You are not required to submit financial or identity information to anyone except IRESE or brokers. We discourage investors from requesting this type of information, and discourage you from providing it. By sending financial or identity information to unknown parties, you are putting yourself at risk for identity fraud.

Protecting Yourself from Identity Fraud

If you are an owner who is concerned about identity fraud, we recommend that you have a security alert (sometimes known as a "fraud alert") placed on your credit file. A security alert is a notice on your credit file where you can instruct potential creditors to contact you regarding any requests for credit before credit is extended. At IRESE, we receive a lot of requests from owners who have security alerts on their files, and we are required to follow the instructions on those alerts before those owners can submit an application.

To place a security alert on your credit file, you can contact each of the three major credit agencies and have the alert placed for free, or you can contact a number of other services, which will place and maintain the alerts for a fee. We also highly recommend that you add a contact telephone number to the security alert, so that potential creditors can contact you in case of legitimate requests.

You can learn more about identity theft and security alerts from the Federal Trade Commission.