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Fee-based services say they'll protect your identity, privacy, credit, name, and more. Find out what they can and can not do -- and learn what you can do to defend yourself.
What is your identity worth? According to the Global Internet Security Threat Report from Symantec, credit card numbers go for as little as 40 cents on the black market. Complete access to a bank account? Just $10.
Not so long ago, one's identity didn't involve so many dollars and cents. Discussions of privacy seemed better suited to the realm of academic debates or conspiracy theories. Today, unfortunately, the context is too often one of ripped-off consumers, with tales of swiped credit card numbers, false mortgages, and employment fraud leading to many cumulative hours spent, perhaps over years, trying to clean up the mess.
Of course when someone comes gunning for granny's life savings, "good Samaritans" won't be far behind.
Take identity theft monitoring service providers. The pitch? Give us your Social Security number and notification of suspicious identity activity is only an e-mail alert or phone call away. These services, which typically cost $10 to $20 per month, offer to guard your identity by monitoring the three credit-reporting agencies (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion), cell phone applications, government databases, and public information. Some also provide insurance (subject to underwriting, and not valid in every state) to help defray costs associated with recovering from identity theft cases.
Others offer even more. For example, Intersections' Identity Guard ($17 per month for the "Total Protection" plan) says it uses "patented scanning technology" to maintain "daily surveillance of the Internet's 'back alley' chat rooms and news groups" and see if your identity is for sale. Secure Identity Systems ($7 per month) says it "tracks hundreds of databases that use Social Security numbers, including utilities, DMV records, financial institution records, and more."
MyPublicInfo ($80 for a six-month "Public Information Profile") watches criminal records and real estate reports. Debix ($99 per year) automatically calls you at home or on your cell phone the moment someone obtains new credit in your name. LifeLock ($10 per month) requests "that your name be removed from pre-approved credit card and junk mail lists, and we keep making the requests as they expire," so would-be attackers can't swipe credit card offers from your mailbox. According to LifeLock, "we've got your back." More Than 225 Million Records Breached Since 2005
A little identity theft prevention would be nice, especially since over 225 million records containing sensitive, personal information have been compromised since January 2005, according to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. Furthermore, the quantity and scale of data breaches appears to be on the rise. For example, a March break-in at an Indiana debt-collection agency led to a missing server containing 700,000 people's personal information, including some Social Security numbers. (The server is still at large.)
Of course, not every breached record results in a case of identity theft. (Interestingly, an Identity Theft Research Center study found that in almost half of all identity theft cases, the victim believed the perpetrator had been family or a friend.) Yet with breaches on the rise, it may not be a surprise that the incidence of identity theft reportedly increased three-fold in 2007.
Furthermore, identity theft cleanup can be complicated. According to a Federal Trade Commission study of identity theft cases from 2001 to 2006, for the extreme 10% of cases, costs stretched to $1,200 and clean-ups required 44 hours. Thankfully, however, the median time to resolve an identity theft problem was four hours, and "in more than 50% of ID thefts, victims incurred no out-of-pocket expenses," which includes "any lost wages, legal fees, any payment of fraudulent debts, and miscellaneous expenses such as notarization, copying, and postage."
What Identity Theft Monitoring Promises
Monitoring helps with identity theft by actively watching for fraud in your name. "The credit monitoring service notifies you at an earlier stage than you might otherwise know about the fraud, because otherwise it could be months before someone potentially finds out about it," says Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy at PRC.
Monitoring, however, won't stop identity theft outright. "With credit monitoring, your report is still potentially seen by people who want to commit fraudulent acts against you," he says. "You'll get an early warning, but you haven't actually prevented them from using the report." At this point, it's also too late to freeze your credit, which prohibits anyone but current creditors from seeing a credit report. This means your personal data is already at large, and may have been used to gain a credit card, cell phone, or even mortgage in your name. (Read More at InformationWeek.com)