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Understanding Identity Theft

How can I tell if I'm a victim of identity theft?

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Linda Sherry
Director, National Priorities, Consumer Action
http://www.consumer-action.org  
 

Linda Sherry, Consumer Action’s director of national priorities and one of the organization’s chief spokespersons, joined the San Francisco-based national consumer education and advocacy group in 1994 from a background as a weekly newspaper reporter.

Consumer Action (www.consumer-action.org), founded in 1971, has a national reputation for free multilingual consumer education on personal finance issues.

Sherry, who moved to Washington, DC, in August 2004 to establish an office for Consumer Action, is responsible for the organization’s national advocacy work and for the research and writing of Consumer Action’s free educational publications and web site content. Her recent projects for Consumer Action include publications on home buying, credit card terms and conditions, bankruptcy, ID theft, Internet privacy, cell phones and investing vs. savings. Sherry is chief surveyor and coordinator of Consumer Action’s popular pricing surveys of rates for credit cards and telephone services. She is the editor of Consumer Action’s newsletter, Consumer Action News.

Sherry has received awards for Consumer Action publications from the National Association of Consumer Agency Administrators (Excellence in Consumer Education, 1996, 2000 and 2003) and U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs (1995 National Consumer Week). Sherry serves as a member of the National Consumers League Fraud Alliance steering committee.

Before joining Consumer Action, Sherry was managing editor of AsianWeek in San Francisco from 1991-1994. Previously she was a reporter at The Almanac newspapers in Menlo Park, CA; The New York Times Long Island Section and The East Hampton Star in East Hampton, NY. She was the founding editor of the Sag Harbor Herald, a weekly newspaper in Long Island, NY.

How can I tell if I'm a victim of identity theft?

In this video, Linda Sherry details the best ways to prevent identity theft and what you can do if you think your identity has been stolen.

This expert: 30,041 views

This series: 9,132 views

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Id

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Theft

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Identity

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Fraud

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Internet

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Abuse

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Stolen

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Scam

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Transcripts

Speaker: How can I tell if I am a victim of identity theft?

Linda Sherry:There are a few things you can do to find out if you are a victim of identity theft and you can watch carefully all of your financial accounts, your credit card accounts, your bank accounts, to make sure that no one has used your account without authorization. Also you can watch your mail. A lot of ID theft is accomplished through the mail. For instance, they might divert your mail; they might steal a credit card solicitation and send it back in two different addresses, get a credit card that way. You should also make sure that you know that at all times that where your personal information is. Someone could come into your house, for instance, a contractor, a cleaner or whatever and steal some personal information from right-out of your house, if you don't have it under lock and key.

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