Everyone is concerned about becoming the victim of identity theft or another form of financial fraud, you may be wondering whether you should invest in an identity monitoring service.

By signing up for ID theft protection, you can receive alerts if a hacker makes a credit inquiry, sets up a new account, or uses your personal information, such as your Social Security number, driver’s license, or credit card.

Though these companies can help you monitor sensitive personal data, they may not prevent a bad actor from accessing and using your financial information.

Plus, such services are often expensive, costing around $10 to $30 per month, depending on the type of protection you need. If you’re on the fence and you’re wondering whether the service is worth the payment, consider these benefits and drawbacks before you enroll in an identity monitoring service.

• What Is Identity Theft Protection?
• What are the Pros and Cons of Identity Theft Services?
• Which is the best Identity Theft Protection Services?
• What are the 5 most Common Types of Identity Theft?

What Is Identity Theft Protection?

Professional identity theft services use a combination of technology and professionals to regularly scan databases and websites to detect unusual or suspicious activity. If fraudulent activity is detected, you’re immediately alerted via a mobile alert, email or text message.

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And if you fall victim to identity theft,  most providers will offer recovery assistance to secure your information from further harm.

Most providers offer individual plans and the whole family plans for $86-$240/yr., depending on the features selected and the number of people monitored.  Usually, if you choose to pay the annual price upfront, you’ll receive a discount lower than monthly pricing.

There are two types of services offered – credit monitoring and identity theft recovery. Credit monitoring services look for unusual activity in your credit file that may indicate your financial information is being used fraudulently.

Signs you may be a victim of identity theft include:

• Fraudulent credit card changes
• Bogus loan applications
• Social Security number for sale on the dark web

On the other hand, identity recovery services assist in financial and reputational recovery that include:

• Freezing credit
• Correcting credit reports
• Filing police reports
• Closing accounts opened in your name.

It should be noted that identity theft protection services do not prevent your identity from being compromised. Instead, it provides you with constant monitoring to immediately alert you to suspicious activity. Instant alerts provide you the opportunity to quickly take action to reduce the amount of damage identity theft can cause – if it goes undetected.

What are the Pros and Cons of Identity Theft Services?

In general, identity theft protection companies offer three main services:

• Monitoring: Identity theft protection firms monitor your credit files and alert you about activity, such as new accounts opened in your name and credit inquiries received, so you can react quickly.
• Alerts: Notify you of instances where your personal information has been used, like if someone tries to open a bank account in your name. This can be helpful because many people don’t realize identity theft has happened until their credit is wrecked, their bank accounts depleted or they suddenly have a lot of new debt in their name.
• Recovery: If someone hacks your information and uses it maliciously, these companies can help you recover lost money and help undo the damage to your credit. Most offer insurance policies of up to $1 million.

Many also offer tangential services, such as alerts about identity theft news and local sex offender registries. Some monitor dark web sites known to traffic in stolen personal and financial data, which is something you can’t do yourself.

Pro: You’ll have peace of mind if you’re at a high risk of identity theft. 

Even if you conclude that there are better ways to monitor your accounts for identity theft, having an identity monitoring service may offer an extra layer of security and put your mind at ease.

For instance, Carol Gee, a freelance writer in Atlanta, says that she and her husband have had LifeLock for a couple years. “My decision to get it was due to a breach of medical records at the hospital where my husband worked and where we both had had several hospitalizations. Although we were provided with limited identify protection once it was over, we were left vulnerable. Also, prior to that, someone stole my wallet at my job,” Gee says.

So far, LifeLock hasn’t turned up any criminals trying to use Gee or her husband’s information, but she says she still benefits from the service. They spend about $200 a year on the least expensive plan option to monitor their credit.

Lifelock offers three plan options: The least expensive plan sends an alert if somebody else is using your Social Security number or credit card information and offers lost wallet protection, enabling you to cancel or replace a driver’s license or credit card, and offers reimbursement for up to $25,000 in stolen funds.

The next tier plan offers extra services, such as alerting you when there’s a security breach with a major department store or hospital that may have your financial information.

