Protect your Identity - Equifax Security Breach
A recent article by financial columnist David Lazarus appeared in the LA Times and the Oregonian. It was in reaction to the Equifax security breach. He clicked on an Experian Ad and ultimately discovered that the unwitting public is being sold a monitoring service in exchange for:
(1) giving up their right to ever sue the company
(2) enabling the company to sell their identity information to third parties.
Read the article yourself, make sure to read the Terms of Service and the Disclosures, which no one ever reads, as that is where it is disclosed.
Watch out for this type of service from Equifax as nobody wants to pay to have their identity information sold to third parties, and end up getting phone calls and emails from company's trying to sell them stuff.
Think about this:
*The Equifax breach is different because the hacker got the most sensitive personal identification data on 145 million Americans--almost every adult.
* If your information is sold on the black market it will hurt and consume a lot of your time to fix it, especially if you don't have someone like IDShield monitoring your credit now, and catching it when it first happens.
*It can affect your tax refund, your medical history, your bills and your credit. Victims may get billed for expensive medical surgery they never had, get arrested and taken to jail because the pretender jumped bail, or get stuck with non-payment issues on accounts they never opened....
*Many employers don't realize that a victim of identity theft may need to spend hundreds of hours straightening out the mess, and will probably spend some of their work hours doing just that, straightening it out. IDshield can be something an employer can offer as a fringe benefit for their key employees.
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So, the question is...how do you evaluate the various services out there? Ask yourself does the monitoring service I'm looking at offer more than monitoring. Does it work for you the many hours it requires to fix the breach and damaged credit when it happens?
The difference between a true identity protection and restoration service versus a mere monitoring service is huge. A monitoring service is the smoke alarm. A true protection service is the smoke alarm AND the fire department. The first one keeps your data secure and alerts you when there is a problem (monitoring service) and the second one allows you access to licensed investigators to help restore your identity (fire department - puts out fire...issue).
IDshield has BOTH features--and it costs members less than other widely advertised identity protection services. Now is the time to make sure you are protected from Identity Theft, from someone using your credit or making you a victim.