Should I purchase Identity Theft?

Question

I lost my ssn card a few days ago, so I applied for a new one, and I also put a fraud alert with the 3 credit bureaus, BUT I was reading this Protection Plan they offer for $15 a month and I was wondering, is it a good idea to sing up for it? They give you a $20,000 insurance policy with no limits on how often you check your credit reports and they also monitor any BIG changes in your credit....So if you have any experience or input in this matter, I would greatly appreciate your comments!!!

Answer 1

I have a rider on my home owners policy...$25 bucks a year.

Answer 2

I think those Identity theft insurance programs way overcharge ($15 a month) for what they offer.  Placing the fraud alert with the credit bureaus and monitoring your credit report once a year (you are entitled to one free credit report annually) should be sufficient to protect you from any fraud.

If had a need to check your credit report more than once a year, then you could order another one for much less than you would be paying for the insurance ($180 a year).  

You are not liable personally anyway for any fraud someone commits in your name.  What those insurance policies offer that you can't really do for yourself is reimburse you for any time and financial costs associated with having to straighten out any identity issues.  

The only real reason I can see for getting this plan is if you are someone who chronically worries.  In that case, the $180 a year may be worth the piece of mind it brings you.

Answer 3

Zander Insurance, a frequent advertiser on the Dave Ramsey Show, has come up with a new identity theft protection program, called their "Identity Safegaurds" program which might be a good solution for people worried about having their identity stolen, and really, we all should be worrying about it because it's happening so often and the instances of theft are growing rapidly. In addition to the prevention services, they do a great job on cleaning up the mess if your identity is stolen. They will assign you a personal recovery representative which is essentially a case worker for you. They'll put fraud victim alerts on your credit bureaus, notify creditors, financial institutions, and law enforcement agencies. They'll work with you to take care of any legal issues and make sure your identity theft mess has been cleaned up. In the event that you have to miss work or have to pay anything to clean up after your identity theft has been stolen, such as legal fees, court costs, credit reports, all the way up to $20,000 per individual, and there's no deductible to speak of. Overall this product is very solid. If you're going to get identity theft insurance, Zander insurance is definitely the place to go for it. It actually takes care of the problem rather than just writing you a check and making you clean up the mess.

Answer 4

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After all, without a credit card, it's harder to live, and especially hard to shop online. Lots of credit card related questions are often being asked and yours is just another one. Credit cards are great to use as long as you control them-->They are useful, helpful, and make buying things a whole lot easier. But it's important to remember that people go into thousands of dollars of debt because of them, and the same thing could happen to you

Answer 5

I don't think it's necessary.

Answer 6

just check with ur credit bureaus.. and keep checking ur acct info every week...thats what protection plan really does... so whats the point just do it ur self ..which saves u money and time in some ways..

Answer 7

Well I worked for a bank that sold ID Protect but in reality I don't think it works in most cases because there is people who could have gotten a hold of you SSN a while ago, I mean if you call any customer service and give your SSN more than likely they write it down and it goes to the trash and then you have people going through garbage to get that kind of info, what I would just do is get a membership with a credit check company and they send you info about your credit every month and you can keep track of it and if anything does happen which more than likely it wont you have to just go through the goverment which is the same thing but cheaper.

Try it out I mean they will try to tell you all this stuff just to sign up for IDP but really they get comission so don't listen. It's better to take advise from someone who knows about it and isn't benifitting from it.

Hope everything works out for you and you have any other question let me know.