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Trusted ID Review

02/09/2010

Trusted ID is an Identity Protection Service that is designed to help you protect against identity theft. How does it work? Let’s find out.

ID Freeze – The main feature of of Trusted ID’s program is called ID Freeze. It offers essentially internet and registry scanning and assistance in placing fraud alerts for your credit reports. Below is the list of things would do for you under the ID Freeze program.

  • Public Database Scanning
  • Credit Card Scanning – This is where they scan black market sites to see if your credit card number is being traded
  • Social Security Scanning – This is where they scan black market sites to see if your social security number is being traded
  • Bank Account Number Scanning – This is where they scan black market sites to see if your bank account number is being traded
  • Name and Address Scanning – This is where they scan black market sites to see if your name and address is being traded and used
  • Identity Threat Score – After doing their proprietary scanning, Trusted ID will come up with a threat score that tells you how vulnerable you are to an ID theft
  • Medical Benefits Protection – Trusted ID will review your medical benefit statements to ensure that you and your family are the only ones being treated with your medical benefits.
  • Fraud Alerts – Trusted ID will help you to set up fraud alerts with the three credit bureaus. By law, you can only do this for yourself and nobody can do it on someone else behalf. But Trusted ID will aid you in this and remind you to renew your fraud alerts every three months (fraud alerts are only good for three months).

    Guarantee and Resolution

    Trusted ID has a one million dollar guarantee to cover any cost you incur to restore your identity. Furthermore, they will help you to resolve and remedy the situation should your ID ever get stolen when you are a customer.

    Other Convenient Services

    Trusted ID also provides other what I would call “convenience services” like getting your free annual credit reports for you, removing you from well known marketing databases to reduce junk mail, and also offering free anti-spywares for your computers and wallet services where they will call your credit cards and banks and other financial services if your wallet ever gets stolen.

    Credit Freeze

    Trusted ID will also help you with freezing your credit if you really need this service. A credit freeze locks your report for years rather than 90 days. The advantages of doing this with Trusted ID is that you only have to make one call to freeze or unfreeze your credit. If you do it yourself, you have to call the three credit bureaus and subject yourself to a barrage of marketing emails!

    Family Plan

    Aside from offering individual plans, Trusted ID also offers family plans. The individual plan comes with a one month free trial and is very reasonable at $8.50/month. If you pay for the full year, it is equivalent to paying $7.01 a month. For the family plan, the cost is $16.99 a month and it will be $13.49 a month equivalent if you pay for the full year.

    Opinion and Verdict – Trusted ID appears to be a solid offering. It has a comprehensive database scanning capabilities (which is very important in checking if your ID is floating around somewhere). The only thing that I not really like is that they still use fraud alerts to prevent new accounts from being opened. Because you can only set up fraud alerts yourself, they can only assist you and remind you every three months (which is quite a hassle). A company like LifeLock® has done away with fraud alerts and instead has a system in place to call you asking your permission to give creditors a look at your credit report without resorting to fraud alerts. But if you decide to go all out an put a credit freeze on your report, then having Trusted ID do it is better because you only have to call one person to get your credit reports freezed or unfreezed.

    But perhaps the most compelling feature of Trusted ID is the price, which is cheaper than most services out there. If you could put up with the inconvenience or having to place fraud alerts every three months on your credit report and if you decide to totally freeze your credit, or if you wish to have your whole family on such a plan, then Trusted ID is a compelling choice.

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