The Best Identity Theft Protection Services

Reviews.com, March 15, 2019

The Best Identity Theft Protection Services
To be clear, identity theft prevention services don’t exist — there’s no way to actually prevent your identity from being stolen. What the best identity theft protection services can do, though, is ceaselessly monitor your credit and accounts to alert you as soon as suspicious behavior arises. From there, the best credit monitoring service will assist you every step of the way in reclaiming your identity. We signed up for as many accounts as we could and read their fine print to see which services could best help you monitor and reclaim your identity.

How We Chose the Best Identity Theft Protection Services
Credit reports from all three bureaus
Credit reports are crucial to your financial reputation — they’re what lenders use to decide whether to offer you a loan, they affect mortgage rates and car purchasing, and they even determine whether your internet provider requires an application fee. They’re also how many people first learn they’ve been scammed.
Each of the “big-three” credit-reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) uses a slightly different method to compile data for their credit reports, so it’s important to keep an eye on all three. Details that show up in one agency’s report (a bogus account, debt collection, or legal judgment) might not show up in another. ID theft protection services that offer continuous, “real time” monitoring of all three credit bureaus give you the best odds of early fraud detection.