Identity Theft Protection

[DaveLeeNC]

Is there a 'good' identify protection service out there? My SS#/etc is clearly "out there" as deposit accounts have been set up in my name multiple times. From all that I know this is invisible to the various credit services and identity theft protection services. I currently have the basic Equifax plan (free for now due to some breach), but I am not impressed.

Is there something out there that looks more broadly at this than just the credit side of the equation? I have locked my credit with the 3 major credit organizations and there is some service that deals more with checking accounts (I would have to dig through some records to find the details) where I did everything that they allowed me to do. But a month or so back yet another new deposit account in my name showed up (caught by me and the bank, but ....).

Thanks.

dave

 

[Freedom56]

Is there a 'good' identify protection service out there? My SS#/etc is clearly "out there" as deposit accounts have been set up in my name multiple times. From all that I know this is invisible to the various credit services and identity theft protection services. I currently have the basic Equifax plan (free for now due to some breach), but I am not impressed.

Is there something out there that looks more broadly at this than just the credit side of the equation? I have locked my credit with the 3 major credit organizations and there is some service that deals more with checking accounts (I would have to dig through some records to find the details) where I did everything that they allowed me to do. But a month or so back yet another new deposit account in my name showed up (caught by me and the bank, but ....).

Thanks.

dave

If you have AAA membership, identity theft monitoring is included. You have to sign up for it. I just use the free service included with my membership.

https://www.aaa.com/experianidtheft/

 

[audreyh1]

To me the best identity theft protection is freezing my credit plus having locks on porting our phone numbers and paying for a personal email provider and domain name. I’m also careful with passwords, very careful with unsolicited emails (phishing), have 2 factor authentication turned on for new devices and various other situations, and avoid WiFi networks other than at home with our strong firewall, otherwise using cellphone hotspot.

On top of that I do use a credit monitoring service.

 

[Lsbcal]

To me the best identity theft protection is freezing my credit plus having locks on porting our phone numbers and paying for a personal email provider and domain name. I’m also careful with passwords, very careful with unsolicited emails (phishing), have 2 factor authentication turned on for new devices and various other situations, and avoid WiFi networks other than at home with our strong firewall, otherwise using cellphone hotspot.

On top of that I do use a credit monitoring service.

How do you put a lock on porting your phone number?

We have T-Mobil. Recently I added a few more digits to our password for better security.

 

[rk911]

How do you put a lock on porting your phone number?

We have T-Mobil. Recently I added a few more digits to our password for better security.

contact T-Mobile customer svc.

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

To me the best identity theft protection is freezing my credit plus having locks on porting our phone numbers and paying for a personal email provider and domain name. I’m also careful with passwords, very careful with unsolicited emails (phishing), have 2 factor authentication turned on for new devices and various other situations, and avoid WiFi networks other than at home with our strong firewall, otherwise using cellphone hotspot.

On top of that I do use a credit monitoring service.

Audrey, I'm interested in how a personal-mail provider and domain name works and costs?

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

I've been thinking about setting up a separate e-mail address only for banking and a second phone number only for 2FA. Does anyone else do that or am I being paranoid?

 

[COcheesehead]

Coverage for financial loss events may be included in your homeowners policy.
I also use 2FA, transfer lockdown, email/text alerts on all financial transactions. Finger print, face, voice recognition where I can.
I also have three different credit monitoring services in addition to credit freezes.
All portable devices are passworded.

 

[audreyh1]

How do you put a lock on porting your phone number?

We have T-Mobil. Recently I added a few more digits to our password for better security.

Go into your T-mobile account settings and you can turn that on for each line. It wasn’t hard to find.

 

[braumeister]

Go into your T-mobile account settings and you can turn that on for each line. It wasn’t hard to find.

IIRC, they only require a short PIN for porting protection, but let you use a longer one if you want. Mine is 8 characters long.

 

[audreyh1]

IIRC, they only require a short PIN for porting protection, but let you use a longer one if you want. Mine is 8 characters long.

They seem to change things now and then. This time there was a on/off switch per line.

They call this Account Takeover Protection now. Well, maybe they always called it that, but it seems to work differently now.

 

[rk911]

Audrey, I'm interested in how a personal-mail provider and domain name works and costs?

lots of companies will register your domain (abcdef.com, .net, etc.) and also provide email addresses for you. (mom@abcdef.net, dad@ancdef.com, etc). our domain is $49 per year and each email address is $12 per year).

we used https://www.enomcentral.com for our domain and email addresses. you can retrieve email on their website or through your favorite email client (outlook, thunderbird, etc].

 

[firemediceric]

On the recommendation of a friend, I am considering going with Zander Identity Theft Protection. I have read some positive reviews. Can anyone here weigh in?

https://www.zanderins.com/identity-theft-protection

 

[braumeister]

On the recommendation of a friend, I am considering going with Zander Identity Theft Protection. I have read some positive reviews. Can anyone here weigh in?

They also have quite a few poor reviews. Looks to me like their strongest selling point is a very close relationship with Dave Ramsey.
https://www.techradar.com/reviews/zander-identity-theft-protection

You should decide just exactly what you want in a product like this, and research several of them.
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-identity-theft-protection,review-2083.html

 

[rk911]

On the recommendation of a friend, I am considering going with Zander Identity Theft Protection. I have read some positive reviews. Can anyone here weigh in?

https://www.zanderins.com/identity-theft-protection

we switched to Zander from Lifelock several years ago. When Lifelock was sold to Symantec their customer service went offshore and into the toilet and we were heavily lobbied via email to buy other Symantec products. The company seemed more focused on selling software than anything else. At least that was my impression.

I'm a Dave Ramsey fan so we looked into Zander and liked what we saw. Reasonable pricing, good on-line account interface and on-shore customer service, which was good the one and only time I needed them (4-yrs ago, haven't needed them since, so...). We have our credit frozen with the big 3 but that's not 100%. We have Zander as a backstop.