And the most expensive service offers added perks aside from alerting you to potentially compromised Social Security numbers or credit card information, including reimbursement for up to $1 million in stolen funds. “I view it like accident insurance. I hope I never have to use it, but happy to have it when I do,” Gee says.

Con: The cost may be prohibitive. 

Identity monitoring services can be expensive. LifeLock, for instance, has tiered pricing for $9.99 a month, $19.99 a month or $29.99 a month, depending on the plan you select.

Another identity theft protection service, Identity Guard, offers a plan for $8.99 a month for an individual, $19.99 a month for a couple and $24.99 a month for a family. For all of its plans, services include monitoring credit reports and credit card activity and alerting consumers of suspicious bank activity.

Other reputable ID monitoring services include ID Watchdog Platinum, which costs $19.95 a month, and IdentityForce, which offers two main plans: UltraSecure for $17.95 per month and UltraSecure+Credit for $23.95 a month. As with all of these services, the more you pay, you more protection you’ll receive.

Con: The services don’t necessarily prevent fraudulent activity. 

While these services will alert you that fraud has occurred, they won’t necessarily keep it from happening, points out Greg Scott, a salesperson for a cybersecurity company in Fullerton, California. He also has been a victim of credit card fraud and wrote a cybersecurity novel called “Bullseye Breach: Anatomy of an Electronic Break-In.”

“The very best of those services can only report on activity that’s already happened. By the time the victim gets the warning, it’s already too late,” Scott says. “All those services are Band-Aids on a gaping chest wound.”

And according to Scott, a more pressing cybersecurity issue is compromised Social Security numbers. He hopes that reforms will be put in place to make it harder for determined thieves to gain access to sensitive Social Security information. “This system is a disaster in the making, and no identity monitoring service will fix it.”

Con: You can get similar protection without paying an ID monitoring company. 

There are a variety of free services offering identity monitoring, explains Robert Siciliano, a security analyst with Hotspot Shield, a virtual private network service, based in Boston. One service you may want to look into is the American Automobile Association, which offers its members free identity theft protection, Siciliano says.

Another service to check out is TrueIdentity.com, a free identity protection service offered by the credit bureau TransUnion.

As you’ve likely noticed, especially if you’ve gone somewhere far-flung and your card has been suspended due to suspicious activity, your credit cards and banking institution also monitor your accounts. Corporations are trying to protect you from identity theft. What’s more, if you don’t mind putting in the extra effort, you can monitor your accounts on your own.

And if your information is compromised, consult IdentityTheft.gov, which can help you get forms filled out and letters sent. For instance, the website can help you craft a letter to your credit card company in the event you need to get stolen funds recouped.

Still, there are some benefits of paying for an identity monitoring service. “All of these bells and whistles are definitely layers of protection or at least can assist the consumer in cases where things do go wrong and their identity is compromised,” Siciliano says. “Even when the monitoring service can’t actually proactively protect them, the restoration component kicks in.”

Alternatively, if you’re looking for a cheap way to protect yourself, consider freezing your credit. That way, it will make it much harder for criminals to open up new accounts in your name because lenders can’t pull up your credit report, which they generally need to do when agreeing to make a loan.

Until recently, you would need to pay $10, $20 or $30 each time you opted to freeze your credit. Even better, freezing and unfreezing your credit does not affect your credit score.

Identity monitoring services may have trouble luring customers in the future, thanks to a new credit freeze law, says Scott Johnson, an insurance agent and broker in Mill Valley, California, who runs Wholevstermlifeinsurance.com, an insurance comparison website.

Johnson says that many of his clients have credit freezes, a topic that comes up when he gets their Social Security numbers, which insurers require. As of mid-September, a new federal law went into effect, enabling consumers to freeze and unfreeze their credit file for free. You can also get a free freeze for your children if they’re under the age of 16.

Which is the best Identity Theft Protection Services?

we’ll look at some of the best identity theft protection services for helping you manage and protect your identity at various price points. Before we get started though, we should tell you that you don’t necessarily have to spend $10-$30 a month for the best identity theft protection.

