After first checking if any of your data has been compromised, the next step that All Set Cybersecurity recommends is to review your credit reports. These reports summarize all of your credit cards, loans, mortgages, and other debts that financial institutions check before extending you any new credit. If an identity thief had successfully opened up a credit card or taken out a loan in your name, this would be visible on your credit report.

There are many products in the market that force you to pay to view and monitor your credit reports and scores. We don't encourage our clients to pay for those services because the Federal Trade Commission requires the three major credit bureaus (Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian) to provide consumers like you with free annual copies of these reports!

We recommend reviewing all three reports once each year to make sure there aren't any entries that you don't recognize. For example, if you only have one credit card, but you see second one listed that you don't recognize, that could be a sign that someone has stolen your identity. Don't immediately panic because it could also just be an error or an old card that you had forgotten about (e.g. one you had signed up for in a retail store). If it does appear you are the victim of identity theft, contact the financial institution and report it to the Federal Trade Commission at identitytheft.gov right away. This process can be stressful and tricky to navigate, and All Set Cybersecurity is here in case you need help!

Whether anything suspicious turned up in your reports or not, your next step should be to “freeze” your credit reports, which prevents lenders from accessing them to process an application in your name. In other words, if a cybercriminal submitted a credit application in your name, this would increase the chances of them being denied.

Once you freeze your reports, it only takes a few minutes to temporarily unfreeze them when you legitimately need to apply for a new credit card or loan yourself! You can ask the financial institution which credit report they need access to, which can save you the trouble of temporarily unfreezing all three.

Here is how you can freeze and unfreeze your credit reports with each of the credit bureaus:

• Equifax

• Transunion

• Experian

You might be wondering - how is it that companies like Equifax can collect my information without my permission? Can I opt out? Unfortunately not! The FTC explains here that “financial companies can share certain types of information about you without giving you the right to opt out.” This is extra frustrating because Equifax was itself the victim of a large security breach in 2017. You can’t do anything about the existence of these companies, but you can make the best of it by taking advantage of free annual access to your reports and freezing them.