at Experian's web site has answered many questions on fraud. Just do a search on "fraud" (I saw 52 Q&A on the subject).
Thank you for your replies! I found my answer on Experian. While it won't lower my score it will cause a lot of unnecessary trouble when I'm ready to apply for credit! I will probably keep the statement on for the next month or so and then ask for it to be removed. I will be looking for a car early next year and I don't want to go thru a lot of trouble. Citibank: I never applied to them so I will check my reports (all 3 CRA's will send me one) to see who has recently extended "me" credit! Thank you for your help! Beth
