<prompt> Human: Someone 1500 miles away from my home started writing fraudulent checks against my old checking account. As part of the fallout, I found myself being dogged by 3 collection agencies. Ive been doing a steady stream of fighting, mailing police reports, affidavits, the whole nine yards. Yesterday when I got home from work, I found that two of the three companies had sent me letters advising they were ceasing collection efforts and removing the marks from the big three. WIN! VICTORY!I guess I dont have much of a question. I do wish Credit Karma had a working Credit Simulator, so I could see how big an impact this will make on my score. Ive been planning on taking out a loan over the summer, and itll be good to see my score come back up. Anyway, mild victory. That is all.Assistant: Im paying for the extra stuff not to lock my credit. I think people are getting confused. I locked my credit with Equifax. There I was told that Equifax will contact Transunion and Experian to lock as well. Ill pay 16.95monthly and check the reports for all 3. I see it as a small price to pay for the huge damage that can be caused in a matter of minutes Human: I did something similar. I issued a fraud alert with one, and they in turn issued the alert with the other two. I think its good for 30 or 60 days. There wasnt a cost to me, so this might be something different.I already saw the effect, too: I went to open an online account and it informed me Id need to call to verify my identity. Then I went thru a process that was clearly designed to weed out someone posing as me, which was really fantastic.  <response>: Since you were a victim of fraud and you have police reports, you can actually get a much longer fraud alert 7 years and I believe its free. 