I used to pay for this service, but decided it wasn't doing all that much for me that I couldn't do better myself, and I was occasionally getting false alerts for things that were totally legitimate.. My personal opinion is that it is simpler and more reliable to put a freeze on your account at each of the big three monitoring agencies (Transunion, Experian, and Equifax). In most states it is free to add a freeze and free to take it off (temporarily or permanently); although some states allow the credit agencies to charge a modest fee, like $5,each time you do this.

When you need to apply for a mortgage or a credit card, etc., you lift the freezes online for a day or two, and then put them back on when they're through doing the credit check. The rest of the time (when the freezes are in place) nobody can open credit in your name. I know this doesn't protect against all forms of ID theft, but it goes a log way.

My bank offers free credit report. Why pay for something you can get for free? The big 3 are supposed to give you one free credit report a year.

fwiw;

I have some lady named Catherine with my same last name that has lived in my house and shares my credit history for probably over 10 years.. and I cant get rid of her. Car insurance is a challenge at times as they want to know if there is any way she might drive one of the cars .. so she must have bad drivers history. I told the last car insurance guy she didn't live there.. and I didn't know who she is, its an error on your computer systems. He sort of laughed and told me she had to be on the policy if she lives here - I said she must live in the bushes and only comes around while I'm sleeping... I've never seen her in my life, no way has she ever or ever will drive one of the cars - he thought I was joking. He had to phone his headquarters before he could price up my insurance. Car insurance comes up for renewal .. go through the same thing again, and again.

I have had credit cards mailed here in her name, doctors office call to confirm her appointments, bills from doctors in my mailbox, bill collector for the doctors offices, pharmacy guys asking if I was picking up her meds too. I tell everybody she's some kind of phony. It doesn't matter,,, she is painful to me, .. doesn't seem to be any ways to be rid of her.

I don't think the credit guard services can do anything to stop the people out there like this lady.

Kudzu9

I agree with your approach. I am going to cancel my id theft with aarp. I also want to put a freeze on my credit with all three credit companies. It is difficult these days to tell what is a valid website and what is not. Can you give me your link to all three credit companies so i can put a freeze on.

Thanks

I helped a family member sign up for one of these credit monitoring services because she's elderly and worries herself to death about someone getting her credit card numbers and such. Despite her insistence, I tried to talk her out of it because as stated above, most of what they do, you can do yourself for free. For instance, you can get two of your scores and a variety of other information on creditkarma.com. (There are many forms of FICO scores now so the scores you get from any individual services won't always agree.)

Now that she has the service I see that they tend to send out a bunch of email "alerts" for run-of-the-mill stuff, which makes her more nervous than ever. They probably do this so you feel like they're doing something.

Also, they're not easy to get ahold of on the phone. Again, this is the service I signed her up for; it may not describe every one. If you had an identity theft occur, their value would depend largely on how well you could communicate with them, and given what I've seen I'm not optimistic about that.

Just based on what I've seen I'd say save your money.

paulsmth2-

Just Google Transunion, Experian, and Equifax. Each site is a little different in terms of how you get to the right page to place a freeze, but you should be able to just use the search box at each site to get to where you need to be.

I put a freeze on my credit profile with all three credit companies. In addition i get a free credit score from my credit card company. However that doesn't tell me much. I like the statement I get from my current id theft aarp company better. So for the time being I will continue to pay the 12 monthly fee to them for the one piece of monthly paper. I may cancel the contract at a later date. They do very little to earn their fee and the promotional lies they put out are just a ripoff.

But they must have a report that you like. Only you can decide if that report is worth to you what they charge.

because i put a freeze on my credit account the aarp id people can no longer produce the single page of info... therefore I cancelled the contract with aarp.