Choosing an Identity Theft Protection Service

The term "identity theft protection service" is somewhat of a misnomer. In order to protect your identity, you are really keeping a close eye on your credit report and/or securing identity theft insurance. Both of these features are available with reputable credit monitoring services.

Credit monitoring services allow you to check one or all of your credit reports from the three credit bureaus each month. You will receive notification of any changes via email within 24 hours of the change. This will help you ensure that there are no errors in your credit report. Checking your credit report regularly helps protect you from identity theft.

Credit monitoring services also provide some identity theft insurance, in case your credit cards are stolen, or you fall victim to another type of identity theft. Credit Watch Gold 3-in-1 Monitoring from Equifax provides up to $20,000 in identity fraud expense coverage, TransUnion Credit Monitoring and 3-Bureau Credit Monitoring from TransUnion each provide up to $25,000 in identity theft insurance.

Credit monitoring services help you ensure that your identity stays yours by allowing you to carefully monitor your credit reports on a regular basis, alerting you to changes, and covering you in case of identity theft.