ID Credit Monitoring

Be Wise. Shield Your Identity Today.

The FTC (Federal Trade Commission) reports that 9 million Americans become victims of identity theft every year, most of them children and young adults. To protect themselves, many people have signed up with identity theft protection services that track their credit and prevent fraudulent activity. Perhaps you would consider protecting yourself the same way. Even as the thieves get cleverer and steal even more account numbers and identities, an identity theft protection service will protect you.

Studying Your Credit Report for Unusual Activity

Free credit reports are acquired through Identity Protection services and such services allow you to verify any marks related to purchase history. Bad credit scores are ultimately the resulting scars that can affect employment and even attempts at a securing a mortgage. It’s important to review credit scores because victims of Identity theft are often regard their credit score with little interest.

Identity protection agencies constantly monitor daily behavior of your credit taking note of any anomalies that arise. This allows you safe worry and a stress free conscience of trying to do this on your own. As well as the protection features they offer, you’ll find comfort in the variety of extending services also provided, from wallet watch to database monitoring . As technology progresses and attempts of thieves to steal identities become increasingly clever, so does the system of protection.

One Million Dollar Guarantee

Most identity theft services charge only a small monthly fee in exchange for coverage of up to one million dollars if you are a target of identity theft. Each plan varies in degree, but generally speaking, the companies primary effort is to identify when you identity is stolen. They will then pool their resources to help you fix the problem. The monthly fee is certainly worth it when one considers that identity theft often causes thousands of dollars in personal damages.

What Do Identity Protection Services Actually Protect You From?

Services will vary, however you will find that most identity protection firm will provide the following services:

1. Database Monitoring and Security
2. Financial account protection
3. Family Identity Protection
4. Individual identity Protection
5. Guaranteed recovery if your identity is stolen
6. Credit Monitoring
7. Fraud Alerts

What Do Identity Protection Service Actually Protect You From?

Now that we've reviewed the list of services above, the following is what those services will actually prevent:

1. Negative credit marks
2. Illegal Sales of your personal information
3. Unauthorized address changes
4. Unauthorized telephone number changes
5. Theft of your social security number

You can choose which service you like best based on their unique strengths. Our complete review of each service makes it easier for you to pick the service that is best suited for you. Services not only differ on the plans that they offer for both families and individuals, but also on their database and credit monitoring. You must evaluate your needs and pick the appropriate service.

Learn how exactly identity protection services work.

Fraudulent Internet Scams

The Internet is a ripe resource for thieves and fraudsters as they can contact millions of people all around the world at just the click of a button, and it is easy for them to hide form authorities and stay anonymous as they will not need a postal address or landline telephone number to operate their scams and frauds from.

Email Scams

This is one of the most effective ways in which fraudsters have of contacting large numbers of potential victims and there are a number of ways in which they use the email system to scam people out of money and sensitive information:

  • Official Requests for Information – these are very dangerous emails for the recipients, as the fraudster will pose as an official account provider such as a credit card company (credit theft monitoring)or bank, and send out emails requesting that account holders confirm their details as soon as possible, either by return email of by logging in to their accounts through a link within the email (that takes them to a fake website).  These emails can often be very sophisticated and convincing, with the bank logo and professional style language, and the fraudster will try and trick the recipient into making a hasty decision to reply to the email by making claims such as the account will be closed unless the victims replies quickly, or that their account has been compromised and they need to log in immediately.
  • Fake Special Offers – fraudsters may use the email system to send out fake special offers for goods or services, but once the customer has paid they usually never get anything in return, or the item that arrives is inferior quality and not as advertised.

Banner Ads and Fake Websites

Fraudsters can use sophisticated malware that can imbed deep into your computer and track the types of websites you are visiting and also record your keystrokes.  This allows the fraudsters to spy on their victims as they are logging into sensitive online accounts such as banks, personal email or credit cards, and the malware can be transferred to your computer either when you click on infected banner adverts, which can click you through to websites loaded with malicious software.

Identity Theft Scams

There are many ways in which identity thieves can try and scam you into providing them with your sensitive personal details such as your Social Security Number, bank account details or credit card number, and you should be treating any request for this kind of personal information very seriously, and only releasing the information if you have confirmed that the request is genuine and necessary.

Common Types of Scams
The most common types of scams will offer you the chance to either to take advantage of amazing deals on goods, services or credit products (such as loans, shares or service agreements), or offer the chance to make lots of money by investing a small amount of money yourself (identity protection reviews).  This can include:

•    Earn at Home Scams – be very cautious about any ‘amazing’ opportunities to earn lots of money from home, as in reality there are actually very few well paid jobs that can be carried out from home on a self employed basis, and most of these opportunities will in fact be scams.  For example you could be asked to pay a start up fee for the business, which may be to cover the costs of any admin or company literature you need, but once you have handed over your credit card number or bank account details and paid the fee you never hear from the company again, and even worse you may find that these details have been misused, and a number of fraudulent charges also been run up on your accounts.

•    Investment Scams – these scams are typically sent out via email, often from other countries (Nigeria seems to be a key originating country for these types of scams for some reason).  Basically someone will email you and claim to have an ‘amazing’ investment opportunity for you and this could be related to real estate, shares and bonds and any other high value assets.  All you will have to do to cash in on this ‘get rich quick’ scheme is to invest a small amount of capital, anything from a couple of hundred to a couple of thousand dollars.  Another common scam is to claim you have an inheritance worth thousands or even millions of dollars in your name (often from someone who has died abroad as you cannot then check this so easily), and that you just need to pay a referral or finders fee in order for the company contacting you to be able to process your claim for this exciting, but unfortunately in most cases completely fake windfall.