Credit Monitoring
- Thread starter DoWhat
- Start date
My company pays for InfoArmor for our 18 employees and their families. My company had some contracts that required many to have clearances. And after the OPM data leak occurred, we realized that many of our guys who had clearances also had family members info st OPM. So made the decision to cast it wide. We will provide coverage for as long as you’re employed with us.
Individually as a consumer it all comes down to what you have to lose. Purloined credit card numbers are no big deal these days. As the consumer we are generally not held responsible. It’s a bit disheartening but as long as you have means for quick replacement (especially important if you travel a lot like I do) it’s almost expected to have a CC# compromised these days.
As for identity theft, aka having your credit history trashed and worse. That’s a big deal to anyone with a credit history. It’s really just doing an analysis and deciding how much you want to pay as an insurance policy against an identity incident. My personal feeling is that most consumers can get away with the most restrictive lock-down at the Big Three credit bureaus and go with that.
Most identity thefts probably aren’t happening by going through trash these days; it’s mostly electronic. I still shred all business and personal papers.
Individually as a consumer it all comes down to what you have to lose. Purloined credit card numbers are no big deal these days. As the consumer we are generally not held responsible. It’s a bit disheartening but as long as you have means for quick replacement (especially important if you travel a lot like I do) it’s almost expected to have a CC# compromised these days.
As for identity theft, aka having your credit history trashed and worse. That’s a big deal to anyone with a credit history. It’s really just doing an analysis and deciding how much you want to pay as an insurance policy against an identity incident. My personal feeling is that most consumers can get away with the most restrictive lock-down at the Big Three credit bureaus and go with that.
Most identity thefts probably aren’t happening by going through trash these days; it’s mostly electronic. I still shred all business and personal papers.
SamSpade
Well-Known Member
Me too. Many years ago someone took some misdirected mail and wrote checks against a newly opened credit card account of mine.
Never got the money back.
To this day I always rip those "checks" up, even though I constantly remind credit companies to never send them.
Does a credit freeze stop that?
Nothing will be a guarantee. But a freeze will reduce your attack surface because (hopefully, if things work correctly) it will prevent someone from taking out credit in your name without your knowledge.
Protecting one's credit is a lot like securing a network of computers from hackers: you hope to make the bar high enough such that you're passed over for low-hanging fruit. There is no panacea.
I've used LifeLock for about eight or nine years. Monitor myself/wife/youngest daughter for less than $290 total per year for all of us. I feel good about it.
I've only had one incident of any of our ssn's coming up that we were not aware of, and it was squelched immediately.
Still, I shred anything that has my name/address, or any financial information/applications received in the mail, along with a nice burn run in the back yard fire pit for the bigger stuff twice a year.
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