Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.
If you don’t have a story about identity theft, I bet you know someone that does. Just the other day, I was talking with a friend about protecting identity theft and fraud identity. We each had story after story about people we knew that had experiences with theft and fraud, and we even had our own small (but still scary) experiences with identity theft protection.
Basically, it is crazy that now-a-days it seems everyone has an experience with identity fraud. It isn’t a rare occasion any longer. It is in the news on a regular basis. Identity theft is real and could happen to anyone (I mean think about all those Target credit cards stolen this past holiday season – yikes!)
Okay, so now that we are all thinking about our experiences and our friends and family’s experiences with identity theft, let’s take a step back and think about how we can be proactive about our individual identity protection.
Have you heard of LifeLock Identity Theft Protection?
What is LifeLock?
LifeLock is a identify theft protection service. They monitor your credit and personal information from identity theft and fraud, taking the stress and burden from you. They use technologies to monitor your secure personal information from threats, determine risks and work in the background, while you focus on other things in life.
LifeLock Protection Plans
– LifeLock Standard (proactive defense to keep your information safe)
– LifeLock Ultimate (most advanced line of defense against identity theft)
– LifeLock Junior (helps safeguard a child’s social security number and name)
How LifeLock Could Have Helped Me with Credit Monitoring:
It is scary to have your credit card call you and ask you if you have been shopping at ___ when you haven’t been to ____ in years! Obviously, there is something wrong. Luckily, my credit card company alerted me early. Even though they caught the stolen card right away, it wasn’t that easy to deal with. I spent hours proving my purchasing records and canceling cards, changing passwords and pins. I had to get new cards and think about the places my information could have been compromised. It was a headache in a number of ways. But LifeLock could have done a lot of this on my behalf and could have saved me the hassle.
Not only have I had suspicious purchases on my credit card, I also had an issue with my credit report. When I was in the market for buying my first home, I applied to get approved for a loan. My loan officer brought it to my attention that 2 of the credit bureaus had my credit score at a similar level, while the other credit score was completely different. She didn’t understand why that would be and suggested I looked into it, or it would make me ineligible for a loan. When I did, I found out my information was merged with another person very similar to me. We were the same age, born in the same town, and lived just miles away from each other. I could see all of this on my credit report! I literally had this person’s entire life history on my credit report. This situation made me realize her identity was compromised as well as mine. We both were in the system like we were the same person. The process was very intensive to fix. I had to go line by line with a supervisor at this specific credit bureau. While this is a unique situation, I know LifeLock could have helped if I had it in the beginning with the LifeLock Junior. If I would have had the protection as a child, they could have recognized that my credit score was changing drastically and I was racking up credit card debt. The problem would have stopped before it started, and I wouldn’t have had to deal with the aftermath of getting another person’s personal information on my credit report.
My Overall LifeLock Review
After scoping out the main pages on lifelock.com, and reading some other LifeLock reviews, I realized just how useful this service could be during the times when you least expect your identity to be stolen. The fact of the matter is, it is never something you expect or are ready for. That is why LifeLock comes in so handy, they will have your back and help you through the tough situations of identity theft and identify fraud.
LifeLock Promotion Code
If you want to guard yourself from identity theft, here is a 10% off LifeLock Promotion Code to get you started (at a 10% discount). The Promo Code is: LifeLockSecure.