The US government offers identitytheft.gov, a service that can help ID theft victims report the identity thief and begin the identity recovery process, which may include stolen funds reimbursement.

1. LifeLock

LifeLock has come a long way since the days when it was subject to multiple Federal Trade Commission investigations (settled in 2015) and various lawsuits from customers and credit reporting agencies. In 2017, it became a subsidiary of Symantec, purchased for $2.3 billion.

Symantec’s name and related enterprise security business was thereafter sold off to Broadcom, then flipped to Accenture. Now, the consumer security company lives on as NortonLifeLock, where its antivirus, ID theft and even VPN services are available as all-in-one packages.

You may recall the ads where LifeLock’s founder posted his Social Security number everywhere, as a statement in his confidence about LifeLock’s protection services. While he did experience numerous instances of identity theft based on those Social Security number postings, LifeLock’s identity theft monitoring services helped him recover.

The company offers a wide range of identity theft protection plan services, including LifeLock Junior (for monitoring your kids) and LifeLock Ultimate Plus (the “everything and the kitchen sink” plan). Note that the elderly-targeted LifeLock Senior is no longer available.

LifeLock identity protection services range from $9.99 a month to $29.99 a month and offer reimbursement of $25,000 to $1 million, depending on the monitoring plan. The lower-priced LifeLock standard protection services monitor credit only from one bureau.

The $29.99-a-month plan monitors all three major credit bureaus. You can pull credit reports from a credit bureau once a year, but the service will provide you with a credit score monthly, based on Experian data.

SSN and credit alerts, dark web monitoring, alerts on a suspicious activity like crimes committed in your name and credit card activity, and fraud alert services are all marks in LifeLock’s favor, despite its past stumbles. Base price: $107.88 a year or $8.99 a month after 25% discount.

2. IdentityForce

The base UltraSecure program for IdentityForce is $99.90 a year (down from $149.90). Its UltraSecure Plus Credit program, which provides you with your credit reports and score, is $199.90. We liked how the credit score monitoring not only watches all three reporting agencies but provides a visual tracker that lets you examine your credit rating over time.

IdentityForce monitors quite a lot beyond credit information. In addition to being a credit monitoring service, It checks for public information record changes, addresses changes, court and arrests records, payday loan applications, and checks for identity information on a variety of illicit identity-sharing websites to act as a guard dog from identity thieves.

The company also monitors sex offender registries to see if your name is associated with such things. We also like that it tracks SSNs for new usages or associations with new names.

Its mobile app has been updated with a feature called Mobile Attack Control. This monitors your smartphone for spyware, unsecured Wi-Fi locations, as well as “spoof” networks (networks that act as if they’re legitimate connections, but they’re not).

Additionally, the phone app will present alerts if there are security issues monitored by IdentityForce that need immediate attention. The company says that it offers quarterly updates on credit reporting for subscribers to its higher tier, too.

We liked how the company has an interesting credit score simulator which can help you understand how different balances, payments, and balance transfers might have an impact on your credit score. IdentityForce offers a 30-day free trial version. Base price: $99.90 a year or $9.99 a month.

3. Identity Guard

The big pitch for Identity Guard is that it utilizes IBM’s Watson. Earlier versions of Watson have done everything from winning at “Jeopardy” to helping doctors diagnose cancer. The version of Watson powering Identity Guard is, as you’d expect, focused on identity theft.

Identity Guard’s use of Watson involves building a corpus of knowledge and continuing to feed it information from many different sources, including social networks. There’s no doubt the Watson-enabled service can help advise you on identity management. Its service monitors the customer’s personal information, including their credit files, DOB and SSN.

Identity Guard offers a clear summary of its insurance terms. The company offers a basic “value” plan at $80 per year (for individuals), but it provides no credit monitoring. If you want monthly credit report updates, that jumps to $160 a year and includes credit monitoring from three credit bureaus and a monthly credit score.

