What is an active duty military alert?

To properly view this site, javascript must be enabled and Flash version 9 or higher must be installed.
Get the latest Flash player
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.

What is an active duty military alert?

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: 28,939 views

This series: 6,617 views

Print

Transcripts

Speaker: What is an Active Duty Military Alert?

Linda Sherry: An Active Duty Military Alert is a great thing for people who serve in the military to know about. It's an extra protection so that when our service members go overseas or go on active duty, they aren't able all the time to monitor their credit reports and credit accounts and credit card statements and all of that as easily once they are overseas on active duty.

So what they can do is they can call up the credit reporting bureau's and they can put an active military alert. This will make sure that they don't get any unsolicited offers of credit that come in the mail, that thieves could take advantage of and they will make sure that anyone that tries to open credit in their name, if it they are alerted to the fact that this person is overseas at this moment.

Other Videos

  • Can student loans be dismissed through bankruptcy?
  • Should some purchases only be made if both parties agree? In this video, David Marotta discusses why it's important to agree in a marriage how finances are handled, and what the five principles should be.
  • Choosing a Financial Planner In this video, financial planning professional and member of the Financial Planning Association®, Mark Johannessen, CFP®, describes the four important steps to take when choosing a financial planner. This video is designed for individuals trying to decide if they need the services of a financial planner. This video series includes an overview of knowing when you need the services of a financial planner, looking for a financial planner and choosing the right one, the importance of full disclosure and how to contact a financial planning professional.
  • How to Start a Small Business This video explains the basics of starting your own business.
  • How Do I Handle Collection Calles From My Lender Christian Bohyn, a Belgian Real Estate Investor who lives in Florida and has lost millions of dollars in real estate explains how to handle phone calls coming from your lenders collections department. He is a Senior Partner of MonkeySold, a company that specializes in processing short Sales and helping people in selling their homes fast.
  • How does credit fit into the mortgage equation? In this video, mortgage advisor, Jeff Thomas describes how to purchase your first home and the process you must go through to obtain a mortgage. This video is designed for first time homebuyers and also provides valuable information to indivduals who have purchased a home in the past. This video includes an overview of the four parts of a loan file, mortgage jargon, the loan process, house hunting, the types of mortgages available and the 7 steps on how to manage your mortgage correctly.