Fraud Alerts and Active Duty Alerts

If you are the victim of identity theft, FACTA gives you the right to contact a credit reporting agency to flag your account. To place a fraud alert, you must provide proof of your identity to the credit bureau. The fraud alert is initially effective for 90 days, but may be extended at your request for seven years when you provide a police report to the credit bureaus that indicates you are a victim of identity theft.

FACTA creates a new kind of alert, an active duty alert, that allows active duty military personnel to place a notation on their credit report as a way to alert potential creditors to possible fraud. While on duty outside the country, military members are particularly vulnerable to identity theft and lack the means to monitor credit activity. An active duty alert is maintained in the file for at least 12 months.

If a fraud alert or active duty alert is placed on your credit report, any business that is asked to extend credit to you must contact you at a telephone number you provide or take other “reasonable steps” to see that the credit application was not made by an identity thief.

FACTA gives you the right to a free copy of your credit report when you place a fraud alert. With the extended alert (seven years), you are entitled to two free copies of your report during the 12-month period after you place the alert.

New FACTA provisions also allow you to “block” certain items on your credit report that resulted from identity theft. Like the fraud alert, “blocking” was already an option for consumers in some states. With FACTA, Congress has made “blocking” the national standard.

(Click the link to read more about the rulemaking on this provision.)


Help for Identity Theft Victims

The crime of identity theft has continued at epidemic proportions. Several widely reported surveys on the number of identity theft victims were released as Congress went into final hearings on FCRA amendments. A shocking report released by the Federal Trade Commission in September 2003 estimated that approximately 10 million people were victims of identity theft in 2002 alone. To read the FTC's analysis and other surveys on identity theft, visit the PRC web page, “How Many Identity Theft Victims Are There?,” www.privacyrights.org/ar/idtheftsurveys.htm.