Credit Monitoring and Identity Theft Protection-A full review

Credit Monitoring cannot protect you from being a victim of identity theft or credit card fraud.  What it can do is tell you when new activity on your credit profile has been generated.   This could be accounts opened by you or a thief using your info to commit consumer fraud.  These accounts can become Collections and Charge  Offs which are the outcome of a thief opening credit, which remains unpaid, in your name.  It is true that once you know there is a problem it can help you to react faster and save you some frustration but once you see accounts that are not yours it is already too late.

If your monitoring company provides you with notices that a creditor is inquiring into your history, with your authorization, that is  helpful since you are being notified before the account is opened.  The problem  is what do you do with this inquiry information?  You would have to track down the creditor, get someone on the phone who knows what they are talking about, and have them figure out why they inquired into your history.

This is a lot of unnecessary work.  All that really needs to be done is to place an alert on your credit report to have all creditors contact you on your phone for approval.   Once this is done creditors must call you for your approval direct.  Although this may not allow you to open instant credit it will surely stop identity theft in the form of new accounts.

The other problem with credit monitoring is if you do not understand credit in general, or specifically, how will you know what is a problem when you have an alert from  your Monitoring company?  Monitoring companies alert you for various reasons some being inconsequential.  We find most consumers asking us what their alerts really mean.  Most of the public does not know how to read credit reports and are unsure of what negatively impacts them.

Once you understand how to read your credit profile you must stay abreast of changes in the scoring systems and requirements of creditors in regards to scores.  This is a lot to keep up with.  I personally spend most of my work week and at least 4 hours a weekend studying these topics to stay current.  You can imagine how hard it would be for the average consumer.

Since it is so important to understand credit and the rules that apply to it we are offering 2 new programs to help consumers stay educated.

Program 1; 2 full credit analysis annually with one of our specialists. We will pull your credit profile for you 2X’s a year. Throughout the year we will provide you with updates on changes in the scoring systems and credit news. We will put a note on your credit profiles to force creditors to contact you via phone to approve new credit. This program is $310.00 + $40.00 for the credit reports.

Program 2; is exactly the same except you pull your own credit reports and provide us with them. This program is $230.00 a year.

There is so much misinformation floating around and the majority of consumers lack real knowledge about credit.  From my experience I know that learning about your  credit and how it works is the first step in protecting it.  If a consumer uses  any of these 2 programs for a few years they should have the ability to manage and understand all aspects of their credit.  At this point a monitoring program could at least be a tool they could decipher.  A consumer would not need both of  our programs and credit monitoring.  Either one would work for them once they really know how credit works.

If you think about it a monitoring company could charge up to $30.00 a month if not more.  If you understood your credit, how to read it, and if you had the note I discussed earlier to stop instant credit you don’t need them.  You could pull your credit and scores every 4 months for $40.00 each time and you would be able  to see exactly what the status is.  This would cost you $120.00 plus our $230.00 fee for education and analysis versus $360.00 for a service that is difficult to  understand and delivers news of problems after they occur.

When it comes to identity theft products I have found the only aspect of what they do, that I understand, is putting a fraud alert on your credit profile.  This will protect you from credit being opened without your consent but the rest of their services don’t seem to have much value.  As I reported in my last article these products offer vague descriptions of coverage to victims of ID theft.  The decision to provide the victim with compensation or coverage for services needed to assist the individual, after becoming a victim, is decided based on their judgment.  They claim to be able to alert you when your name is Googled.  They state that they browse around in illegal chat rooms where thieves exchange social security numbers to see if they can find yours.  Even if this is true it will not stop you from being a victim.

The truth is it will just alert you that something could happen.  Once you have the fraud alert you really don’t need the other alerts.

There is another type of identity theft that occurs where none of these methods can protect you.  You can have your social security number used by someone other  than you using a totally different name.  Because the bureaus use both social security numbers and name to pull up information, a thief can use your social security number with a different name and you may never know it.

This happens with illegal aliens who buy social security numbers.  They begin a “sub-file” of a real social security number used by the individual it was meant for.  This can go undetected for decades especially if the sub file user does not have negative credit.  Usually this is detected when a consumer goes for unemployment insurance.  The Unemployment agency will pull up information based on only your social security number.  Unemployment does this to detect whether the insured has been working.  This is the most common way sub files are detected.  I do not know of any way for consumer to protect themselves from sub-file social security number theft to date but I will continue to study it.

Feel free to call us if you have any questions!

Great credit brings great opportunity!!

Copyright © 2010 North Shore Advisory, Inc.



2 Responses to “Credit Monitoring and Identity Theft Protection-A full review”

1. Lakisha Bevard says:

   March 30, 2010 at 3:56 pm

   I read a article under the same title some time ago, but this articles quality is much, much better. How you do this?
2. Caridad Yokely says:

   November 9, 2010 at 7:11 pm

   this may appear as little surprise to large numbers who are currently laid-off or concerned about it.