In a tough economy people will do what they can to make ends meet, even if it’s illegal. Unfortunately this has sent identity theft skyrocketing in recent years. This makes it more important than ever to protect your most important financial asset, your credit history. Identity thieves can destroy your credit history leaving your life in shambles. Credit monitoring services promise to help prevent identity theft and may even provide insurance in the event that your identity is stolen.
#1: Prevent Identity Theft
When you use a credit monitoring service you will be updated immediately when changes are made to your credit report. This can help you to stay one step ahead of any potential identity thieves. The sooner you discover that your identity has been stolen the better your chances will be to prevent serious damage to your credit report and credit score. Only a credit report monitoring service can help you detect any fraudulent activity on your credit report as soon as it happens.
#2: Prevent Unauthorized Updates
Most people don’t know it but there’s a form of identity theft where the thieves will actually change personal information on someone’s credit report to hijack accounts. These updates can be detected instantly by a credit report monitoring service. If you find an unauthorized update has been made you can quickly freeze your credit report and prevent any additional unauthorized access.
#3: Additional Tools
Credit report monitoring services will typically provide a wide range of tools you can use to analyze your credit report, look for areas to improve upon and even submit disputes online rather than by mail. This can help to save you time when viewing your credit report as a detailed analysis can quickly show you blemishes on your credit report which may be inaccuracies that need to be reviewed.
#4: Security
Most credit report monitoring services also offer additional levels of security such as internet scans they can use to identity whether or not your personal information is being bought and sold online. You just can’t get that type of service anywhere else. If you’re serious about keeping your credit history perfect, a credit report monitoring service may be the perfect choice for you