topic Identity Theft Protection in Community Chat

Identity Theft Protection

SeaMaiden — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 17:47:42 GMT

I am contemplating getting an Identity theft protection monitor. I was looking at the discover card offer for just $15 a month.

Do you think this is a good investment? I also hear of Life Lock... but many of the reviews on that one are really poor.

Re: Identity Theft Protection

millieshops — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 17:57:21 GMT

@SeaMaiden What does Discover promise that other companies don’t and what are their reviews?

overall the experience with ID protection tend to be poor because they report things to you rather than preventing them

Re: Identity Theft Protection

LuvmyLab — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 18:06:39 GMT

@SeaMaiden DO NOT DO LIFELOCK!!!!! We signed up for it last year after my identity was stolen online. It was a nightmare deailng with them. I realized after we did ALL the work, we were paying for nothing. We were supposed to get alerts when our credit card was used (even by us) but we never did. We soon realized that we could do all the protecting ourselves by contacting companies (like our mortgage) and putting passwords and extra security questions on our accounts. We cancelled Lifelock. You can do everything yourself that you pay these types of companies.

Re: Identity Theft Protection

Still Raining — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 18:32:22 GMT

Much the same can be done by filing your own lien against your property, freezing your credit, setting your alerts as low as you can, and setting a daily ATM cap.

Course then you get beeped about what you and Amazon were up to.

Re: Identity Theft Protection

Deb0509 — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 18:20:13 GMT

I called Discover to ask them about theirs and the people that I was transferred to knew nothing about it. I wouldn't get it there.

Re: Identity Theft Protection

LuvmyLab — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 18:56:08 GMT

Also with Lifelock they only have certain companies that they supposedly "monitor". A lot of companies that we do business with they could not even monitor. We already had security freezes on our credit bureau accounts so that was done. But everything a company says they can do for you, you can do yourself. It just takes time but then we spent a LOT of time filling out forms with our information with Lifelock for nothing!

Re: Identity Theft Protection

Mz iMac — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 19:05:12 GMT

@SeaMaiden "Do you think this is a good investment? "

NOPE!

Follow "Still Raining's" suggestions. Just to add, you can set up fraud alerts at all 3 credit bureaus & your bank for FREE!

Re: Identity Theft Protection

Porcelain — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 19:07:37 GMT

All your private info is already out there being bought and sold. It's way too late for any of this. Sorry to say.

Re: Identity Theft Protection

Ainhisg — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 19:21:04 GMT

What these companies offer is expertise in dealing with identity theft should it happen to you. People are under the assumption that they protect it from happening. Nothing can do that. They just offer a way to monitor financial and medical accounts and should the unthinkable happen, provide a service to help reclaim your identity. We have Identity Force, and it breaks down to .$32 a day. A person hopes they never need help in getting back his/her identity, but should the need arise, $.32 cents a day is nothing compared to the assistance one would receive. ETA: Our financial advisor recommends having one, and he has Lifelock himself. After doing a fair bit of research, we went with Identity Force.

Re: Identity Theft Protection

deeva — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 21:13:17 GMT

Just freeze your credit. And sign up for alerts thru your credit card companies.
As others have stated, since Equivifax had their data breach, our info is already out there.