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Starting October 31, many members of the military will have access to a free tool to help spot identity theft. The nationwide credit reporting agencies – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion – have confirmed that they will provide free electronic credit monitoring services to active duty servicemembers and National Guard members.

For details on how to sign up, go to the websites for each of the credit reporting agencies.

A credit monitoring service can alert you to mistakes or problems on your credit report that might be the result of identity theft. For example, it would tell you if there’s a new credit card or loan in your name. If you knew about that, great. But if you didn’t, that could be an early warning of identity theft.

Once you have the credit monitoring service, you will be notified by mobile app, email, or text of certain changes to your credit file. These can include changes of address, payments that are more than 30 days late, bankruptcy information, foreclosures, liens, and new accounts opened in your name.

If you find inaccurate or fraudulent information on your credit report, read Disputing Errors on Your Credit Report. If you find signs of identity theft, visit Identitytheft.gov to get started on recovery.

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Unwanted Calls, Emails, and Texts

14 Comments

MJ
October 31, 2019
A long, overdue, and well deserved VERY necessary service for our veterans!
gmiller48
October 31, 2019

In reply to by MJ

This seems to be good for active memebers and national guard.... what about those of us who served for our country already........
MOC
October 31, 2019
So is this just active duty? If so why aren’t all Veterans included?
TES
October 31, 2019
Why not retired military and/or disabled vets also?
Mrmick
October 31, 2019
What about retired military? They spent many years defending this country!
rkp
November 01, 2019
Well deserved service to our active military and national guard. What about providing this service to the military retirees?
skyveterans
November 01, 2019
This is well over due and anything we can do to support our military members is greatly appreciated. I know since I served in the United States Air Force and the California Air National Guard.
lonestar
November 05, 2019
Whatever happened to the free monitoring those involved who's information was hacked from one of the credit bureaus. I haven't heard anything more since I chose credit monoriting instead of cash.
FTC Staff
November 05, 2019

In reply to by lonestar

If your information was exposed in the Equifax breach and you signed up for free free credit monitoring, you will get an activation code with instructions - after the court gives final approval to the settlement. The final approval will be on January 23, 2020 at the earliest.

 When you filed your claim to get the free credit monitoring, you picked whether you wanted to get the code by postal mail or email.

Brandi Pardo
November 04, 2019
What about the U.S.Army Reserves? Is it only Active Duty and National Guard?
NavyChick
November 07, 2019
This needs to be extended to retirees too. When they had that huge OPM breach in which China got millions of SF-86’s. For those of us notified that we were part of that we only got one year of security monitoring. However for those of us with TS or higher our whole life were on those forms. The risk did not go away at the one year mark. Our info is floating around out there somewhere. It is disgusting that we are not included in this deal.
Jan
January 08, 2020
This should be extended to all Veterans, especially since our data was compromised by a breach. We should all have free ID monitoring for life.
J
March 07, 2021
I hope it could help freeze credit because I been wanting to

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