Identity Theft and Your Credit Report: What to Do First

Signs of identity theft on a credit report

• An account you never opened.
• A hard inquiry from a lender you never applied to.
• A different name, address, or employer you don't recognize listed on your file.
• A collection for a debt that isn't yours at all.

This is a meaningfully different situation from an ordinary reporting error — the goal isn't just correcting a fact, it's establishing that the account or inquiry was never yours in the first place.

The first steps, before anything else

1. File a report at IdentityTheft.gov, the FTC's official identity-theft recovery site. It generates a personal recovery plan and an FTC Identity Theft Report, which carries specific legal weight when disputing fraudulent accounts.
2. Consider a fraud alert or a credit freeze with each of the three bureaus.
3. Review all three of your credit reports for every account or inquiry that isn't yours.
4. File a police report if you're able to — some furnishers require one alongside the FTC report.

How this differs from an ordinary dispute

A standard dispute (see our dispute-process guide) challenges a specific fact about an account that is genuinely yours. An identity-theft dispute challenges whether the account belongs to you at all, and an FTC Identity Theft Report substantially strengthens that claim with the bureaus and furnishers.

How we help

Once you've filed your FTC report, we can review your three-bureau report with you, help identify every account and inquiry that needs to be disputed as fraudulent, and support you through that specific dispute process — always with a staff member reviewing before anything is sent.