Identity Theft

Good tip!

Good info, Ric. Sorry to hear about your BIL. The evil SOBs who do this crap make me sick.

My boss got his identity stolen and they even got his IRS return this past year. He eventually got it sorted out and got his refund but it took something like 8 months, untold numbers of phone calls and time off work, not to mention the stress of just having to deal with it all.

my buddy had this happen so he got lifelock. Wow does lifelock suck. Talk about a joke. Don't waste your money.

motorbreaker said:

my buddy had this happen so he got lifelock. Wow does lifelock suck. Talk about a joke. Don't waste your money.

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You are the first one I've ever heard say that about Lifelock, what were his complaints? I have something similar through work, like 15 bucks a month and they monitor both me and my wife. Any time something happens with our credit or large purchases, they call me. Plus 2 free credit checks a year.

Jackalope said:

DJK. You can get 1 free check a year by law and there are sites like credit karma that don't ever charge you for one.

You can call all three reporting bureaus and put a freeze on your credit for like 5 bucks. To unfreeze it all you have to do is call and it's done in minutes. Companies that already report to your credit like open CCs can still put your payment history, mark accounts as closed etc. But nobody can run your credit which means nobody will ever issue fraudulent credit.

Most banks and CC company can do text alerts now too. Meaning if the card is used they will text you.

There's no real reason to pay these companies like lifelock.

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Yeah I can see that, but for $13.95 a month I put all my cards and accounts in a profile and don't worry about it again. They call me if there is an issue. I can check my credit score any time I want and get two full reports a year without a "free credit check" company hassling me with phone calls, emails, having to cancel a trial period, etc. Someone swipes my account information and spends 50 bucks at 10 different gas stations before the bank figures out it isn't me, my monitoring company has it insured and puts the money back until the situation is sorted out. My mom just had this happen to her a few weeks ago, her bank caught it, but the money was caught up until everything was sorted out.

Just a small monthly fee for peace of mind for me.

I have only heard of great things about Lifelock, please let us know what your buddies complaints were motorbreaker.

Creditkarma.com, credit.com are good free sites to get an account setup on to keep tabs. Bank of America is now offering FICO score updates each month for free. Something to think about if you are not a card member.

Joe hit it on the head with setting your CC/debit card alerts. My info was part of some database that got hacked, free monitoring for a few years. Always enjoy getting that call to make sure the purchase was legit.