Common Questions

• Social Security Number
• Email Address
• Phone Number
• Driver's License
• Medical ID Number
• Credit or Debit Card
• Bank Account Number
• International Bank Account Number
• New Inquiry on Credit Report
• New Account or New Trade on Credit Report

• Consider changing the password to your email and to any other accounts that use your email address as a username. Use a strong password and avoid reusing passwords across multiple sites
• Review your credit reports from all three bureaus (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) for new activity
• As a precaution, keep an eye on your bank and credit card accounts for unfamiliar transactions

• Watch for suspicious calls and contact your phone provider if these noticeably increase
• Add your name to the national Do Not Call list
• Review your credit reports from all three bureaus (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) for new activity
• As a precaution, keep an eye on your bank and credit card accounts for unfamiliar transactions

• Contact your local DMV
• Review your credit reports from all three bureaus (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) for new activity
• As a precaution, keep an eye on your bank and credit card accounts for unfamiliar transactions

• Contact your medical card provider to report activity and verify that there has not been any fraudulent claims opened
• Review your credit reports from all three bureaus (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) for new activity
• As a precaution, keep an eye on your medical insurance accounts, as well as your bank and credit card accounts for unfamiliar transactions

• Review the account transaction history closely for unfamiliar charges
• Contact financial institution to cancel your card and/or report it stolen
• Review your credit reports from all three bureaus (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) for new activity
• As a precaution, keep an eye on other bank and credit card accounts for unfamiliar transactions

• Contact U.S. Passport office
• Review your credit reports from all three bureaus (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) for new activity

• Review the account transaction history closely for unfamiliar charges
• Contact financial institution and close your bank card/account
• Review your credit reports from all three bureaus (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) for new activity
• As a precaution, keep an eye on other bank and credit card accounts for unfamiliar transactions

• Review the account transaction history closely for unfamiliar charges
• Contact financial institution and close your bank card/account
• Review your credit reports from all three bureaus (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) for new activity
• As a precaution, keep an eye on other bank and credit card accounts for unfamiliar transactions

• Review your credit reports from all three bureaus (Experian, Equifax and Transunion) for new activity
• As a precaution, keep an eye on your bank and credit card accounts for unfamiliar transactions

This is the potential company or website where the internet compromise originated from. Hackers, when sharing stolen data on the dark web, will sometimes provide the name of the company or website where the information was breached from.

If you don't recognize this as a company you have a relationship with, note that it may be a third party organization that interfaces with a company you have done business with. A hypothetical example could be if your information was exposed during the breach of a payment processor that partners with a commercial airline you've bought tickets from.

If you're still certain that you didn't authorize this activity, there are steps that you can take.

• Contact the creditor - this may clear up what's happening
• Review your credit report for new activity
• Dispute the account information on your credit report

If you're still certain that you didn't authorize this activity, there are steps that you can take.

• Contact the creditor - this may clear up what's happening
• Review your credit report for new activity
• Dispute the account information on your credit report

• JPMCB (aka JP Morgan Chase Bank)
• CBNA (aka Citibank)
• CapOne (aka CapitalOne)
• FNBO (aka First National Bank of Omaha)
• TBH (aka The Home Depot)
• Synchrony Bank - Credit and loan provider that typically works with major retailers
• Credco - This is a third-party reporting agency. Often, mortgage companies, financial institutions, and dealerships will contact this type of reporting agency to obtain a three-bureau credit score
• Ally - Ally bank is a credit and loan provider that typically works with major retailers in several industries, such as auto financing, equity sponsors, and corporate finance

• If the loan was approved and the lender opened an account in your name you will receive an alert for the initial credit report inquiry to process your application and also an alert for the account being opened
• If the lender reported your account to all three of the major credit bureaus - Experian, Equifax and TransUnion - you may receive an alert from each bureau

In order to update this information, log in to the site and head over to the My Account page. You'll be able to update certain account information there.

If you need to cancel your OnAlert account, you can call OnAlert customer care at 833-533-1790 or log in to the site and head over to the My Account page.

• You need to choose a password that's long enough. There's no minimum password length everyone agrees on, but you should generally go for passwords that are a minimum of 12 to 14 characters in length.
• Your password should include numbers, symbols, capital letters, and lower-case letters. Using a mix of different types of characters to make the password harder to crack.
• Your password shouldn't be a dictionary word or a combination of dictionary words. Any word on its own is bad. Any combination of a few words, especially if they're obvious, is also bad. For example, 'bird' is a terrible password. 'yellow bird' is also very bad.
• Avoid obvious substitutions in your password. Don't use common substitutions either - for example, 'MOuse' isn't strong just because you've replaced an o with a 0.

