I discovered that my college severely fucked up last January when I got somebody else’s student loan bill. The issue has been fixed, and it was a mistake, but when this happened I called Experian to put a fraud alert on my credit report. The student loan is not on my report anymore, but I left the alert on. How long does a fraud alert last? I now need a new car and want to know if this will effect my ability to get a car loan.
It should not affect your ability to get a loan, except for “instant credit”. Many identity thieves take your information to a department store and get one of the credit cards they are always pushing that come with instant credit. Supposedly having a fraud alert will stop this kind of activity (assuming that you have such a fraud alert with all the credit agencies). Just having a fraud alert will not affect your credit score, nor will it affect your ability to get a loan. The loan officer may ask you some questions to confirm your identity. It used to be that those alerts lasted six months and needed to be renewed, but I am not sure of that now. Personally, I think everyone should have a fraud alert.
An initial (free) fraud alert for all three credit reporting companies is 90 days. After that you generally have two options:
[ul]
[li]A documented identity theft to extend an alert.[/li][li]You pay for ongoing credit monitoring.[/li][/ul]
There are exceptions so you have to check each credit agency for details.
I have a fraud alert (thanks to some dude in la belle province) and all it changes is that I need a bit more ID/time to establish I am who I say I am.
My CC issuer does it as part of the service. When I made an unusually large purchase recently, I processed the sale as normal and my phone rang. Naturally I ignored it but the transaction would not complete. Phone rang again and when I answered it there was a nice young lady asking if I really wanted to spend that much on a present. Well - she actually was just checking that it was me.
A slight embarrassment in the sales queue but a welcome intervention if my card had gone missing, even chip and pin is not 100% safe.
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