Possible identity theft...?

You can put a fraud alert which last 3 months. Or you can contact each credit bureau and freeze your credit. There are fees to freeze and unfreeze, but no new credit inquiries can be done on frozen account. Much safer than any monitoring service.

By the way, wait about 60 days and pull your credit report from one of the credit bureaus. Then space out the reports from the other two every 4 months (AnnualCreditReport.com).

Well, Tamara. You are taking some good initial steps. As far as reporting to a CRA. Start with Experian. And, while notifying them, place the fraud alert. By having a police report as supporting documentation, you should be able to get an extended alert that can be in place for up to seven years. Also, file an Identity Theft Affidavit with the FTC... http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/resources/forms/affidav...

Reason I say to begin with Experian- Most people do not realize this. Experian is the only CRA that actually downloads the entire address change database, every single night. With the scenario that has happened to you, usually the thieves will attempt an address change. Notifying Experian initially will flag the change.

Begin a rotational request of your credit reports. Begin with the CRA that is most commonly used in your area. Ask your bank which is the most commonly used CRA for your area of the country. Four months later request another report from one of the remaining two, and four months later get the third report. Continue this rotation from now on. You can get your reports free at: http://www.annualcreditreport.com/

All three CRAs are required to share information between them. Under federally mandated guidelines in an attempt to sync. a persons records.

You could put a credit freeze in place, depending your need for access to credit in the short-term (90-120 days).

Moving to your ID. If the ID that was stolen is your DL, or even a Student ID, you need to have a new one issued and- This is Extremely Important- Demand a new ID Number. DO NOT WAIVER on this point. A new number will flag your old ID as invalid and therefore move you one degree away from any crimes that may be committed using your old ID.

Mark A Priganc, Certified Identity Theft Risk Management Specialist

Author of: Identity Theft: The Personal Guide

Founder of: The National Law Enforcement Identity Theft Summit

This happened to wife during the holidays. She left her wallet in a shopping cart and actually has a stranger return it to our home. She had everything in there, SSN, ID cards, gift cards.... but when the stranger returned it we thought everything was okay.

A few months later we found out the stranger (or someone else) opened up new accounts, applied for a mortgage!!! and tried to change our mailing address. Get identity theft protection, it's not worth the nightmare. Get one that does real time credit monitoring. You only get free reports once a year and that's not enough and fraud alerts only help with new accounts.

For us it was a toss up between Identity Guard and ProtectMyID, Lifelock doesn't offer credit monitoring so we eliminated that choice. Here's an article that explains everything.

I know it sucks but good luck.

Get credit reports from all three credit agencies and have them put an alert on your account:

* Equifax 888-826-0573

* TransUnion - 1-800-888-4213

* Experian - 1-888-397-3742

There are a bunch of steps that you should take. Check out the link in my source for tips - they give good advice (all do-it-yourself stuff). I did a lot of this when my passport went missing a while back.

All 3 of them.