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Equifax Complete Premier Review: Identity Theft Protection |
| Sign up for Equifax Complete Premier | |
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| Useful combination of credit and identity theft protection features, a bit pricey. | |
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Equifax Complete Premier is a solid identity theft protection service with many useful features to help you protect your identity and manage your credit. Its combination of monitoring the Internet black market for your personal information, automatic fraud alerts, 3-bureau monitoring and all 3 credit reports and scores make it a good choice to help protect your identity, if somewhat pricey.
Equifax Complete Premier monitors underground Internet trading sites on the Internet black market for your Social Security number, credit/debit cards and bank account numbers. It will monitor up to 6 credit/debit cards and 5 bank accounts, you just need to add them to your profile once you're a member. Oddly, unlike other identity theft protection services we review, Equifax Complete Premier doesn't start automatically monitoring the SSN and credit card you signed up with. Instead, you need to manually add your Social Security number and all the cards and bank accounts to your online portal, which we found a bit inconvenient (and a little hard to find in the Member Center itself). However, once all the information is entered you'll be alerted via email when suspicious activity is detected. In addition to Internet black market monitoring, Equifax Complete Premier features automated setting of fraud alerts on your credit files at all three bureaus. Setting fraud alerts is a solid method to prevent identity theft. Fraud alerts require any lender that is opening up a new account in your name to contact you (usually by phone) in order to verify your identity and that it was you who requested the account. Thus fraud alerts can prevent new account fraud, one of the main types of identity theft, before it happens. In fact, the setting of fraud alerts was the core of the LifeLock identity theft protection service until they were forced to stop using them by a lawsuit from Experian. Apparently since Equifax is one of the credit bureaus, they are allowed to set fraud alerts for you. Equifax Complete Premier also offers more standard identity theft protection features such as $1,000,000 in identity theft insurance and 24/7 access to identity theft resolution specialists. Equifax Complete Premier does a great job of supplying you with a lot of credit information. Upon enrollment, you get immediate access to your credit scores and reports from all three bureaus. While you only get all three scores and reports annually, you get unlimited access to your Equifax score and report. Your Equifax score is tracked in graphical format, making it easy to see how it changes over time. Equifax Complete Premier monitors all three bureaus' credit reports constantly so you will know whenever there is a change on your report at any bureau or the credit scores Equifax maintains. We think this is critical both for managing your credit and protecting your identity. The credit scoring formula Equifax uses is their own Equifax Credit Score. While it would be nice if they used the more popular FICO system, we believe the Equifax Credit Score formula is a very good approximation of your FICO score. Plus, it's not possible to obtain your Experian FICO score so Equifax wouldn't be able to provide you all three credit scores if they used FICO scoring. Equifax's credit report monitoring service is more advanced than others. It allows you to be alerted not just upon significant changes to your report such as a credit inquiry or the opening of a new account, but also on small updates like balance changes for a credit card account. (Note that you can only be alerted on these smaller changes to your Equifax credit report, not your Experian or Transunion report. All major changes to those two other credit reports are still monitored, though.) You can customize these alerts by setting thresholds of when you should be notified, such as at least a 25% balance change or a $200 balance change. While these minor changes may not seem like a big deal, they can affect your credit score and could also alert you that someone else is fraudulently using your credit card. Equifax Complete Premier also includes a useful credit score estimator that will predict how different actions you might take could raise or lower your score. We think these tools are extremely useful in trying to raise your credit score. Overall, Equifax Complete Premier is a solid identity theft protection service with some unique benefits. While at $19.95 per month it's not the cheapest service out there and leans more towards credit information than the full-featured identity protection the other top-rated services we review offer, it's a good choice. It's a particularly good choice for those who are interested in keeping constant tabs on their Equifax credit score. Sign up for Equifax Complete Premier | Compare to Other Identity Theft Protection |
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| Price: | $19.95/mo |
| Fraud Monitoring: | Monitors 3-bureau credit reports, credit/debit cards, Social Security number, bank accounts |
| ID Theft Insurance/ Guarantee: | $1,000,000 insurance |
| Reports Delivered: | All 3-bureau credit scores & reports upon signup |
| Computer Security: | None |
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