Senator Maria Cantwell: Fighting Identity Theft

HOW TO TELL WHETHER YOUR IDENTITY HAS BEEN STOLEN

The Federal Trade Commission recommends that consumers vigilantly monitor their financial accounts to determine whether they have been victimized by identity thieves. The following problems may indicate that someone has stolen your personal information:

• Unexplained charges or withdrawals
  
• Failing to receive bills or other mail, which may signal that a thief has changed your mailing address
  
• Receiving credit cards for which you did not apply
  
• Denial of credit for no apparent reason
  
• Receiving calls from debt collectors or companies about merchandise or services you didn't buy

Also, an anti-fraud education organization, CardCops, runs a web site to help consumers determine whether their credit card numbers may have been stolen. The group monitors Internet "chat rooms" where identity thieves illicitly trade and sell stolen credit card numbers. It turns that information over to law enforcement authorities, but it also allows consumers to access their database to see whether individual card numbers may have been stolen. In the first two months of operation, the site had identified more than 100,000 stolen credit cards. The web site of CardCops is www.cardcops.com .

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