It can take years for you to build up a good credit rating, and this will make you eligible for much more competitive credit products and special offers such as low interest loans, mortgages and credit cards.  However identity thieves can not only steal money from your existing accounts, but also open new credit accounts falsely in your name that they have no intention of honouring, leaving you with a record of bad debts and non payments on your credit history, destroying the good credit name you have worked so hard to build up for yourself.

Identity protection services provide a number of measures that can protect your credit report from identity thieves and prevent them from applying for products fraudulently in your name:

•    Credit Report Fraud Alerts – Fraud Alerts will be placed on your credit reports with the main credit agencies Experian, TransUnion and Equifax, and this will ensure that lenders confirm all applications for credit made in your name with you personally before processing.

•    Credit Report Freeze – some identity theft protection services will help you to freeze your credit report completely, and this will prevent anyone (including yourself) applying for credit in your name, and will also prevent third parties from looking at your credit details and sending you those annoying and unnecessary pre-approved credit offers in the mail.

•    Credit Report Monitoring – Identity theft protection services will monitor your credit reports for you, and alert you immediately either through an email or SMS message if any suspicious changes have taken place.

•    Credit Reports – identity theft protection services can provide you with easy access to copies of your credit reports, so you do not have to go to each individual credit agency, and you can use this to check through all of your credit history for any errors or suspicious activity, and also review your credit score and how to improve it into the future.

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