Help me!..newbie here

might want to check out:

My Fico.com
Privacy Guard.com

 

First, of course, place fraud alerts with the CRAs.
It's also probably worth pulling paper reports from each CRA, along with FICO scores, to assist in proving damages when a CA collecting on a fraudulent account fails to follow FACTA.

Has your university offerred to pay for credit monitoring, due to the compromising of security of the records under their care?

 

Although I have no personal experience with them, ripoffreport.com shows complaints for unauthorized charges and failing to cancel. Sounds like similar problems to what FTC just settled with ConsumerInfo.com for. The whole credit monitoring "industry" appears rife with "marginal" practices, in my view.

For $10/month, plus 3 free annual reports under Federal law, you could pull 15 reports a year, or 5 per CRA, at what most monitoring services cost. Since they would be directly from the CRAs, they would likely be more reliable, and usable in litigation should you need to.

Have you considered a credit freeze? Is it allowed in your state? In California, in the case of a known id theft, I believe it is free, otherwise about $10 per CRA to activate or remove.

 

Also see this site:

http://partners.myfico.com/email/071205/?LPID=FICO122

FairIsaac seems to look more positively on credit freezes than the CRAs, who make a lot of money selling credit information.

In my view, credit reports should be locked up, under the consumer's control, with only specifically and verifiably authorized access allowed. Credit reports should show the consumer not only actual inquiries, but failed attempts.

The current system holds honest citizens hostage to the actions of crank users stealing mail, funding the growth of the id theft and illegal document "industry", while the CRAs profit from providing services that don't prevent a thing. Credit monitoring services are little better than hiring the nosey lady down the street to watch your house, while you leave the front door unlocked on vacation.

It is ineffective trying to prevent crime, especially one as anonymous as id theft, by trying to chase down the burgler after he has already fenced your TV. The police don't have the resources, and the lenders seldom acknowledge id thefts before selling off the deadbeat accounts, which are just a cost of business covered by raising rates on their other customers.

 

Credit freezes are the best way to BE SURE. But at $10 a pop for each CRA to freeze it and then another $10 to unfreeze, it can get expensive pretty quick, depending on how active your credit needs are. If you lay the approximate cost of freezing/unfreezing for a year vs. the array of Identity Theft products available in the marketplace, for me personally it's going to cost about the same amount of $.

Nevertheless, credit freezes are the only sure fire way to make sure ID theft is neutralized.

Bill H.
http://www.creditcardassist.com

 

The following summary is interesting, at least if you live in California:

http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/ITLawsCA.htm

The following would apply with regard to any of the CRAs, if you live in California. (This is TU's notice of consumer rights to Californians, referred to in the above link.)

http://www.transunion.com/Personal/CaliforniaRights.jsp

Note that if you place a security alert on your file (appropriate if your identity information may have been stolen whether or not you have yet been victimized), you can get a free credit report every 90 days for a year, from each of the CRAs.

 

You might ask the university for a copy of the police report they filed on the incident.