Identity Theft Protection services

[MarissaNicole]

Anybody use them? I was thinking of getting Lifelock or one of those services... the last thing we need during residency is to have to deal with identity theft. DH was a victim in college when someone stole his checkbook and some credit cards and it did damage to his credit but it could have been far worse.

Anybody use any of these services? I haven't done my research yet but I figured I'd see if any of you have any real life experience or opinions regarding them.

ETA: the heading should read: Identity Theft Protection oops!

[bokelley]

I always do the free one each year, we have never signed on with a service. I am looking forward to hearing other peoples thoughts though!

[SuzySunshine]

We also only do the free ones once/year. My understanding is that LifeLock just puts an alert on your credit report which you could do yourself in writing. I would take a look at this before you agree to any costs: https://www.annualcreditreport.com/c...faq#fraudalert

Also, a lot of credit cards now offer services to their members, you might check if yours does.

[peggyfromwastate]

We have identityguard thru costco. It's $8 a month I think. Mostly it's because we have to use our social security numbers for everything-- it's on DH's ID, my ID, my kids' IDs. If we didn't have to have our SS #s so out there I probably wouldn't bother. Unfortunately, the military uses the socials as the main way to identify you, followed of course by your date of birth...

[Deebs]

We use Lifelock. DH had his identity stolen about 15 years ago, and he eventually had to hire an attorney to get his credit completely cleaned up in the aftermath. You absolutely can do what they do yourself - put a fraud alert on each credit agency, so you're basically paying for convenience and for their guarantee that if you do have a theft, they'll help you clean it up. We tried for about a year to do the fraud alerts ourselves, but we found it very tedious to keep up with it.

[Finding Equanimity]

Sorry, I'm totally ignorant in this area. When you guys say you get free reports, where do you get them? Or are you talking about your annual free credit reports? (Yeah, I probably just showed how stupid I am... wince).

[SuzySunshine]

That is what I meant - make sure to use the government site though as most others charge.

https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp

You can request one once/year, I always do mine, DH's and the kids.

[peggyfromwastate]

That's a good idea to check your kids out. I'll probably have to do that. Plus mine, which is not under our credit monitoring, since I don't make a salary! Oh well...

[Finding Equanimity]

Thanks Suzy!