For the past five years, identity theft has been the #1 fraud complaint filed with the FTC. In 2006 , the FTC received over 200,000 reports of identity theft, comprising over 30% of all fraud complaints received last year. Can you imagine the results now?
Requesting your credit report yearly and noticing unusual activity is one small way to protect yourself, but obviously it's not enough to save you. There is another viable solution that cannot only restore your identity, but it can also notify you, quickly if you have potential problems. An awesome company called, Prepaid Legal Services, has teamed up with the world's leading independent risk consulting company, Kroll Background America, to create the Identity Theft Shield. This program provides easy access to resources needed to understand your credit report, and the information and services that are needed to fight against an identity thief that may threaten your financial status. The Identity Theft Shield has been created to alert you of certain account activity and restore your credit standing, if compromised.
You don't have to be wealthy or extremely rich to be a target for an identity thief. Identity theft strikes regardless of race, sex, age or economic standing. While an identity thief can assume your identity in just a couple of hours, it can take you many years to restore your credit back to the standing that it was at previous to the thievery. Experts estimate that a typical victim will lose, on average, $1,000- $1,200 in out-of-pocket expenses and face hours of contacting the appropriate institutions and agencies, to report the fraud and attempting to reverse the damage caused by the crime.
If you have the Identity Theft Shield before your ID is stole, you can make a single call and let the experts do all the work for you, which will save you time and money! The monitoring that this product provides allows you to take a proactive approach. In fact, early detection of suspicious apprehensive activity is one of the most powerful tools the Identity Theft Shield offers for protecting your credit standing and your good name.
The Identity Theft Shield is available to individuals as either a stand-alone product or an addition to the Pre-Paid Legal Family Plan. This product provides up-to-date credit reports through Experian at no additional cost, allowing the members to have their credit score appraised by an independent scoring service. In addition, the list below specifies a few of the ways the Identity Theft Shield can save you time and money, while giving you a sense of security, and a peace of mind:
* Reduces out-of-pocket expenses and time spent away from work and your family, with valuable services from detection to resolution.
* Licensed Investigators will work in your behalf to help correct identity theft issues you have with affected agencies and the proper institutions, including:
- Credit Card Companies
- Financial Institutions
- All three credit repositories
- The Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
- The Social Security Administrations
- The Department of Motor Vehicles
- The United States Postal Service
- The Law Enforcement Personnel… amongst other organizations that may be affected.
* Fraud alert notifications are sent to all three credit repositories, the Social Security Administration, the FTC, the U.S. Postal Service and affected credit card companies and financial institutions.
* Proactive searches of applicable local and national database are made to track down suspicious information, including:
- Criminal activity in your name with your county's records and certain federal watch lists.
- Department of Motor Vehicle records in your state
- Unknown addresses affiliated with your name
- Your Banking activity reported as fraudulent.
Identity Theft continues to be a national crisis and is here to stay, and everyone's at risk! The good news is you don't have to be a victim of this monstrous crime.
