You hear about it all the time—identity theft and the victims that deal with it.
Identity theft is growing every day, and is becoming quite the epidemic with the growth and popularity of online shopping, social networking sites, and the numerous uses of a person’s social security number. Add in poor security measures at institutions, a growing number of hackers and the new work from home lifestyle that has resulted in far too many stolen laptops and you get a recipe for disaster.
How do you protect yourself from identity theft?
Well, you could spend tons of time and money pulling your credit report each month and scoping out any unusual activity. By pulling your credit report and reviewing it, activity has already occurred by this time. Credit monitoring comes with a monthly fee similar to other identity protection services but it still only lets you know after the fact about any unusual activity. Wouldn’t you be better off being proactive about protecting your identity, rather than spending numerous hours on the phone with creditors and faxing paperwork back and forth explaining that you’ve been a victim of identity theft and didn’t rack up all those charges?
Most would rather take the steps to initially avoid identity theft. What you have to do then is contact each of the credit bureaus to place fraud alerts on your account. Of course, fraud alerts only go for 90 days before they expire, and you have to start the whole process over again being careful to not miss your renewal date. But with so many busy families, who has the time?
Many Americans don’t! Life is hectic these days, especially if you have kids. A lot of us would rather have someone else do the work of watching their credit instead of depending on themselves to do so. This way there is no lapse in your credit protection due to a missed or late fraud alert renewal. And for a measly average of $9 a month, it is very affordable especially when you consider the costs and headaches involved in fixing the problem and the additional benefits you get by employing a service.
With professionals hired you also get additional services many of which you can not do on your own. You can remove yourself from junk mail and pre-approved credit offers, highly recommended by the way, but most companies also provide scanning of black market internet sites that sell your information and database monitoring. If your private information is found, anywhere it shouldn’t be, you are immediately notified. Most importantly, these services give you a service guarantee and/or identity theft insurance which is a must have given the scope of identity theft.
There are many companies out there offering identity theft protection. LifeLock, TrustedID, and Debix are just a few of the services out there to help you protect your credit and good name. Each of these companies are experienced and are the best of the best in our opinion, Of course, each one has their unique services, but for the most part, they will monitor your current credit and personal information and make sure you are contacted as new accounts are being open to make sure it is you requesting the loan, and if not, allowing you to take action immediately to stop the transaction rather than fixing the damage later.
If you’re worried about identity theft, these services will help keep your mind at ease knowing that someone is watching over your information with an eagle eye, so you have time for the more important things in life. Take the time now to review the services offered by these companies. It is far easier to set up an identity protection plan then go through the horror of fixing your credit.