Georgia state resources for personal identity theft protection

Note: These resources are specifically designed to address personal identity theft prevention and incidents of consumer identity theft. Because most state and federal identity theft and consumer protection laws are designed to protect individual consumers, businesses generally do not enjoy the same rights, protections, and potential recourse as consumers. Therefore, while helpful in addressing many issues that you may face as an individual, be aware that consumer identity theft information may not be applicable to an incident of business identity theft or fraud.

Governor’s Office of Consumer Protection: Identity Theft Instructions for Victims  (for personal cases)

Learn how to protect your personal credit

Business identity thieves often use the identity information (and credit) of the business owner or company officers to open new accounts, or as guarantors of fraudulent loans and lines of credit. In addition to taking actions to protect your business, it is also important to protect yourself as well. This section provides detailed explanations of important consumer credit protection tools that are available to help protect your personal credit from identity thieves.

Use the links below to learn what these tools are, how they work, and how to use them to help protect your personal credit.

Tools & Resources to Protect Your Personal Credit:

Review, Manage, and Protect Your Georgia State Business Filings

If your business does not regularly review your state business filings, file your annual reports in a timely manner, or enroll in email alerts or other preventative systems that may be offered by your state, you may unknowingly attract the unwanted attention of business identity thieves.

• Review your Georgia business filings online
  Verify the accuracy of your state business filings and confirm that your filings are up to date

• Review your Georgia UCC filings online
  Verify the accuracy of your Georgia UCC filings

Note: The Georgia Secretary of State's Corporations Division has implemented an email alert system to protect businesses.

The Secretary of State’s e-mail notification program sends an e-mail to every email address associated with the corporate entity every time a change is made to any field in the corporate filing. The notification asks each entity contact with an email address on file to review the entity’s information, to make sure that the changed information is authorized and correct. We encourage you to include more than one email address with each of your entities to ensure receipt of e-mail notifications. Additionally, a backup security measure permanently stores every email address added to an entity’s record. This measure ensures that a person who attempts fraud can not delete email addresses to block receipt of the notifications by the rightful entity contact.

• Georgia Secretary of State business identity theft web page

Review and Protect Your Business Credit Reports

Business identity thieves can manipulate or falsify business credit records and then use these to impersonate your business, or as a part of a fraud scheme to target your business. To combat this, you should periodically review your business credit reports and the information that is being reported.

Contact the business credit reporting agencies:

Report and Correct Fraudulent Georgia Business Filings

In Georgia, if your state business records have been fraudulently changed or updated, contact the Georgia Secretary of State Corporations Division to report and correct fraudulent business filings. Contact information is provided below.

Please note that you should only contact the Georgia Secretary of State Corporations Division for business identity theft incidents involving fraudulent business records.

Though the Georgia Secretary of State’s office has statutory authority to investigate consumer complaints and allegations of criminal activity in other divisions, such as Elections and Professional Licensing, it does not have statutory authority – through either the Corporations Division or the Investigations Unit – to criminally investigate complaints of alleged corporate identity theft. However, the Office fully cooperates with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies that request assistance in investigating potential criminal activity.

All other types of business identity theft incidents and related fraud should be reported directly to law enforcement. Also review the Business Identity Theft Victim Action List for other important steps to take.

Georgia Credit Security Freeze

Georgia enacted its own state law establishing the availability of credit security freezes for its citizens. The three major credit bureaus  (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion) have also voluntarily made security freezes available to all Georgia state citizens. Innovis voluntarily allows consumers in all states to freeze their Innovis credit files.

Eligibility: All consumers 

Credit Security Freeze Fees:  Per credit bureau. To be effective, you should place a freeze at each credit bureau
• No cost for confirmed identity theft victims (with a copy of a police report) and/or for seniors age 65 and older
• All others must pay $3.00 to place a new freeze, to temporarily lift the freeze, or to remove it entirely
• The freeze will remain in place until you remove it

To Place a Credit Security Freeze in Georgia:

• Experian security freeze website  

• Equifax security freeze website  

• TransUnion security freeze website  

• Innovis security freeze website  
 

Report Business Identity Theft to Georgia Law Enforcement

In Georgia, if your business is a victim of business identity theft, you should report the crime to your local law enforcement agency. In some cases, you may also report the crime to the Georgia Office of Consumer Protection.

In the case of fraudulent business filings, the Georgia Secretary of State Corporations Division may also report or escalate to law enforcement as appropriate.

Also review the Business Identity Theft Victim Action List for other important steps to take.

Georgia Office of Consumer Protection

Georgia Office of Consumer Protection website

Main Office phone:  (404) 651-8600

OCP Online Complaint Form              OCP Downloadable Complaint Form

State of Georgia Office of the Attorney General 

Georgia Attorney General website

Georgia Attorney General Consumer Information website

Main Office phone:  (404) 656-3300

State of Georgia Department of Public Safety

Department of Public Safety website