Have a Countrywide mortgage? Better read this

If you have a mortgage with Countrywide Financial, may want to check your credit report. This advice follows the arrest of a Countrywide employee the FBI says sold Social Security numbers and other sensitive information on as many as 2 million customers.
    The arrest was the result of a joint investigation involving the federal agency and Countrywide's own investigators.
    Countrywide, which was acquired by Bank of America Corp. in July, has been notifying some customers by mail that their information may have been sold, including names, addresses, Social Security numbers, and various other loan and application information. The company says it has no evidence that the information has been used to steal anyone's identity.
    Countrywide is offering those customers two years of free credit monitoring. They will receive e-mail alerts when new accounts, inquiries, negative information, credit-limit changes, and other items appear on their credit reports at the three major credit reporting agencies, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. Only customers who receive a notice from Countrywide are eligible for the free monitoring service.
    In addition, we recommend that Countrywide customers consider the following:
    (1) Freezing your credit files, which will prevent lenders from accessing your information. The cost of freezing your file at each of the credit reporting agencies varies from state to state and can be found, along with other tips, on the Consumers Union Web site. Consumers Union is the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports and this Web site.
    (2) Initiating a free 90-day fraud alert on your credit report. An alert signals lenders that they should verify the identity of anyone applying for credit. An alert requested at one of the three credit reporting agencies will automatically trigger alerts at the other two. The 90-day alerts can be renewed after they expire.
    (3) Checking your credit report. By law it's available for free every 12 months at each of the three agencies, or whenever you initiate a 90-day fraud alert. The official Web site for this purpose is AnnualCreditReport.com. —Anthony Giorgianni