Its most comprehensive plan is the Identity Guard Ultra plan, which costs $200 a year and includes annual credit reports, 401k and investment account monitoring, home title monitoring and “social insight reports.” Base price: $80 a year or $6.67 a month.

4. Complete ID

Complete ID is a service provided by Experian, one of the big three credit reporting agencies. The service has a special deal with Costco: Costco Executive members pay $8.99 a month plus and an optional $2.99 a month for child protection. Gold Star Costco members pay $13.99 a month and an optional $3.99 a month for child protection. Non-Costco members pay $19.99 a month.

Complete ID provides an annual credit report from the three agencies. It also offers monthly credit scores and provides a nice graph over time so you can see how your score has improved.

The service offers monitoring for unauthorized use of your Social Security number and other non-credit identity monitoring. A valuable feature is its neighborhood watch, updated monthly, which provides details on sexual predators and crimes in your area.

As with all of the services we’re spotlighting, Complete ID offers $1 million in limited identity theft insurance. And unlike some of the competitors listed here, it has a clear summary of benefits. Base price (non-Costco members): $239.88 a year. Base price (for Costco members): $107.88 a year.

5. ID Watchdog

ID Watchdog describes its service as “True Identity Protection.” The company’s big differentiator is helping you recover after you’ve been the victim of an identity theft experience. It offers a guarantee of “100% identity theft resolution,” but the fine print introduces some notable limits.

First, the company will only help you if it detects a new incident of fraud while you’re an active customer. It doesn’t guarantee you’ll get back any money you lost, but it will provide access to its team of “Certified Identity Theft Risk Management Specialists.”

Like all the other commercial identity monitoring services we’ve profiled in this directory, ID Watchdog offers a $1 million identity theft insurance policy. But that policy’s exact terms, limits and benefits aren’t spelled out until you complete the signup process.

The base program doesn’t provide a credit report or credit score information, but if you sign up for the premium $219-per-year service, you can get a copy of your credit report and your credit score. The catch? You get that report once a year. You can already do that yourself, for free, by going to annualcreditreport.com.

While the company says that it provides monitoring services, it does not specify, anywhere in its terms and conditions, how often it performs checks for each type of service it monitors. Base price: $164 a year or $14.95 a month.

6. Identity Fraud

One of Identity Fraud’s stand-out features is the price. It has the second-lowest entry-level price of any of the services we explored. The company also offers a business cybercrime protection service called BizLock.

Identity Fraud’s personal service is $99.95 a year, with a bump to $159.95 a year for credit reporting and monitoring. Like all our other contenders, Identity Fraud offers $1 million in fraud insurance (except for those in New York state, where the limit is $25,000 in coverage), with a $0 deductible. And we like that Identity Fraud’s insurance benefits are clear and easy to find.

The company does provide a credit score, but it’s limited only to data from TransUnion, one of the three credit-reporting agencies. The company will send you a monthly “no news is good news” email if your identity has had a quiet month. It also offers lost wallet services, along with identity resolution and prevention assistance. Base price: $99.95 a year or $9.95 a month.

7. Intelius Identity Protect

Intelius picked up points because it allows members to pull a new credit report every 31 days. Most services provide credit reports only once a year. While the monthly reports represent only one of the three credit bureaus, reports from all three bureaus can be purchased.

The company also offers its own Intelius Identity Protect score, which is not a FICO score, but is similar and can be used to gauge how your credit would perform for loans and financial institutions and transactions. As with many of our other services, Intelius provides record monitoring services.

The company allows you to monitor two addresses, two phone numbers, three credit or debit cards, and two bank account numbers, providing broader coverage than some of its competitors. Furthermore, it offers clear details on its $1 million identity theft insurance coverage.

We also like how the company offers a junk postal mail opt-out service it calls “Junk Mail Reduction,” designed to reduce the number of credit card offers you get, and therefore the number of pings against your credit records. 

Intelius Identity Protect offers a trial version. Base price: $239.40 a year.

