Overview | Compare All Services | FAQ| Blog

Identity Truth

Identity Truth Review

 Go to Site | View Full Comparison Chart
Web Site:
 Visit Website
Rating:
Bottom Line:
 Excellent fraud monitoring and online tools; Dedicated toll free number 1-866-736-0165
Full Review:
 [Editor's Note: Identity Truth has set up an exclusive toll free number where NextAdvisor.com visitors can speak to an Identity Truth representative Monday through Saturday from 8am to 6pm EST to ask questions and ensure that they are receiving the exclusive 30 day free trial of Identity Truth that is only available through NextAdvisor.com. If you are interested in ordering Identity Truth, we recommend that you call the number: 1-866-736-0165.]

Identity Truth is an identity theft detection service in that it monitors your Experian credit report, but it also monitors many other data sources and claims to be able to predict when you are at high risk for identity theft. One of the best aspects of their service is their online interface that gives you access to all your personal information they have on file and everything they are monitoring for you. Identity Truth has even come up with an identity health score to give you a numerical indication of the level of risk you are facing for identity theft. In terms of what is actually being monitored, it is a bit hard for the average consumer to tell but Identity Truth starts with data from your Experian credit report. They then take that information, along with additional information you give them such as credit card and bank account numbers, and monitor multiple sources for any suspicious activity in your name, social security number, phone numbers or bank account numbers. They also give you a copy of your Experian credit report when you sign up. In addition, Identity Truth tracks data breaches across the country and lets you know of all the latest known data breaches at any institution so you can see if you might be at risk. It's hard to verify Identity Truth's claim of predicting fraud based on all their monitoring, but it certainly sounds good. Based on our tests so far, they do a good job of flagging incosistencies in your data and giving you instructions on who to contact in order to make sure there is not a problem. Identity Truth also one ups LifeLock in the insurance/guarantee area, giving you a $2 million in insurance. As we always try to point out, the importance of these numbers is overblown as all they cover are the direct costs of restoring your identity, not any actual financial losses or indirect costs such as your time and the difficulty getting credit after identity theft. One area Identity Truth falls a bit short is that when you sign up they make it seem as though they will set fraud alerts at the credit bureaus for you but actually they just give you the contact information to set them yourself. For those that want to have continous fraud alerts set, this is a little difficult to manage as they must be renewed every 90 days at each of the three credit bureaus. Also, Identity Truth only monitors data from one credit bureau, Experian. It would be nice if they got it from all three.

Identity Truth offers NextAdvisor.com visitors an exclusive 30 day free trial of their product with very competitive pricing after the trial period is complete. We suggest you sign up for the $99.99 annual plan or the $229.99 3 year plan because they represent a better value than the monthly plan. You will save about $20 per year, or 17%, with a one year subscription and about $23 per year, or 36%, with a three year subscription. The sign-up process is simple and you get access to your slick online interface very quickly. When we first started testing the site it was pretty slow but they seemed to have increased the speed to adequate levels. From our experience customer service is easy to reach during their generous 8am - midnight ET 7 days a week hours.

Go to Site | View Full Comparison Chart
Service Details:

Price: Free 30 day trial; $9.99/mo, $99.00/yr or $229.99 for 3 yrs
Type: Detection - credit monitoring
Credit Reports Delivered: 1 Experian credit report
Fraud
Monitoring:		 Credit cards, public records, social security, applications, other
Mail List Removal: Preapproved credit and junk mail
ID Theft Insurance/ Guarantee: $2,000,000

NextAdvisor Identity Theft Protection Blog Headlines

Texas company uses shredded checks as packing material
While there are many proactive steps that consumers can take to help mitigate the risk of identity theft but, unfortunately, there is no way to prevent companies from making bad decisions on how they handle their customer’s personal information. Take the video below as a case in point. A small Texas specialty foods [...]

Avoid data breaches - encrypt your Gmail!
Google recently created an option for Gmail users to ensure that their email is securely encrypted using SSL. All you have to do to permanently encrypt your email is go to your Gmail settings page and, next to “Browser connection,” select “Always use https.” When viewing your Gmail, check the address bar. If it says [...]

Data Breach Alert: Countrywide financial analyst stole data
Early this month, a former Countrywide senior financial analyst was arrested for stealing and selling Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal information for up to 2 million mortgage applicants over a two year period. Rene L. Rebollo Jr. was working at Full Spectrum Lending, Countywide’s subprime lending division. According to the FBI, Robollo confessed [...]

Data Breach Alert: Princeton Review accidently publishes personal data and te...
When switching servers in June, the Princeton Review accidentally published names, standardized test scores, birthdays, ethnicities and other personal information for about 34,000 public school students in Sarasota, Florida. For seven weeks, this data and many other sensitive documents were available to anyone typing in a fairly simple web address, as well as through search [...]

Identity Theft 911 releases a new study on identity theft in California
Identity Theft 911, an identity theft protection provider, released a new study this week detailing the impact of identity theft in California. The study includes some interesting statistics, such as: Nearly 1.5 million Californians were victims of identity theft in 2007 Identity theft cost Californians an estimated $749 million in out of pocket expenses in 2007 Californians spent [...]

Data Breach Alert: Wells Fargo notifies 5,000 to 7,000 people that their data...
Sometime in May or June, a Wells Fargo bank employee access code was used to steal thousands of Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses, driver’s license numbers and, in some cases, credit card numbers. Only a small number of the impacted individuals were actually Wells Fargo customers. Wells Fargo has sent letters to most of the [...]

Smart phones are the newest target for hackers
According to a recent article from the Wall Street Journal, smart phones are the latest online security risk. BlackBerrys, iPhones and other personal devices that connect to the Internet are rarely protected by firewalls or security software. Not only can hackers use spyware to read your emails and text messages, they can also track your [...]

Stores neglect to inform customers of credit card breach
Last week, federal prosecutors revealed that an international ring of hackers had stolen more than 40 million credit and debit card numbers from nine different retailers. Apparently, many of those retailers failed to inform their customers about the breaches, despite laws requiring them to do so. More than 40 states legally require companies to disclose [...]

Identity Truth launches exclusive 30 day free trial; Earns 5 star rating
We have always thought very highly of the Identity Truth identity theft protection service and its use of cutting edge technology to help detect identity theft at the earliest possible moments. Just about the only thing we didn’t like about the Identity Truth service is that they didn’t offer any type of risk free [...]

Data Breach Alert: Hundreds of thousands of computers infected by Russian hac...
A group of hackers, likely based in Russia, may have infected as many as 378,000 PCs over a 16 month period with a software program, called Coreflood, that could extract significant amounts of personal information from the computer owner. The attack was targeted against large corporations and government agencies. Most corporate or government networks are [...]