ID theft protection

[Night Elf]

What do you do to protect your identity information? I've been seeing a commercial for Lifelock. I know that DH did something to our credit, put a freeze on it or something. But I don't know if that helps with everything.

[SparklyUnicorn]

Some homeowner's policies now offer to add that as protection.  I think it covers some aid towards legal representation. 

 

I'm not sure I trust some of these credit protection companies.  We were notified about a breach at BCBS and they offer a year of coverage through one of these services.  We looked into it, but they wanted far more personal information than the insurance company has on us!  That seems ridiculous.  I suppose they need to know some of our information, but I'm not enthused about giving more to an unknown company. 

 

 

[Aiden]

We have family identity theft insurance through Zander. http://www.zanderins.com/idtheft/idtheft.aspx

 

We have not had to use it (no identity theft), so I can't say how they'll be if there's a problem.

[walkermamaof4]

We use zander for $99/yr. We heard about it in a Dave Ramsey class. What Zander does is fixes your problem and your credit, which takes 100's of hours to do. Dave Ramsey pays for it for all of his employees bc/ he says he needs them working, not freaking out and spending hundreds of hours trying to fix the huge mess when someone has this happen to them. I think you also want the homeowners money protection as well as this.

[JumpyTheFrog]

Credit freeze with each of the three bureaus.

[Laurie]

What do you do to protect your identity information?

 

1. Locking mailbox

2. Shred old bills, etc.

3. RFID protected wallet

4. I never put my social security number on forms at doctors' offices...My check for a co-pay was stolen from  a dr's office several years ago and it was an "inside" job.  I've also read about other cases involving ID theft at  medical offices so I'm not very trusting anymore.   I quit filling in my soc. sec. # on their forms...they can get that from our insurance company if they really want it and I'm not going to make it easy for some office crook.  No one has made an issue of my blank space yet.

 

We haven't purchased anything like Lifelock.  I did get two years of some sort of monitoring service after my check was stolen from the dr.'s office.  And now my whole family will get free monitoring for awhile because our health insurance company was hacked.  A pox on the crooks!

 

[Wildcat]

Like Aiden and walkermamaof4, we bought Zander insurance (we got ours after the BCBS Anthem hack). They only wanted our names and we only provide the sensitive info IF we need their service. In the last few years, we have been victims of hacks from several places. Out of all of those hacks, there were a total of FOUR different companies offered by the companies to provide us with 'free monitoring services' and each wanted our sensitive info. To us, that's four more places to be hacked, so we declined. I like knowing that if we need Zander, we won't have to spend hours on the phone clearing stuff up. The stress I have every month trying to get the cable company to correct our bill is enough to send me head-first into a big bag of chocolate, so I can only imagine what dealing with identity theft would be like!!

 

We also employ the methods that Laurie mentions, but honestly, I think the days of people going through mailboxes and garbage cans is over, except for a minimal amount and our biggest threat is from hacking and careless employees leaving files & computers laying around. Still, I will continue to shred everything and be "that person" who will argue about having to hand over our SS# for anything.

[Night Elf]

DH just told me it's part of our home insurance policy and they've already helped us once. I didn't remember that. Someone used our Sprint account to charge $900 worth of merchandise. Ding dongs.