ERIC and JULIE JOHNSON

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For twenty-five more great freebies, visit www.kiplinger.com/features/archives/2007/08/free.html.

Information Provided By: Billy Winfree of Pinnacle Financial

Check your credit report once a year; staggering the three credit report agencies throughout the year so that you could check your credit report for free every four months.

Photocopy all of your credit cards in case your wallet/purse is stolen so that you will know what is missing and have the phone numbers available to contact the appropriate company.

If you suspect you are a victim of identity theft:

File a report with the Federal Trade Commission first. Go to their website and download the forms to fill out and THEN contact the police and contact the credit card company. Contact the Federal Trade Commission first because the police will also use their forms to attach to the police report.

Credit Bureaus:

Equifax

Experian

Trans

Union

Credit Freeze/Credit Security Act

Put a credit freeze on your credit. This allows a consumer to "lock" access to credit file with a PIN assigned for the consumer to unlock the file to allow an inquiry for a consumer initiated or authorized reason. He said that if you know you are going out to purchase a vehicle then you can contact the appropriate person and give them your PIN to "thaw" your credit and it will last approx. 48 hours and then the freeze is back on.

You can check this out by going to:

annualcreditreport.com

The Federal Trade Commission:

Report complaints to:

877-ID Theft

877-438-4338 or

www.consumer.gov/idtheft

Check washing:

This is done by using brake fluid and de-natured alcohol. The new pens with the special ink to prevent check fraud really do work. If someone were to try and "check wash" then the new ink would just smear and not disappear like regular ink does.

If you get rid of your computer, using a sledgehammer is the best way to destroy a hard drive. Yes you can purchase software that says it will wipe your hard drive clean but the sledgehammer is the best method.

Go here to get off of junk mail lists:

www.the-dma.org/consumers

Go here for do not call list

www.donotcall.gov

www.TN.gov

Go to the TN site as well for the do not call list because TN will pounce on the callers.

If you ever have a case where you need to confiscate computers:

Do not power down the computer; instead just unplug computer from power source.

This will allow a forensics person to do their thing and make sure that once the computer was in the hands of confiscator (Trustee) and that no evidence was contaminated. If you power down or reboot a computer that has been seized then this could hurt the chain of evidence because it will show that someone had been on the computer after it was seized. The forensics person will mirror the hard drive and that will allow you to get necessary documents etc from the computer. It takes about 30 minutes per computer.

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