Earlier this year my health insurance company was a victim of a hacker. As a result we received warning that personal identity information may be at risk.
My company took the initiative to offer a 1 year subscription with Life-Lock. A service provided for free for year, why say no? But looking into the actual services provided by Life-Lock it sure doesn’t seem like much that a person couldn’t do for themselves other than monitoring all the “databases”. The biggest concern I have with their service is the $1 Million guarantee. They will only spend their money and help you recover your identity if the loss is a result of a “failure or defect” in their service. This doesn’t give me much confidence!
Once before, I was personally impacted by ID theft on a small scale. Some clerk I assume kept a copy of my credit card number and used it to purchase some badly needed stereo speakers. Luckily, my credit card company caught the abnormal charges, required verification of my ID on my next purchase and confirmed the erroneous charges. As a result my card was cancelled and reissued. No direct cost to me and no further troubles were experienced.
Coupling this previous experience and the concern over my insurance companies breach created enough concern to do more. Furthermore a few coincidentally timed news reports about the trials and tribulations of individuals that felt the full force of complete ID theft. Individuals featured had spent countless hours and thousands of dollars trying to clear up the mess. Another story featured a young girl that was arrested on a warrant the turned out to be another case of ID theft.
Some searching resulted in what I believe is the most comprehensive ID protection product on the market. IDExperts provides services similar to Life-Lock to help protect you from becoming a victim in the first place. But then the similarities end.
IDExperts provide:
Prevention – IDExperts refer to this as FraudStop, they constantly monitor a variety of sources for suspicious activity that may be a signal of fraudulent use of your ID
Recovery – If you are a victim they assign an expert to help you assess the situation and fix the damage. They will work on your behalf to cancel card, file police reports, dispute and resolve fraudulent charges and then help you re-establish yourself taking caution necessary to prevent a recurrence.
Insurance – This is to cover any out of pocket expenses necessary to address your ID theft case. Up to $30,000 per family to pay for legal fees, lost wages or other direct costs associated with your case.
Additionally they are available as your ID experts to answer questions and provide guidance on any of your identity related concerns.
A recent study by Javelin Strategy & Research found that in 2008 there were 9.9 million cases of ID theft resulting in $48 Billion in loss. That’s an average of nearly $5,000 each. Add in the pain, agony and time to unravel the problems, get all your credit cards, license etc reissued and suddenly the value of this type of service looks quite good.
Even though I was provided Life-Lock services for free I still find it is worth my money to invest in the services of IDExperts.
What is your identity worth to you?
[…] with LifeLock (provided free due to a security breach of our insurance company) and with IdExperts, because after some research we felt this was a more robust insurance and protection […]