Credit Monitoring? Waste of time?

[OldShooter]

With the never-ending cascade of popular web sites that get hacked, it seems that I always have "free credit monitoring' services active. I get one or two status notifications every month. The thing is, the notices always (like 100%) say that they have nothing to report. This has been going on for at least several years. I do not have my credit locked, though a number of years ago I opted out of new credit card offers, which made my mail box happy. I don't check my credit score very often, but it seems to run in the 830 range.

So, is that the case for everyone? Nothing to report? It seems like a waste of time and money.

 

[brett]

I have never been on one of those sites. Never been hacked. We do update our credit cards on occasion. Just cancelled one, signed up for another.

 

[COcheesehead]

My house has never burned. Do I need fire insurance?

 

[frank05]

I once did but I found I had to call to cancel my subscription which resulted in multiple phone calls over several days. Now my policy is never sign up for a service that you can’t directly cancel via their website.

 

[COcheesehead]

Most are free.

 

[audreyh1]

Not to me. We pay for it independently of any reported breach.

Usually there isn’t anything to report which is good. Occasionally we are notified if a new account has been opened or there has been an inquiry on our credit. If it’s something we did, that’s good. Otherwise we’d have to find out what happened.

And we do also keep our credit frozen.

 

[Al18]

I get free credit monitoring, which picked up suspect activity a few times over the years. You can put a free security freeze at each of the 3 credit monitoring services. None of this has cost me any money. Well worth the small amount of time to setup the security freezes.

 

[Aerides]

it's free, and the "time" cost is 2 or 5 seconds every month or so.

ok, i'll take that deal

 

[USGrant1962]

I get it free due to the GSA breach, but it has never caught anything of significance. I think I've had it for 15 years or more at this point. My credit cards on the other hand regularly catch fraudulent charges, so that is good I guess. PITA when I have to get a new CC mailed to me though. Seems to happen every couple of years or so.

 

[tulak]

My house has never burned. Do I need fire insurance?

I had the same thought. Not about credit monitoring, but about not having credit locked.

That’s cheap insurance. And hopefully you’ll never need it tested.

As for the question, I don’t use credit monitoring, but my credit is locked and one of my credit cards tells me if my credit score changed. That’s enough for me to generally know if something is wrong. I should pull my free credit report more often, but I don’t. No real good reason why, except I get busy.

 

[audreyh1]

Any freebie credit monitoring I was offered due to some breach was for a limited time, usually just 1 year from signing up. Too disruptive.

 

[Montecfo]

I use credit karma. Free. I do not worry with all the free offers due to breaches. I do pull credit reports from time to time and review.

 

[jazz4cash]

Most are free.

I have two or three that are perks from a credit account or membership. They never reported a problem but they lag too much to really be effective against fraud. It’s more about monetizing their giant database.

 

[badatmath]

Never done it. Don't regret it. No issues. Never had a fraudulent charge on a card either.

 

[Dalton]

I have notifications turned on from the big 4 credit agencies, as well as my credit cards. I also have had my credit locked since the equifax breach (just temp unfroze them to buy my new truck).

I get warnings fairly frequently, and they come in barrages for a few months, then tail off. Usually, the warnings involve my personal information that has been found on the "dark web," including name, phone, address, birthdate, last 5 of my SS#, etc. Several of the medical portals I was registered with (to have access to my medical stuff with various doctors), have been hacked over the last 5 years, and I'm pretty sure that's how this info gets out and while getting passed around, the services are picking it up and warning me. They have also correctly warned me when I try to use credit, like when I bought my truck, and during a hurricane I applied for credit at a big box store just to get a big discount on a chainsaw (and hadn't unfrozen my credit, so it got rejected, oh well, not worth the effort).

So, they work. I've taken some of the notifications as a reminder to go ahead and change some of my most important password, which is good to do periodically.

 

[JoeWras]

I had one that was "free" to me due to a data breach. When I opened up a Fidelity credit card last year, I got notified 3 weeks later.

Useless.

 

[foxcreek9]

Chase, Mastercard, Discover, and Credit Karma all have free monitoring. I churn CCs on a regular basis and all notify me within hours of a credit check and/or a new card has been opened.

 

[scrabbler1]

I have free monitoring from 2 services stemming from those broad data breaches. One of them was from that big BCBS/Anthem breach more than 5 years ago. I get emails from them every month telling me there are no issues (usually; sometimes they include "suspicious" activity which amounted to nothing wrong). I am waiting for them to tell me they will end this service unless I subscribe by fiving them a CC number, which I will never do.

