Monitoring is Not Enough

You know that Identity Theft is the Fastest Growing Crime in North America today. You know that someone's Identity is stolen about every three (3) minutes. You know that it's not IF but WHEN your ID will be compromised.

You also know that ID Theft is not limited to your financial persona and definitely not limited to credit cards.

You have already learned that Medical ID Theft is one of the fastest expanding area of Identity Fraud. In addition to Medical ID Theft and Financial ID Theft, there are several other kinds that you should be aware of:

• Criminal/Character ID Theft - Where there is a warrant out for your arrest for a crime you didn't commit. Where you might be arrested and jailed for a crime someone else committed and gave the officer your ID, perhaps a fake drivers license or Picture ID Card.
• Employment or Social Security ID Theft - where one or more of the over 8 million illegal aliens or "undocumented workers" are working at a job using your Social Security Number. You will receive a bill from the Internal Revenue Service for the taxes not withheld and not paid. It is a time consuming and aggravating mess to clean up. We will discuss this one more in future articles.
• Drivers License ID Theft - Have you ever obtained a fake ID, perhaps as a minor? It was easy then and it is easy now. More on this later.

Monitoring is Not enough. Monitoring will inform you when a change is made to your credit bureau report, but the monitoring services will not repair the damage. That is left up to you.

Resolution services are not enough. This is again another do-it-yourself (DIY) process, which is very time consuming and emotionally draining.

Credit Freeze and Credit Alerts are not enough. They only freeze the information in your credit report. Credit Freezes and Credit alerts protect against Financial ID Theft only, not the other types of ID Theft, which when implemented bypass the credit bureaus.

Restoration Services in combination with Monitoring services and increased personal knowledge are the best methods of protection from ID Theft, but are still lacking. An Attorney or law firm on call would be the ultimate protection and we will go into this in future postings.

To Contact Alan Smith, please visit Alan Smith's Identity Theft Protection Center