Recovering from Identity Theft

he headline was dreadful from a consumer's perspective. Data from all Target stores had been criminally hacked, and essential information on forty million credit and debit cards was stolen in November and December of 2013. There are reports of angry consumers calling Target's customer service and demanding help. The merchant is the wrong place to call, just as it was pointless to call T. J. Maxx when the data contained on sixty million of their customer's cards were illegally obtained by criminal hackers. This easy-to-understand, 79-page book is the fourth in the Identity Theft series. It is intended for the general, non-specialist reader, provides a set of overall strategies and specific actions you should take if you are the victim of identity theft. There are three appendices. The first appendix contains contact information for the Federal Trade Commission, the three major credit reporting agencies, many US banks, many consumer protection organizations, and a few of the more established companies that specialize in identity theft protection and recovery. The second appendix contains a checklist for protecting yourself from identity theft. Appendix three also contains a checklist; this one is used to aid you in recovering from identity theft if you are a victim. Ron Leach's lectures on identity theft have been attended by more than 3,500 people. Many more have heard him on closed-circuit television. This experience, and his long experience as a professor of computer science make him uniquely qualified to write this book, the fourth in AfterMath’s Identity Theft Series.