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Monday, February 11, 2008

Should We Consider Lifelock?

I am sure you have seen or heard, the commercials, the same as I have. What commercials is that? The one, where the owner of the company, gives you his real social security number. Well, today I wanted talk to you about lifelock.

If my debts weren't so bad, I would sign up in a heartbeat for the service. That is because it is a service for everyone. No matter, if you have been a victim of identity theft or just want to protect yourself.

People from all walks of life and ages have already signed up. One age group that is probably the most important age group is children and students. That is because those credit reports aren't closely monitored so they are much more easily stolen and used, without detection.

Other groups who already use it include both individuals and families who want to be proactive to protect their identity before it is stolen.

As a personal finance blogger, I highly recommend that you consider lifelock. As I said, if I didn't have all the debts that plaque me, I would certainly spend the few dollars to have my identity protected by lifelock.



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go ahead share your thoughts with me now.
Posted by Kevin Surbaugh at 2/11/2008 01:16:00 PM
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6 comments:

  1. hmm, it's a form of insurance. do you give up automobile and home owner's insurance because of your debts? at some point that's risky.
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  2. I believe you can lock all your credit report files up for a one-time fee of $10 EACH for 3 credit bureaus (that is what it costs in Missouri). The downside is that you have to pay to unlock it if you wanted to get credit or a future employer wanted to run your credit. No one, not even you, can use your credit. It seems like a lot less expensive to me....Dave Ramsey has talked about this.
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  3. Interesting.

    Hope all is well!
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  4. One of the major complaints about Lifelock is that you can do most of what they offer for free. Concise instructions on how are available here
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  5. You additionally agree that you have a good faith suspicion that you have been or are about to become a victim of fraud or related crime, including identity theft, that you want to obtain fraud alerts under 15 U.S.C. § 1681c-1, and that you will notify LifeLock immediately if and when you no longer have such a good faith suspicion.

    This from LifeLock's own Terms and conditions. So you have to be a previous victim or a currently threatened one, or sign up for service fraudulently. What good is THAT? That's like getting car insurance AFTER the wreck, or AFTER getting drunk right before driving. Jeez.........
    ReplyDelete
  6. After a thorough afternoon long browse of various "identity theft protection" companies online and calling LifeLock and Zander Insurance, I decided to sign my husband and I up for LifeLock.

    This is my "I'm not expert" summary of what I found. All of the other "big name" so called protection companies were A) Hokey looking and didn't actually say what they did B) not members of the BBB C)opened within the last 3-4 years and/or D)didn't have A ratings on the BBB.

    Zander Insurance is INSURANCE. They don't check anything for you. They just give you recommendations and reminders about checking your credit report, shredding your paper work, etc. The idea is that you'll catch people using your information, inform them, and they'll pay to help you clean up your mess. They step in after your home owners insurance (or whatever else you have) and well, if someone steals your credit card then you go to your credit card company who has a responsibility to fix it, then you go to your home owners insurance, THEN Zander supposedly steps in. Yeah, basically a waste of money and that's what our emergency savings is for.

    LifeLock does do a lot of things that you can just do for yourself (at no charge to yourself of course) this is the best website I found that describes exactly how to do that
    http://www.mymoneyblog.com/archives/2007/07/dont-pay-for-identity-theft-insurance-heres-how-to-protect-yourself-for-free.html

    Ok, so why did I get LifeLock? We haven't had any real problems yet. (They won't help you if you've already had identity theft, some people say that Zanders supposedly can though) But
    1) LifeLock supposedly lets you know whenever your info is being used to apply for credit or services, before it hits your credit report. The lady I talked to said that they have some "back door" access that they can't reveal. I can't do that.
    2) they say they "scour known criminal websites for the illegal selling or trading of the personal information you have on file with LifeLock"
    3)Lastly they say they'll "notify you when we detect any new address information associated with your name in address databases nationwide"
    So those are the real reasons why we got it. All the other things they do are just fluff. Don't know if it works yet, but the stuff that they cover sounded very similar to the advice given out by the FTC, except LifeLock should TELL you when someone submits a change of address for your name instead of you wondering where your bills are for a week or two.

    Oh, last word of advice from a layman, don't buy into any of those places that tell you they'll protect your computer either, waste of money. My husband has a bit of a hacker side. (Occasionally he'll download a virus just to reverse engineer it to see what it does/ steals.)
    And he's taught me a few rules of thumb.
    1. Don't save any important passwords on the computer
    2. Don't download random stuff or click a million things without paying attention
    3. Make sure that all information that you do give out goes through secure, well-known sites
    4. Have basic virus protection (we use the free version of AVG, I've never had any real problems with viruses)
    5. We also like NoScript which stops a lot of other annoying stuff (if you/ your family do tend to click many random things this can also stop you from running potentially dangerous scripts as well).
    5. Back up all your information on a hard drive or (if there's not much) DVD/CD that is preferably in a fire/theft proof safe.
    6. Guard your laptop with your life, never let it leave your body, and make sure it's at least protected by a password. but if you did loose it, it's ok because none of your passwords are saved there
    6. As a wonderful lady once told me, "don't be stupid"
    ReplyDelete

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