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Identity Theft Shield Review: Identity Theft Protection |
Rating: |
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| Does not prevent identity theft but assists in recovery | |
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Identity Theft Shield from PrePaid Legal and Kroll, Inc provides solid identity theft recovery support for victims but takes no steps to protect subscribers from having their identities stolen in the first place. The service offers single bureau credit report monitoring of your Experian credit file for $9.95 per month which also includes a free Experian credit report and score at sign up. Experian is the largest of the three credit bureaus and will likely reflect most major changes to your credit report, but we believe that three bureau credit monitoring is a better option since it eliminates the risk that a potentially fraudulent account or entry may not show up on your Experian credit report but end up on one of the other two bureau files in your name. Identity Theft Shield also offers a Gold package which includes credit report monitoring of all three bureaus, including Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, for $12.95. The Gold package also includes a credit report from each of the three credit bureaus at sign up.
Credit report monitoring is a good tool to help identify inconsistencies in your credit report that could be caused by identity thieves, but it doesn't prevent identity theft in any way. Other services we have reviewed, such as LifeLock, Identity Guard, Identity Truth and Trusted ID, take proactive measures to prevent identity theft crimes from being perpetrated against their subscribers. Identity Theft Shield, on the other hand, offers no tools that actually prevent identity theft. Identity Theft Shield does offer extensive recovery services to its subscribers if they are the unfortunate victims of identity theft. Identity Theft Shield sets fraud alerts and sends notifications to all applicable government agencies and financial institutions on behalf of the victimized subscriber. It also monitors an extensive list of public and private databases in an effort to identify any misuse of a subscriber's personal information. Identity Theft Shield's recovery services also help reduce some out-of-pocket expenses and fraud resolution specialists are able to handle much of the heavy lifting when it comes to recovering a stolen identity. Setting fraud alerts and proactively searching national databases for suspicious activity are both great services for victims, but they are also extremely effective in preventing and identifying potential identity theft crimes. In fact, many of the other services we have reviewed offer these tools to all subscribers as preventative measures rather than after a crime has already been committed as Identity Theft Shield does. We do believe that it is a good service for victims, but many of the solutions it offers to help recover a stolen identity are used by other identity theft protection services to actually prevent identity theft in the first place. The lack of proactive identity theft prevention measures is the biggest downside to the Identity Theft Shield service. |
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| Price: | $9.95/mo for single bureau credit monitoring; $12.95/mo for 3-bureau credit monitoring |
| Fraud Monitoring: | Monitors 3-bureau credit report or Experian credit report |
| ID Theft Insurance/ Guarantee: | None |
| Reports Delivered: | Experian credit report and independently calculated score |
| Computer Security: | None |
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