8. PrivacyGuard

PrivacyGuard offers a 14-day trial program, but instead of it being free, you have to pay a buck. So while you can still see if you like the program, the company loses all the friction-reducing benefits of trial-to-live conversions by requiring users to jump through that dollar hoop at the beginning of the relationship. Go figure.

Beyond the slightly shoot-themselves-in-the-foot trial program, PrivacyGuard provides many of the usual credit and ID protection services offered by identity theft protection company competitors. It offers daily credit monitoring, a key value in protecting a person’s identity against identity thieves, and a frequency level sorely lacking among many of the company’s competitors.

Privacy Guard’s base $9.99-per-month program does records scans. A $19.99-a-month program does credit scans. A $24.99-per-month program does both. Like most other vendors, Privacy Guard offers a $1 million policy. Prior to signing up, the company provides some information about the policy’s benefits and limitations, but not enough for it to be useful for making a purchasing decision.

PrivacyGuard updates credit scores monthly and monitors public records and Social Security Numbers. It also offers a yearly public records report, which provides all of the public records information it’s found into one clear document.

PrivacyGuard offers a trial version. Base price: $119.88 a year.

9. McAfee Identity Theft Protection Standard

McAfee’s identity theft protection service is the least expensive we’ve seen for a year of coverage. It does have a $0.99 trial for the first month, but you can get a full year for $69.99, which is substantially less expensive than the other players we’ve discussed here although it’s five bucks more per year than the $64.99 price the company offered last year.

It offers a slick “cyber monitoring” service that constantly scans for credit activity and alerts you if something unusual happens. The company does monitor your Experian credit file but doesn’t connect to either TransUnion or Equifax.

As with most other vendors, it offers to reimburse up to $1 million for identity recovery and (unless you’re in New York state), it’ll also return up to $10,000 in stolen funds. As an added benefit, if you lose your wallet, the company will do its best to reissue “a variety of contents from IDs and credit cards to concert tickets.”

McAfee is probably best known as an antivirus company founded by its very eccentric eponymous founder, John McAfee. In 2011, Intel bought the company and renamed it Intel Security Group but by 2017, McAfee (now known as McAfee, LLC) was back out on its own, having been spun out to TPG Capital (although Intel still owns a minority stake).

We’re telling you all this because the company’s DNA is very clearly antivirus. A presales call to the company asking about its identity theft program first resulted in complete confusion about how many devices we wanted antivirus installed on, and then, once transferred to the “identity theft department,” culminated in our editor attempting to explain to the rep what credit reporting agencies did and why you’d care about them.

That doesn’t mean the product itself is bad. Fortunately, just about all of this service is automated and there’s never been any question about McAfee’s software chops. If its automated systems see odd behavior for one of your tracked accounts, those alerts may be your first and best protection when you need to secure your credit.

The company actually offers three tiers of identity protection service. Their STANDARD plan is the aforementioned $69.99 for the first year. 

If you’re willing to pay $139.99 per year for the PLUS plan, you also get an annual credit report, a single-bureau credit score, court and criminal record monitoring, and non-credit loan monitoring. This isn’t quite as good a deal as it seems, because the US Federal Trade Commission provides free annual credit reports to any American citizen.

Finally, McAfee offers a PREMIUM plan that offers everything in the STANDARD and PLUS plans, plus bank account takeover monitoring, credit card application monitoring, and sex offender monitoring (which alerts you when new convicted sex offenders register in your area). Base price: $69.99.

What are the 5 most Common Types of Identity Theft?

Identity Theft is the fastest growing white-collar crime in America today.The Federal Trade Commission (FDC) reported that a stolen ID is used an average of 30 times before the victim finds out about it.

This also means it can take up to one year before you become aware your identity has been stolen. In fact, as you are reading this article, you may already be an Identity Theft victim and not even know it. Scary to contemplate, isn’t it?

Although the statistics are grim, you can take pro-active steps today to protect yourself and your loved ones. To accomplish this, you need to know which types of personal information identity thieves are stealing to commit crimes.

Driver’s license ID Theft

The information on your stolen driver’s license provides your name, address, and date of birth, as well as a State driver’s identity number. Thieves use this information to apply for loans; credit cards; open bank accounts to obtain checking accounts; buy cars, homes, boats, stereo equipment, jewelry, anything of value – all charged to you.

