And what if the fraud is not financial in nature?

It won’t show up at all…comforting, huh?

There are hundreds of ways your identity can be used that will never show on any credit report: immigration fraud, medical fraud, false driver’s licenses, tax fraud, utilities fraud, employment fraud…how is monitoring your credit going to find these?

Answer: It won’t.

Credit monitoring will not detect, prevent, or help you with any of the above crimes. It can barely even detect financial fraud: Experian actually admitted to the New York Times that their credit-monitoring products could not detect fraud cases in which a credit applicant used his/her own name, address and phone number with someone else’s (i.e. YOU) Social Security number. Again, this is over 80%of ID Fraud today!

The sad truth is that you alone cannot protect your identity. Your information resides in thousands of databases nationwide and your information is only as secure as the database it’s in. We’re talking about billions of data points, including Social Security, Driver’s License, Motor Vehicle, Criminal, Civil, Legal, Licensing, Financial, Medical, Marketing, Consumer- there is no way that you and I as individuals can keep up with this information.

It seems like every week there’s a new story about a security breach in which people’s personal information has been compromised. Data breaches increased 47% between 2007 and 2008, reaching 656 breaches in 2008 alone. MILLIONS of identities have been compromised in these breaches and given that most people are unaware of the true nature of identity theft,this means tens of thousands of people are already a victim of Identity Theft and have yet to find out!

Thankfully, there are now a few companies out there that monitor your full identity by monitoring more than just your credit. When it comes to finding a good company to protect your identity from theft and fraud, look for companies that can:

1. Find it.
2. Stop it.
3. Fix it.

Hope that helps: LRK