As those considering bankruptcy or rebuilding credit after bankruptcy, keeping track of credit scores and items appearing on your credit report is critical. But monitoring credit reports is important for everyone, both because errors are common and because of the growing problem of identity theft.
During the past few years, several incidents have occurred in which huge volumes of consumer information was accessed. Usually, those incidents involve major banking or credit issuing companies. However, recently one of the largest potential breaches occurred, not from a credit issuing bank, but from the United States government. A laptop containing identifying information--including social security numbers--of 26.5 million veterans discharged since 1975 was stolen.
Veterans discharged during those years should consider obtaining their free annual credit report and look into the benefits of placing a free fraud alert on their credit records. In addition, Equifax is offering discounted credit monitoring services to veterans.
The U.S. Government provides more detailed information about the data disclosed and how veterans can protect themselves at http://www.firstgov.gov/veteransinfo.shtml
This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 30th, 2006 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Your Credit Score. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.