With the recent news about the CEO of LifeLock having his identity stolen, I looked around the web searching for ways we could prevent ourselves from becoming a victim without having to pay monthly or annual fees.
Luckily, most of what companies like LifeLock and Free Credit Report do can be done by you and me for free.
In my search, I ran across Jeremy Duffy, who is something of an awareness advocate, offering many "How-Tos" on his website for free. And when I say free I mean it. No banner ads, no Google ads.
Jeremy Duffy has worked extensively on home computers since the mid nineties. After years of fixing his own computer problems, owning his own small business in computer service, and two college degrees, Jeremy has gained the technical skills to handle most of the problems normal home-users would face. Having worked in retail sales positions for almost 10 years, he has also seen the tricks and underhanded ploys that business will use to get your money.
In both cases, Jeremy has seen the ways that others will manipulate others for personal gain simply by exploiting their lack of knowledge of business and computer issues. As someone who values honesty and straight-forward dealings, Jeremy takes particular exception to manipulating others unfairly. It is for this reason that he started his Awareness Advocacy website and blog and also recently developed his seminar, "Computer and Internet Safety for Normal People". In each the goal is to provide the straight facts to equip a non-specialized citizen to deal with scams, manipulation, and fraud…
Jamison Braly: The first company many people think of when they think about protecting themselves from ID theft are companies like LifeLock. What do these companies do?
Jeremy Duffy: Besides taking people's money, not much. There are really only two categories of company such as this: monitoring services and insurance providers. Monitoring services essentially give you open access to your credit reports and send you alerts when there are inquiries or changes to your report. Note that this doesn't actually give you the ability to stop any of the inquiries; it just lets you know that something happened.
Insurance providers are nothing more than any insurance provider is, clean-up service. In theory, if you meet the conditions under which they will pay out, you will get some money as stipulated by your terms and conditions. Identity theft is a problem, true, but is it worth paying a monthly fee? Also, before you use any such service, you should ask yourself whether this company is solid and likely to be around when you have a problem. Will they pay out or shaft you as the car insurance companies often do?
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