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 scary thing is that, even months later, there was still someone out there claiming to be my brother, and they even had his financial and personal information — enough to get into serious trouble.

My brother thankfully resolved the trouble with the bank. His credit still gets poked by mysterious charges every now and then. My brother was incredibly lucky.

Identity theft is the scariest Internet crime. It costs millions of dollars to millions of people worldwide every year and soaks up hours upon hours of frustrating phone calls to halt payment on fraudulent purchases. In the past few years, several businesses have sprung up to help protect consumers all over the world, taking advantage of fear to scrape together a load of cash. You can even join in for a monthly fee.

No Ability To Track Effectiveness

Protection against identity theft is not customer friendly; there is no possible way for customers to see how effective these service providers really are, or if they are improving computer security at all.

The main appeal is their systematic checking of your credit scores so nothing odd comes through your account without you being aware of it. That’s not particularly special, though; anyone can check their credit report. So beyond this, what exactly 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.

Zero Features For Lots Of Money

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 addressed seriously. If you want to stop worrying about it, get more info on how you can maximize your protection against identity theftand which services you can purchase to assist you. Make sure to get all of your advise from reputable sources to be sure you get nothing but the truth.