What We Learned About Credit Identity Theft
According to the Federal Trade Commission: about 10 million people become victims of identity theft each year. With every minute that passes, 19 more people become victims of credit identity theft.
According to the US Department of Justice: identity theft has replaced drug trafficking as the number one crime.
We learned that credit identity theft can happen years after someone gets their hands on your personal information.
We learned that credit identity theft can happen without you knowing it’s happening for a good, long time.
We learned that it is remarkably easy for someone who has your personal information to do a lot of profitable things with it – and that none of the things those people do with your personal information is good for your life.
We learned that credit card companies and the credit bureaus do not care about their customers one little bit. They will do exactly as little to help you with credit identity theft as is required by law – and most of the time, they won’t do that unless they’re pressed, and pressed hard.
We learned that our relationship is strong. Not that I ever doubted it, but it’s still nice to know.
We learned that my mom, although she’s a borderline obsessive-compulsive, was right about identity theft insurance, and that I’ll never, ever, ever doubt her again.
Ultimately, we learned that we should have signed up for Lifelock sooner – much sooner. If we had been with Lifelock before, or taken a few hours to work on it ourselves, we could have saved ourselves a ton of hassle and a little heartbreak.
The fact that Lifelock will maintain a credit freeze with all three of the credit bureaus is important – many states make you go back again and again to fill out the paperwork to keep that credit freeze into effect. With Lifelock, you don’t have to worry about it. That convenience, combined with the fact that Lifelock backs up their claims with a $1,000,000 guarantee that you won’t lose a dime if you’re ever a victim of credit identity theft while they’re covering you, makes subscribing to Lifelock a simple choice.
Everything we learned was important, but we would have avoided this entire mess in the first place if we had Lifelock.
Yeah, we lost a little money because we were late onto the bus, but if we hadn’t been subscribing to Lifelock before this whole situation really blew up, I am absolutely sure that we would have been out several thousands of dollars and more than a few weeks of our time by the time we got everything under control.