ID Theft Monitoring Services: What You Need To Know
Identity theft is a hot topic these days. If we are to believe the special reports on the evening news, Identity theft is reaching epidemic proportions. So companies that offer "Credit Monitoring Services" have become all the rage. After watching too many of their TV commercials, I tried going to the FreeCreditReport.com site, only to find that they only provide a free credit report if you sign up for Experian's (not free) monitoring service. The FTC is currently investigating this company's practices, and the fact that their well promoted site is uncomfortably close to AnnualCreditReport.com, which actually does provide free credit reports. It never fails, there's always a scammer trying to "help" us in our hour of need.
All of which begs the question: Are these services worth the cost, and more to the point, do they actually protect you from identity theft? "Our position is that for most consumers -- and by most, we mean well over 99.9% of the people in the country -- they are not," says PRC's Stephens. "If you're talking about spending upwards of $100 per year, we don't think that the typical benefit a consumer is going to derive is worth the cost."
