Millions of us have had our identity stolen. When that happen cyber criminals can request credit cards under your name and start charging against your credit record. When this happens, you must contact all the credit bureaus and have an alert put on your account. This forces banks to verify with you that a loan request was actually you. This shuts down fraudulent accounts against your credit. The credit bureaus require you to request this alert, and the alert only last for 12 months. Credit bureau policies should be changed to set all accounts on alert by default, unless a customer specifically requests to not be on alert. This simple change would stop 90% of fraudulent accounts against people's credit in its tracks.