After reading that Anthem is going to send us information in a few weeks and provide "credit monitoring" for those effected, I felt pretty uneasy. I looked into proactive steps we could take to protect against criminals who may have the info. I see 2 main threats, credit identity theft and filing a false tax return using your social. Either one will be a massive headache. File your taxes as soon as possible to mitigate that risk. For the credit fraud there are 2 different actions you can take with the 3 major credit reporting companies: 1. Fraud Alert- its free and requires "extra" proof of identity. When someone runs your credit history it shows up. I don't know if it provides any legal weight but it can't hurt. 2: Credit Freeze- for 5-10 dollars per person/site, no new credit will be made unless you unfreeze it.

 

Here is a link to the Equifax 90 day, free fraud alert. I've been doing this for years and it works very well. When you submit the form, they will notify TransUnion and Experian for you. Very easy, but you do have to remember to resubmit this every 90 days. If you do try to open credit, e.g., finance a car, the finance company will give you a phone call to confirm and ask a couple of questions that come from your credit report. Those questions tend to be about who you have existing loans with and what the monthly payments are.

I noticed that on all three credit bureau web sites, they have buried the free information and are trying to sell services now. If you do the 90 day fraud alert, it should get you through until the Anthem package arrives.

https://www.alerts.equifax.com/AutoF...fraudAlert.jsp

 

Thanks for the link!! Takes 1-2 minutes

 

That link is good and doing the freeze is a great idea, but now their system says it's down. I guess they're being flooded with requests over the Anthem breach.

 

ALPA also has obtained for us a good discount on LifeLock Identity theft insurance. I use it for my whole family and never had a problem.

 

You can also visit http://www.annualcreditreport.com for a free report from the three reporting agencies. You can get 3 reports a yr. if you select one agency at a time every three months.

 

If you want Lifelock go to YigEnroll.com and use code alpa12. You can also get to it on the ALPA website under insurance.

 

For those in the First Tennessee realm, they offer a free program too. Lifelock isn't much different than just setting up your own fraud protection, except you pay them to do the 90 day recurrent step.

 

$1 Million guaranteed coverage on loss......