Credit monitoring and ID theft.

[Gotham10012]

Helle everyone, 

I did some research and I'm not sure I found the best solution to avoid identity theuft. 

My spouse told me how bad she suffered 10 years ago from someone who openned 5 credit cards (of course maxed out the accounts) and 3 VZW accounts and I wanna make sure this does not happens to me.  

I don't wanna freeze my credit reports but I do want to avoid any CC openned without my authorization,

do you guys know a compagny that will alert you anytime a HI is made with TU Eq or Ex?

Because, if I did not apply for a credit card, it wouid be easy to call the company who request my credit report and cancel the account. 

I felt weird receiving my wife's W2 with full SSN, DOB and address in a plain non secured enveloppe back in January. 

It seems really easy to get our info stolen and on the contrary so hard to deal with it.  

Thanks for your input!

Will. 

[youdontkillmoney]

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@Gotham10012 wrote:

Helle everyone, 

I did some research and I'm not sure I found the best solution to avoid identity theuft. 

My spouse told me how bad she suffered 10 years ago from someone who openned 5 credit cards (of course maxed out the accounts) and 3 VZW accounts and I wanna make sure this does not happens to me.  

I don't wanna freeze my credit reports but I do want to avoid any CC openned without my authorization,

do you guys know a compagny that will alert you anytime a HI is made with TU Eq or Ex?

Because, if I did not apply for a credit card, it wouid be easy to call the company who request my credit report and cancel the account. 

I felt weird receiving my wife's W2 with full SSN, DOB and address in a plain non secured enveloppe back in January. 

It seems really easy to get our info stolen and on the contrary so hard to deal with it.  

Thanks for your input!

Will. 

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Two choices, one free and one costs money (there are more choices  out there as far as companies and strategies but these are what I use):

1. every 90 days I call a transunion number and add a 90 day fraud alert which means whenever credit id opened in my name, the creditor has to call me to confirm my identity, 95% of the time the creditor reads the fraud statement on my report and they call, the other 5% they do not so that's a problem

2. I also pay for lifelock.com service and they text, call and email me the minute a inquiry is made on my report, for example, starting cell service at the ATT store two years ago, they did an inquiry and a few seconds later i get a text and call and email to my cell phone that an inquiry was being made (it was my own inquiry)

[takeshi74]

There are monitoring/alerting services as well.  I get autoamted alerts through Credit Sesame and whatever AAA offers with membership.  Both of those only monitor Experian though.

You could also manually monitor your reports using any of the CMS's (see the CMS thread) that allow for regular pulls.

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@Gotham10012 wrote:

Because, if I did not apply for a credit card, it wouid be easy to call the company who request my credit report and cancel the account. 

I felt weird receiving my wife's W2 with full SSN, DOB and address in a plain non secured enveloppe back in January. 

It seems really easy to get our info stolen and on the contrary so hard to deal with it.  

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I've only had a couple of accounts fraudulenty opened under my name but in both cases the fraud departments of the creditors were very easy to work with to resolve the matter.  That said, it was pretty obvious that I didn't open either of those accounts since they used addresses that were nowhere near where I live.