With a new victim being struck every 3 seconds, identity theft shows no signs of giving up its title of being the #1 crime in America. Consider that statistic of a new victim every 3 seconds. If the average person blinks their eyes every 4.2 seconds, then that means every time you blink, someone somewhere in America has just been struck by an identity thief.
According to the FTC, there were over 11 million victims of identity theft in America last year, yet in a recent survey only 10% of Americans said they had identity theft protection. 75% of respondents said they did not have identity theft protection but knew they needed it. Why were they risking living unprotected? Chances are, statistically, you are unprotected too.
The average victim will have to pay $500 to recover from each case of identity theft. That is only the average cost of the recovery itself. That average does not include the amount that the thief makes off with. Considering that the threat of identity theft is so quickly growing, why are so many Americans electing to avoid purchasing identity theft protection coverage? If the trends continue, and Americans continue to take their chances with identity theft believing that it won’t happen to them, the victim rates and losses are going to continue to grow.
There are many identity theft protection providers out there. The biggest companies cost the most due to their astronomical advertising costs. These advertising costs are not taken out of their profits. These millions in costs are picked up by the customer in the form of higher monthly rates.
The smaller companies and providers have similar, if not the same, comprehensive coverage for a much lower cost. Their monthly rates are lower due to their low operating costs and smaller payrolls and overhead. This begs the question: do you want your monthly payment to be covering your coverage or the company’s high overhead and advertising costs?
While researching the different identity theft protection providers, I ran into a difficulty. I could not accurately compare the different services offered because the companies all refer to the same type of protection in different ways. For example, five different companies could all include monitoring of data points in location X, but they would all refer to this coverage in 5 different ways. This made it impossible to compare their services accurately. What was apparent was that they all offer comprehensive identity theft protection coverage that is leaps and bounds beyond simple credit check monitoring.
Easy was the ability to compare the pricing of the different providers. One thing that was disappointing was how quickly the monthly rates grew when family members were added. Why charge so much extra for adding family members? These companies are selling a digital product. The product is not a tangible product that requires them purchase more supplies, build anything extra, ship it across country, etc. So why does the monthly charge double or more for adding a spouse and/or child(ren)?
After conducting my research of identity theft and identity theft protection providers, I reaffirmed my opinion that everyone should guard their family and themselves from identity theft. Choosing not to can be dangerous and reckless. We make decisions everyday to protect ourselves and our finances, so why do we not protect our identities to from identity thieves? The cost of monthly protection coverage is nothing compared to the amount stolen from victims every day. Is it worth the risk to go unprotected?
A clear price comparison chart can be found here. You can also review the comprehensive protection offered by this provider here.. Free reprint available from: Identity Theft Protection – Why Don’t You Have It?.
© for Uber Articles, 2012. |
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Post tags: blue id shield, compare identity theft providers, Credit Card Fraud, credit score montioring, hackers, hacking, Identity Theft, identity theft protection, identity theft protection providers, Security
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