Hi friends and welcome to the Money Girl podcast. My name is Laura Adams. I'm a

personal finance expert and author. Think of me as your money mentor, making it easy for you to get answers to

tough money questions. My mission is to help you live rich and love the journey. You can

learn more about me over at Laura D Adams.com.

And while you're there be sure to check out my tools page. I get a lot of

questions about the products, tools, services, and resources that I recommend.

I've put them all on one page for you at LauraD Adams.com

forward slash tools.

I received a question from a show listener named Scott B that I could really relate to.

He said, after being notified by a company that my personal information was stolen from them, I put a freeze on my credit so no new accounts

could be opened in my name. But how will that affect my credit score? In this episode, I'll discuss what to do when you find out that your personal data has been compromised.

Yep, it happened to me recently.

We'll cover the differences between a security fraud alert and a credit freeze,

how they affect your credit,

and the pros and cons of using a credit monitoring service.

Did you know that someone becomes a fraud victim in the United States every two seconds? A criminal only needs a few data points, such as your name, Social Security number, or credit card number to steal from you.

Here are some of the most common types of identity fraud that occurred in 2014.

At the top of the list is filing a bogus

government document in your name before you do in order to get a tax refund or

benefit. This rip-off makes up 40% of identity crimes.

And you can learn a lot more about this in a 60 minutes expose they did called the

tax refund scam. It's a really great piece. They go to South Florida and interview a guy who made millions with this scam and there's still so many people doing it. I'll put a link to the 60 Minutes show in the notes for this show on the money girl page

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