Most drivers’ licenses also have your street address on them. Therefore, the thieves know where you live and can rob you and your home and/or commit other horrendous crimes against you and your family.

Social Security ID Theft

Thieves use this information for all of the luxuries listed above, as well as obtaining new Social Security cards (claiming the old one was “lost”) to obtain Social Security benefits you worked all of your adult life for; welfare benefits; HUD benefits, including housing vouchers; medical and dental care; and to obtain false passports to be able to slip in and out of the U.S.A. without apprehension.

Medical ID Theft

ID Thieves use your medical information to file false workers’ compensation claims; have surgeries, including cosmetic surgeries, often to alter their appearances to avoid being recognized for previous crimes; to file for other Social Security benefits, such as phony disability claims and/or false medical liability claims, including insurance claims; and to have medical procedures done for legitimate health problems but you get stuck with the enormous hospital and doctor’s bills.

Character/Criminal ID Theft

ID Thieves commit crimes, posing as you! Consequently, you could apply for a job or get pulled over by the police for a burned out tail light on your car, and end up getting arrested for a murder or bank robbery or some other felony you know absolutely nothing about.

It then becomes your difficult job to try to convince the local police and court that you are really the victim and are indeed innocent of the crimes committed in your good name.

Financial ID Theft

Although there is obviously overlap between some of these types of ID Theft, this category specifically and more completely involves a criminal posing as you to empty your bank account(s); financial holdings; remove any valuables you may have in storage in bank vaults; steal any off-shore assets and/or international financial assets or bank accounts; and buy and sell expensive properties such as homes, cars, land, or businesses; and apply for loans and credit cards or credit accounts and quickly run up the tabs on these accounts to their maximum limits, for which you will be held accountable by the companies who approved of the loans and accounts in the first place.

The good news is: the FDC has quickly responded to these new crimes and law enforcement is working closely with other government agencies to apprehend these criminals and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law.

Thanks to many members of the Senate and Congress, bills have been introduced and new laws are being passed to help victims of Identity Theft restore their credit and good names in a more efficient and timely manner.

One such law is “The Identity Theft Protection Act”. It eases the burden of the victim’s financial liability for falsely incurred debt and exonerates the victim of the other crimes committed in the his/her name.

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In the meantime, monitor your personal information closely, as well as your bank account and credit card statements. Get copies of all your national credit reports at least annually. Or monitor it with a service like Credit Report Monitoring service. Cross-shred all personal information not needed, credit card offers, junk mail, and anything with your personal information on it.

Bottom Line

No matter how careful you are with your private information, there is always a chance that your identity will be stolen. The important thing is that you know what to do if it happens. There are several steps you can take immediately to minimize the impact of identity theft in your personal and financial life:

1. Contact Agencies – The first step is to contact the financial institution, lender, insurance company or governmental agency connected with identity theft. Explain exactly what happened and what charges are not yours. You should also contact all other financial institutions and lenders to warn them about possible fraud on your accounts.
2. Track Everything – It is crucial that you document everything involving your identity theft, including fraudulent charges and correspondence about those charges. Check your accounts daily and record any questionable behavior.
3. Request a Fraud Alert – Contact one of the three main credit reporting agencies, including Equifax, Experian and TransUnion to request that a 90-day Fraud Alert be put on your account. You also are entitled to a free copy of your credit report with this request.
4. File Report with FTC – The Federal Trade Commission takes identity theft very seriously and investigates all types of reports. You can file an Identity Theft Affidavit by calling 1-877-ID-THEFT or at ftccomplaintassistant.gov.
5. File Police Report – The FTC may require you to file a police report in your jurisdiction. Even if they don’t, you should always contact your local police department.
6. Contact Governmental Agencies – You should also check with the Social Security Administration, Internal Revenue Service, Department of Motor Vehicles and the United States Postal Service to check to make sure your information at these agencies has not been modified or compromised.