Credit Monitoring
Most credit monitoring companies provide credit reports, credit scores, and various tools to manage and improve individual credit ratings. Nearly ten million Americans were victims of identity theft in the previous year with an average cost per victim of $5000. The main reason people elect to have some form of daily credit monitoring is to be notified of anything that changes on their credit report. This enables people to pro-actively maintain an accurate credit file and prevent against identity theft.
Many victims of identity theft and fraud use credit monitoring, but it is highly recommended to also use credit monitoring services as a preventative measure to keep your credit profile secure. Although new laws have given us the right to a free credit report from all three credit bureaus once per year, in today’s credit driven economy, it is simply not enough to protect our credit profiles.
In the previous year, over 60 million US citizens have been identified as having their private information leaked. If you don’t have some type of credit monitoring in place, you are greatly exposing yourself to identity theft, which is one of the fastest growing crimes in the America. Credit Monitoring offers one of the most cost-effective and best defenses against fraud so you can take fast action to stop criminals and prevent yourself from becoming a victim.
If anybody tries to open accounts in your name, credit monitoring can be set up to sent you email alerts or text messages for quick responses to illegal activity so you can stop it before it gets out of control. Usually identity theft criminals will run up as much credit as they can in a short amount of time, then move on to the next victim so they can reduce the chances of getting caught. If you are alerted on a daily basis of any un-authorized applications or new credit, you have a much greater chance of catching identity theft criminals. Credit monitoring can also be used to help you know when the best time is to lock in a low mortgage rate.
Credit monitoring has multiple benefits in today’s world and is one of the most cost effective ways to protect against errors and fraud. There are many online services available, but Equifax has the best proven track record for providing a great service to their customers. We recommend that everybody take protective measures to preventing fraud and have their credit reports monitored.