What Should I Do about a Stolen Passport?

Passports allow individuals to travel between countries legally. It is important to safeguard your passport to avoid things such as identity theft or the inability to obtain a new passport. Several steps are available to you if you have a stolen passport, such as reporting the stolen passport to law enforcement officials, reporting it to your country’s embassy or consulate if you are out of the country, filing the necessary paperwork with your local passport office and alerting all necessary parties to try to detect or prevent identity theft.

One of the first steps to take if your passport is stolen is to notify law enforcement officials. This should be done no matter whether the passport is stolen in your home country or in a foreign country. Local law enforcement officials will be able to assist you with filling out the paperwork necessary to document the circumstances surrounding the theft of your passport.

If you are out of the country and your passport is stolen, you also should notify your country’s consulate or embassy after you have notified law enforcement officials. This is helpful for a variety of reasons, such as getting assistance with your stolen passport in your native language, notification of any other officials within your home country who might need to be notified and obtaining additional documentation to note that you have had your passport stolen. In addition, this is one of the things that will help you obtain a new passport.

After you have made all of the necessary notifications, you should file stolen passport paperwork with your local passport office. Some offices require you to come in and fill out the paperwork, but others allow you to do so online. If you choose the latter option, you likely will need to send in certain pieces of information for consideration with your online application. It is a good idea to document everything, including when you mailed or submitted information, how you submitted it and to whom you submitted it.

For many people, obtaining a replacement passport is one of the main things on their mind after their passport is stolen. This is important, but it also is imperative that you begin monitoring your credit report. It is quite possible that someone who has stolen your passport will also try to steal your identity. You might contact credit bureaus immediately to make them aware of the situation, and you might enact some type of service to monitor your credit reports.