I learned the hard way the importance of identity protection. Three months ago, from the time of this writing, my family suddenly and unexpectedly lost everything because of identity theft. Unfortunately, we had heard of identity theft but never thought it could befall my family. It seemed unimaginable.
Lacking identity theft prevention, there's no way of realizing identity theft has happened until it's too late. After several months I started receiving phone calls and letters from various credit card companies requiring me to pay my debts to them. The person who had stolen my identity had gotten a number of credit cards in my name, using my social security number and a neighbor's address. Apparently, this is much simpler than one would suspect.
After the incident was behind us (although, we never fully recovered), we decided it was time to find some form of identity protection. We had seen a number of ads, but we wanted to find the company that protected us the most, rather than the one that advertised the most.
The most important thing to know about how to prevent identity theft is that some sort of monitoring service is the best way to defend yourself.
I would pay dearly to prevent the experience from ever happening again, but the company I chose only charges $9 per month. Scouring the web for your illegally sold or traded information is included in that cost. When any such activity is detected, they alert you and help you take steps to resolve the problem. They will also proactively keep an eye out new address information in various databases around the web. If a detected address change is fraudulent, they work with you to help avoid further damage and restore accurate address information. They notify you instantly if anyone uses your information to apply for credit or services. They will reduce the amount of credit card offers you receive in the mail. They even have 24/7 service representatives to help you in the case of problems.
Searching for an identity prevention service can be confusing, but as long as you consider all of the things I've mentioned here, you'll be well on your way to data security.