As for credit freezes, I have them with all 3 major agencies. I keep them even though they turned out to be nuisances about 10 years ago when, while at a store trying to get a discount on a purchase if I opened a store CC, the "instant" approval got rejected and nobody knew why. I learned later why that happened. Not long after, I wanted to increase my CC credit limit, that could be approved only if I "thawed" the freeze. Later, the bank phone rep I called put me on a 3-way call with the monitoring agency. I gave them the PIN (which I have carefully saved from all 3 monitoring agencies), the bank rep saw the report and immediately raised my limit.

Once in a while, I go to that website to get a free credit report. I don't do it every year. It is a minor hassle dodging all the ads to pay for upgrades for extra services.

 

[COcheesehead]

I have two or three that are perks from a credit account or membership. They never reported a problem but they lag too much to really be effective against fraud. It’s more about monetizing their giant database.

In my experience they don’t lag. I had a situation of my own action and I got 3-4 notifications within seconds. Some text, some email. If you’re not getting instant notifications, check to make sure they have update cell/email and if you have text checked as a preference.

 

[JoeWras]

OK, good to hear many people are having fast turn around time.

Let me call out the free service I got for the breech. Kroll.

Here's the sequence of events:
- July 25: new credit card
- September 5: froze my credit at all agencies
- September 19: notice from Kroll for "New Trade"

What's a new trade? Don't know. I think I logged in and found it to be the new card, but perhaps it was the freezing event.

In either case, it was either 8 weeks or 2 weeks before I heard anything from those two events. Too late.

I don't recommend Kroll.

 

[COcheesehead]

OK, good to hear many people are having fast turn around time.

Let me call out the free service I got for the breech. Kroll.

Here's the sequence of events:
- July 25: new credit card
- September 5: froze my credit at all agencies
- September 19: notice from Kroll for "New Trade"

What's a new trade? Don't know. I think I logged in and found it to be the new card, but perhaps it was the freezing event.

In either case, it was either 8 weeks or 2 weeks before I heard anything from those two events. Too late.

I don't recommend Kroll.

Never heard of Kroll. Mine are all from the bureaus themselves and then the big consolidator in addition.

 

[Fermion]

We have frozen all of our credit agencies but it bit me in the butt a couple weeks ago. I had signed up for the Prime card for the $200 bonus and thawed Experian and Transunion for a day. Everything worked fine. During Prime days, they bumped the bonus to $250 so I asked my wife if she wanted her own card and she did. I thawed Experian only, because I thought that was the one they had pulled, and she was denied with no ability to know why. 8 days later a letter arrived saying the denial was because they couldn't access her Transunion. Oops. Now the bonus is down to $150 and not worth the time.

 

[sdawson]

Yep, as someone who has been targeted *a lot* over the years with identity theft, freezing credit, monitoring activiy and also having identity theft insurance is worth it. For simple credit card theft, I make sure to work with the credit card companies directly, and they have been great. I have never lost my physical card, but my number has still been stolen and used perhaps 10 times or more over the past 20 years. So for that, I just work with the card company. But in general I have

1) Frozen my accounts with all 3 agencies
2) Use CreditKarma
3) Use complimentary credit monitoring services given to me due to leaks (I have two of those)
4) Pay $15/month for another paid monitoring service which includes insurance as well.

Ways I have been targeted include

* Attempts to open accounts in my name at FingerHut
* Attempts to apply for other new credit cards in my name
* Attempts to apply for unemployment in my name

That last one does *not* show up on a credit report. A few years ago, I was contacted by HR to confirm I was no longer working for the company. It's a 7,000 employee company. I talked to them on the phone, and apparently they had been contacted by the state I live in to verify information in an unemployment application in my name. I obviously told HR that I still was working. They informed the state.

A few days later I received a letter at my home from the state unemployment office asking for information as well. I phoned them and let them know I did not apply for unemployment.

I was not even awaare that this was a type of scam folks did.

So yes, I'm a bit paranoid and feel the need to monitor and have id theft insurance.

 

[donheff]

I am firmly in the freeze camp. I never saw much value in monitors.

 

[aja8888]

Freeze camp here also. Plus, any charge on my three CC's is immediately emailed to me with a text notification also.