What is a Fraud Alert?

The purpose of a fraud alert is for creditors to confirm that the person using your name is actually you. With your fraud alerts in place, creditors, lenders, or other prospective users of your consumer report must take steps to verify your identity before they can:

• Issue new credit
• Increase credit lines
• Arrange loans
• Create new accounts for such things as utilities and cellular phones

You may place a fraud alert on your credit report if you have a good faith suspicion that you have been or about to become a victim of identity theft. After a fraud alert has been placed in your credit file, any creditor using that credit file to grant new credit or an extension of credit in your name should take reasonable steps to verify your identity and confirm the credit application is not the result of identity theft. This can be done by contacting you by phone, via the mail or by using other methods to verify the application is legitimate. Most of the time, when someone else is trying to use your identity to get credit, the fraud alert will stop them cold.