Friday, April 4, 2008

$10 Million Guarantee against Identity Theft

I think it is truly starting to get out of control. Everyone has jumped on the $1 Million Dollar guarantee as a standard offering for identity theft services.

The value of what you really would get out of that is somewhat questionable. But now I recently noticed that one of the service companies has stepped up the guarantee to $2 Million Dollars.

Well count me in then! I was on the fence for the $1 million, but if they are offering $2 million, that is the ticket. How can I resist?

Are people out there really that foolish? Is upping the artificial "air in a bottle" service guarantee going to suck people in or away from the competition?

I wonder who will be the first to hit the $10 million guarantee mark.
At that point why not just up it to $100 million?

Are you worth a million dollars, how about $2 million? If you are, you most likely have that kind of coin in a brokerage account. Most of them now after E-trade started the trend, cover any fraud losses to your account.

The average loss or theft is in the low thousands with much of that being covered. Our company research has shown that many end up with minimal actual out of pocket expenses.

Their biggest loss is time, effort, anxiety, frustration, in cleaning up the mess left behind. We suggest people start placing a dollar value on that and collect from those companies.

If you receive a fraud alert no matter what is says, this is what it means:

" SOMEONE HAS YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION......we stopped them from opening up a credit account....... since a thief already has stolen your info, we really can't tell you what else they may do with it"

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Public becoming more Savvy to Identity Theft Services

A recent story on ABC 7 in San Francisco pointed out the value or lack thereof for services by an identity theft service that charges over $100 a year and pointed out to their viewers how to perform the same services yourself easily and free.

But what we found to be the best comment was followed by a person who pointed out that any alert to fraudulent activity is NOT PREVENTION. If you are alerted to anything by any service you have already been compromised .

Finally, people are seeing the light and recognizing that being alerted does not equal being protected . The damage has been done. You will need to scramble to figure out what the thieves who already have your information are going to do with it next.

This is why defending your identity first and foremost is much more beneficial and easier than finding out you've been alerted.