My brother’s identity was stolen a few years ago. In less than a week, four different $300 charges materialized on his credit and his bank didn’t make it easy for him to drop those items from his account. This time around wasn’t too problematic, because the bank finally sided with my brother, cancelled the extra charges and gave him new numbers for his account.

The really scary thing about this whole experience is that someone out there in the real world was walking around, claiming to be my brother, and because he or she had just enough personal and financial information to get by, no one could prove this stranger to be otherwise.

Thankfully, my brother was able to get beyond those problems, even though his credit still gets bothered by fraudulent charges every now and then. Luck was with him.

Identity theft is a frightening thing. No one likes the idea of losing money or spending hour after frustrating hour tracking down mysterious charges on their credit reports. When people get scared, they start to do things they wouldn’t normally do, and some businesses begin offering services that offer to help their concerns. Identity theft has definitely freaked out enough people, and numerous businesses offer protective services for a fee.

No Ability To Track Effectiveness

The first issue customers have with Internet protection services is that there is no way to keep an eye on how effective they really are, or if they’re even increasing security at all.

One of their main claims to fame is this: these services frequent your credit report and take notice if any charges begin to accumulate for large sums. This way, nothing goes through without you knowing about it. You could do this for yourself — for free. So, excluding this, what do these businesses do?

There is no good answer to this question, which bothers every consumer who dares to pay these businesses money for theoretical security. Since there are no methods to tracking their actions, you have to accept everything they tell you as fact. The only way to measure their success is to consider if your identity has been stolen since you began working with them. If not, then it stands to reason that the new security must have paid off, right?

No. There are no guarantees.

What Features?

Pricing for protective services changes heartily from service to service depending on what they claim to do for you. There is no business out in Internet Land who explicitly states what they do and for how much and which ones are premium and which are not. Just about everything — yes, everything — these companies do for you, you can easily do on your own. For free.

Protection against identity theft is crucial to maintaining your financial security, but throwing money at strangers to read your credit report just doesn’t make sense in the long run.

Preventing identity fraud needs to be considered carefully. If perhaps you are tired of worrying, learn more about how you can maximize your protection against identity theftand which services you can purchase to help you. Make sure to get all of your advise from reputable sources to be sure you get nothing but the truth.

Tags: Identity Theft