We receive dozens of emails each month asking our opinion on Identity Theft Shield, a protection service against theft identity created by Kroll, Inc. and distributed by thousands of independent representatives of the legal services firm prepaid network marketing, Inc. We have reviewed the identity theft Shield and found it offers theft identity strong recovery media for the victims, but does not take measures to protect their subscribers to have their identity stolen in the first place.
Identity Theft Shield unique offering credit monitoring report of the office of your Experian credit report for $ 9.95 per month which also includes a free credit report and Experian score at registration. Experian is the largest of the three credit bureaus and will probably reflect the most important changes in your credit report, but we believe the three credit bureau monitoring is a better option because it eliminates the risk that a potentially account fraudulent or input may not appear on your Experian credit report, but end up on one of the two other office files in your name. Identity Theft Shield also offers a gold package that includes monitoring credit report from all three bureaus, including Experian, Equifax and TransUnion, to $ 12.95. The Gold package also includes a credit report from all three credit bureaus at registration.
credit monitoring report is a good tool to help identify inconsistencies in your credit report that could be caused by identity thieves, but it does not prevent identity theft in any way. Other services that we examined, such as LifeLock, Identity Guard, and Trusted ID, to take proactive measures to prevent identity theft crimes being perpetrated against their subscribers. Identity Theft Shield, on the other hand, offers no tools that effectively prevent identity theft.
Identity Theft Shield is offering extensive recovery services to their subscribers if they are the unfortunate victims of identity theft. Identity Theft Shield defines fraud alerts and sends notifications to all applicable government agencies and financial institutions on behalf of the victim subscriber. They also monitor a long list of public and private databases in order to identify any misuse of personal information of a subscriber. Shield identity theft recovery services also help reduce some expenses out-of-pocket and resolution specialists of fraud are able to handle much of the heavy lifting when it comes to the recovery of a stolen identity .
setting fraud alerts and research proactively national databases for suspicious activity are both great services for victims, but they are also extremely effective in the prevention and identification of potential identity theft crimes. In fact, most other services we reviewed offer these tools to all subscribers that preventive measures rather than after a crime has been committed in Identity Theft Shield makes.
The lack of proactive identity theft prevention measures is the biggest drawback to identity theft shield service. We believe it is a good service for the victims, but most of the solutions they offer to help recover a stolen identity is used by other identity theft protection services to effectively prevent theft identity first.
We suggest LifeLock Identity Guard or Shield on identity theft for most consumers. Both services have received five stars on our comparison of identity theft protection services and, in our opinion, both offer more extensive service levels that identity theft Shield.
LifeLock provides proactive protection from identity theft by setting fraud alerts on your credit report, the Internet monitoring for unauthorized use of your personal information and alert you if someone tries to redirect your mail in an attempt to gain access to sensitive correspondence such as financial records. They also provide a large enough service guarantee which will cover most of the costs and all the heavy lifting related to recovering your identity theft while you are a LifeLock member. This guarantee has its limitations, which we have previously discussed, but overall we believe that LifeLock is a solution of protection against the most comprehensive identity theft as identity theft Shield.
Identity Guard is another option, especially if the monitoring of the credit report is important to you. They provide 24/7 monitoring credit report from all three credit bureaus and quarterly access to your credit report from Experian, Equifax and TransUnion. Identity Guard also offers a series of advanced tools to help prevent and / or identify unauthorized uses of your personal information. In addition, Identity Guard provides insurance $ 20,000, which covers many of the costs in the event that a subscriber identity theft victim.
You can sign up for LifeLock and Identity Guard online or by phone, and both services offer a free 30 day trial of their product. Identity Theft Shield does not offer a free trial and can be purchased by contacting a representative of the independent sales Pre-Paid Legal.
Please visit our protection service comparison against identity theft for more on these identity theft protection services.