I don’t want it, you can keep it, all these Identity Theft services coming around lately, of course I don’t want to have to pay for car insurance either, but I know having it is better than being without it.
There’s a lot of talk out there now about Identity Theft Protection, and ways to be protected. Also lot of companies promising their own version of what they’ll do for you. So how do you know how real the threat is to know if you really even need their services? After all, my identity is safe, isn’t it?
You don’t see my social security number written in BIG numbers on a truck driving around town just hoping no one is not going to see it, handing out flyers with it written on them. How is anyone going to get my number to even use it, I shred all my credit card offers before I throw them in the trash.
It’s not my job to keep track of all the doctors or credit agencies who have my ssn and what they do with it when records get old and they get rid of paperwork. They dispose of it properly, cause they know how important that information is, right?
So these id theft monitoring services say they’ll call or email me when a line of credit is opened without my permission. I guess that’s like calling the farmer after the cows have gotten out of the barn. What ever happened to locking to barn doors, and checking them before you go to bed.
Then there’s this Lifelock company, they say they will Prevent it from happening, why do they need to offer a $1 million service guarantee for then, doesn’t Prevent mean Prevent? They say they’re different because a banker is supposed to check your credit report first before offering the credit, and the “fraud alert” that Lifelock puts on it is supposed to send the banker a red flag, and contact the phone number on file (which is supposed to be they guy sitting there asking for a line of credit) and if his phone doesn’t ring, hey, maybe he ain’t the guy he says he is asking for money. And the banker is supposed to put 2 and 2 together and not offer the line of credit after all. Maybe that’s what Prevention means.
So now I’m weighing between the two, Protection vs. Monitoring, barn door locked vs. a call at 2 am in the morning to tell me my cows are out on Interstate 40 blocking traffic. I guess if I have to pick, I’d pick the warm bed and suck it up and pay for the peace of mind knowing someone who knows this stuff better than me is pushing the right buttons and watching my back.
