Identity theft most certainly did affect my credit score! Luckily the amount of money that was spent in my good name was not very much at all, but because it had been unpaid, put a serious dent in my credit history.

I had not idea that in 1999, someone had opened a telephone account in my name! Five years later, a debt collector tracked me down and demanded the money.

When I received the notice, I immediately called the main credit reporting agency, Experian. They in turn, put an alert on my credit report and in addition, alerted the other two credit reporting agencies, Equifax and TransUnion.

I called the collection agency and told them that I was not the person on their list and I had never even lived in the State where the Identity Thief was using my information. Eventually, I was sent some paperwork to fill out and I was to send it back to them. Before I did this, I contacted my local State Legislator's office and reported the collection company as they didn't seem to be very professional.

Anyway, to cut a very long story short, the collection agency was operating within bankruptcy and considering that the debt at that time, was several years old, I was advised not to pay it. The States office also sent me sufficient paper work to back it all up.

Well, I did not pay it, but several months later, I applied for a loan. When the loan company looked at my credit report, the $151.00 was on there and listed as a delinquent payment. Because of this, my credit score was in the poor range.

After much debate, the loan company lent me the money that I wanted; But is was at a very high interest rate, and what is more, they said that in order for me receive the loan, I had to pay off that $151.00! After all, they were cutting the checks for me and I was refinancing to get out of debt.

Since then, I pay twelve bucks a month to www.mycreditreport.com, just so they can alert me of any unusual activity. I can also go to that site and view my credit score, to boot. Unfortunately, they will only let me have access to the Experian credit reporting information, which is usually more liberal than the other two agencies. When at this site however, there is the option to pay an extra thirty dollars or so to view the Equifax and TransUnion reports.

By the way, I did pay the extra amount of money one time, so that I could look at all Three credit scores; I found two other addresses that were being used in my name, both in entirely different states than the first offender.

Learn more about this author, Jon Coe.
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