Last month on of my extended family members got their identity stolen and had several credit cards opened up, lots of charges… it’s a big ass mess.
Sadly, it was an “inside job” of sorts and, as a result, has forced me to finally decide to do more to protect our financial security.
As a result, I started searching for ways to be alerted to potential financial credit problems. Fortunately (or not) we don’t have much in the way of assets to protect, it’s more that we don’t want our credit destroyed.
Obviously, the first thing I did was a healthy Google search which quickly directed me to several sites that seemed to compare various companies–there are a lot of them–with various rankings and so on; here’s one example. If you spend any time on these sites you’ll quickly figure out that they’re trying to sell you these products as affiliates. That’s not necessarily a problem for me but I don’t like it when sites do this as a supposed comparison review. Maybe it’s honest. Maybe it’s not.
Anyway, as you might suspect, LifeLock showed up quite a bit and often as a number one option, but not always. If you haven’t heard of the company, they often get good reviews in the fraud protection industry and even have heavy endorsements from people like Rush Limbaugh. Regardless, I was skeptical of LifeLock (and other companies like them) so I did some more research and wound up reading this article titled LifeLock Sucks that I found interesting.
You can read the article yourself to see why it’s not such a good idea. In fact, most of their services you can get elsewhere and sometimes for free (read the aforementioned article for links). About the only thing left that I thought LifeLock–and other companies–might be useful for was with help if/when my identity was stolen and for their insurance payments if that happens. Essentially, the article makes it sound like I would have a better chance at winning the lottery than collecting on insurance. 😉
So, I was a bit distraught. I felt like if LifeLock wasn’t all that then any other company probably wasn’t either and since I didn’t want to do nothing I wasn’t sure what to do. Ultimately, all I really wanted was to know if something happened to my credit sooner than the one time a year I’m allowed to get my credit reports for free. I know I could space it out and check one report every four months but even that seemed like a LONG time to wait!
Ultimately, I decided to sign up for Equifax’s Complete Family Plan coverage which is $30 per month and covers the entire family, my kids included… not that they should ever have any problems but you never know. For about the same price (around $25 for LifeLock Ultimate) I think I can get covered on my own by one of the big fraud companies.
The thing is that Equifax does what I want. They will alert me to changes in my credit score, changes in my card balances (up or down), general changes in my credit status, and more. I can get emails, text alerts, and even share alerts with my wife and vice-versa. I can setup fraud alerts and have them automatically renewed every 90 days (normally it’s a one time deal) which we did for the time being. I can also view my Equifax credit report anytime I like, though, I can’t do so with TransUnion or Experian. There’s a few other things too but that’s the important stuff.
I don’t know about you but this is the option that seems to work for me. I’d love to hear your thoughts on LifeLock or any other fraud protection companies in the comments since I’m still fairly new to it. Remember, disaster planning isn’t just about dealing with the aftereffects of natural disasters, it’s equally about mitigating any and all potential threats to your safety and well-being.
Last, here’s 9 steps to protect yourself from identity theft that you may want to check out to better secure your financial future.
Hope this helps!
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