That's right, my employer had one of their computers compromised the other day, so upon returning back to work from my vacation I had this wonderful e-mail stating such and to go to a certain link to see if my name and ss# was compromised and wouldn't you know it, I was. I spent yesterday putting an "Initial Fraud Alert" on my credit through experian. I guess one good thing came out of it and that is getting a credit report. The rest of the day I spent going through my report detail by ever loving detail. I had got a report some time ago (before we bought our house), but knew my credit was good, so I didn't look at it in as much detail. Needless to say, I printed a ton of stuff off from CC's I had right after HS that I stopped using but never closed. I have spent my entire morning today (good thing we aren't busy) calling every single creditor and requesting my account be closed and then requesting a letter confirming the closure. Once I get all the letters I'm sending them to experian for their records. The bad thing is that all those stay on your report for about 7 years. B/C of this crap w/ work I have to check my credit report in 30 days, which I assume will cost me (this infuriates me) b/c you can only order one free copy from each agency one at a time spaced four months apart. Then I have to check it again on a regular basis for a year. Anyway, I guess it got me rolling on working on my credit. I'm still pretty good, but since buying the house and several other things it has went down a bit. I guess it happens though. The only way now is back up.
I know it takes less time to trash your score than build it up, but does anyone know how long it takes to get it up higher faster?
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You know, by law you can receive a free credit report once a year from all the major credit reporting agencies. Go to https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp to find out more information.
If you've been a victim of fraud however, you should be able to check your report for free. Check out this site from equifax that explains steps you should take if you're a victim: https://www.econsumer.equifax.com/consumer/sitepage.ehtml?forward=elearning_idtheft3
I've had a credit card number "guessed" before from someone on ebay. They didn't guess the expiration date correctly though. But I still had to go through closing my account and running credit checks. I understand your frustration!
I'm not really sure how long it takes to build your scores back up, I would say at least a few months.
A suggestion on money matters would be to check out Suze Orman on CNBC on tv or pick up one of her books. She has awesome advice for everything money related! (www.suzeorman.com)
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