Someone Is Using My Identity — How Do I Stop It

Discovering someone using my identity is one of the most disorienting experiences online. Maybe a credit card you didn't open arrived in the mail, or your tax return got rejected because someone already filed under your name. The good news: there's a clear playbook, and acting fast dramatically limits the damage.

This is the single most powerful move. A credit freeze stops anyone — including you — from opening new accounts in your name until you lift it. It's free, takes about 10 minutes, and is reversible.

Contact Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion individually. If someone using my identity is trying to open new credit lines, a freeze stops it cold.

Go to IdentityTheft.gov (run by the FTC). It walks you through reporting and generates an official Identity Theft Report — banks and credit bureaus will ask for it. File a police report too if you've lost money or have a known suspect.

For each fraudulent account or charge, call the company's fraud department. Provide your Identity Theft Report. Ask them to close the fraudulent account and remove it from your records.

Change passwords on email, banking, and any account tied to money. Enable two-factor authentication everywhere. If someone using my identity also got into your email, treat that as a separate emergency — your inbox is the recovery point for nearly everything else.

Identity theft almost always traces back to data already floating around in old breaches. Checking your exposure shows you which leaks contain your information — and what to lock down next so this doesn't happen again.

You don't need to guess whether your information is floating around in a breach dump. ThreatRidge cross-references billions of leaked records and gives you a plain-English Cyber Health Score in about ten seconds. No signup. No credit card. We don't store or sell the email you enter.

If your score comes back low, you'll see exactly where the exposure is and what to do next. If it comes back clean, you'll know you're ahead of most people online — and what to do to stay there.

The best time to check your exposure was yesterday. The second best time is right now. Check your free Cyber Health Score at ThreatRidge.com.