Insurance

The most important you can do online is preventing identity theft. Hackers don't care about taking your family pictures or even your files you have saved. What the hackers really want is access to personal information like birth date and social security number. If you have account numbers on your computers then they hit jackpot. So it is no surprise that the best thing to protect yourself is identity theft shield protection. Think of it as an insurance policy on your identity.

Think of an identity theft shield as monitoring your credit activity for you so you can sleep better at night. The way it works is that the service pays attention to your social security number and activity that occurs. Your credit reports will be monitored and if there is something going on that's suspicious, you will be notified so that you can take care of it accordingly. The benefit for you is that you don't have to keep manually monitoring your credit report. You will be notified automatically if there is any activity

Another benefit of having identity theft shield is that you have insurance. So if anything fraudulent happens, they pay for that for you. If somehow an account is open using your social security number then you are responsible for activity on that account. Of course you would have to check what the specific limits are set on this just like any other insurance. The great thing is you won't have to worry about losing your credit cards because you will be covered anyway. What is that peace of mind worth to you?

Often, identity theft shield services are part of other packages. For instance, you may find that you can get this type of protection for free when you buy pre-paid legal services. Pre-paid legal is a relatively new concept that allows you to pay for the expertise of a network of legal advocates in advance so that you can take advantage of their services as your need arises. This is exactly the same way that medical insurance works, where you pay monthly and then use your benefits whenever you need to. Since your financial security is often a legal matter, coupling these two premium services just seems to make the most sense.

I know you are realizing the benefits of having an identity theft shield because it is an easy way to protect yourself from someone stealing your identity. The real question is not whether you need identity theft protection but which protection plan is the best for you. You can decide to go with one that has other prepaid services attached to it or you could just go with the credit monitoring.

Identity theft is one of the fast growing cyber-crimes in the world, but you don't have to let it happen to you.