Requesting a fraud alert at any one of the credit bureaus automatically applies alerts to your credit files at all three bureaus. Each fraud alert deactivates itself on a preset expiration date. You can have a fraud alert lifted before its expiration date if you wish, but you must contact each credit bureau individually to do so.

There are three types of fraud alerts:

• A temporary fraud alert. Also known as an initial fraud alert, this type of alert lasts one year and then expires. You can add one to your credit report anytime, for any reason. You can renew it as many times as you like.
• An active-duty fraud alert. This alert protects active-duty service members on assignment away from home, and also lasts one year unless it's removed earlier. Each service member must provide a copy of their duty assignment when requesting this type of alert.
• An extended fraud victim alert. Extended alerts last seven years and are designed for victims of credit fraud or identity theft. If you've been victimized and have reported the crime to authorities, you can obtain an extended fraud alert by submitting a copy of the identity theft report you filed with law enforcement.

A fraud alert is a good precaution to take if you're worried about potential misuse of your personal information. You only need to notify one credit bureau to activate one, and it's only slightly more time-consuming to deactivate fraud alerts than it is to put them in place.

Through the online dispute submission process at https://dispute.transunion.com.

Also known as a security freeze, a credit freeze allows you to restrict access to your credit report, which makes it more difficult for identity thieves to open new accounts in your name. Keep in mind, however, that a credit freeze may prevent you from opening a new account, applying for a job, renting an apartment or buying insurance. If you need to do any of these, you can lift the freeze temporarily either for a specified time or to allow access to a specified party. You can have the freeze lifted for free and place it again for free when you are done allowing access to your credit. While a credit freeze can help prevent identity thieves from opening accounts using your information, they will not prevent a thief from accessing existing accounts and will not prevent prescreened offers of credit. All the national bureaus are required, by law, to offer you credit freezes for free. Remember, freezing your credit will not impact your credit score or prevent you from getting your free annual credit report and your existing creditors and certain governmental agencies will still have access to your credit report.

Credit monitoring is a service that alerts you whenever a change is made to one of your credit reports. This gives you the chance to quickly confirm the accuracy of the change and, if necessary, start sorting out any problems before they really get out of hand. Any suspicious credit-report change can be a sign of fraud, after all, and credit reports often contain errors that can cause rejection by a lender.

Your OnAlert subscription includes credit scores generated using the Experian Vantage 3.0 model. The Experian Vantage 3.0 model is highly regarded in the industry as helpful in identifying potential identity theft. This score in particular, is for educational purposes (to let you know what your score is and whether it has changed) and is not intended for your use in making financial decisions.

• Payment history. Payment history is the most important ingredient in credit scoring, and even one missed payment can have a negative impact on your score.
• Credit utilization. Your credit utilization ratio is calculated by dividing the total revolving credit you are currently using by the total of all your revolving credit limits. This ratio looks at how much of your available credit you're utilizing and can give you a snapshot of how reliant you are on non-cash funds.
• Credit history length. This includes the age of your oldest credit account, the age of your newest credit account and the average age of all your accounts. Generally, the longer your credit history, the higher your credit scores.
• Credit mix. People with top credit scores often carry a diverse portfolio of credit accounts, which might include a car loan, credit card, student loan, mortgage or other credit products. Credit scoring models consider the types of accounts and how many of each you have as an indication of how well you manage a wide range of credit products.
• New credit. This is the number of credit accounts you've recently opened, as well as the number of hard inquiries lenders make when you apply for credit. Too many accounts or inquiries can indicate increased risk, and as such can hurt your credit score.

• One or more of the bureaus could not match the information from your enrollment form with a unique credit file
• One or more of the bureaus experienced a technical issue during the process of pulling your credit report
• One or more of the bureaus do not have a credit report on file for you

Your credit score may be different among the 3 credit bureaus - Experian, Equifax and TransUnion because each bureau is independent and contains unique data regarding your credit history. Lenders are not required to report to or inquire with all 3 bureaus, therefore, it is possible that you may have more credit inquiries or delinquencies on file with one bureau as opposed to another, which may impact your credit score.

No. Your credit reports are linked to your personal information, which typically includes your Social Security number, so your credit reports and credit histories remain separate when you get married. However, if you and your spouse open a joint account, or one of you adds the other as an authorized user on a credit card account, the history of that account will be reflected on both of your credit reports.

• New Bank Account Opening – If your personal information has been used to open a new bank account.
• Bank Account Takeover – If changes have been made to your existing bank account, including changes to account contact information or attempts to add new account holders.

Alerts are generated daily for new activity.

Your first Dark Web Monitoring report includes data from the previous 11 years. This means that Dark Web Monitoring searches the prior 11 years of records it has collected for a match to the personal information you are monitoring.