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Recommended sites to shop for credit monitoring services:
CreditReport.com - Identity Theft Protection & Monitoring.
Score Direct - Get free monitoring alerts and credit repair tips.
Free Credit Report - Get your score in seconds and start monitoring your accounts.

Credit Monitoring

Credit monitoring is a very important tool to utilize to prevent identity theft and protect your credit report. Identity theft can happen to anyone at anytime. Even if you are extra careful about whom you give your credit card number and personal information out to, an identity theft hacker can infiltrate even the most secure websites and steal users credit card information.

Identity theft works like this: A criminal gets a hold of some of your personal information. It could be your social security number, bank account, credit card number, address, etc. In most cases, they use this information to open a new credit card under your name, or finance something under your name. They then max out the credit card and disappear, and you are left to foot the bill. I have heard stories of criminals ordering items online using a stolen credit card, and then going to the person's house the day of the delivery to steal it from the front door.

Falling victim to identity theft can cause all sorts of problems. First of all, it can really send your credit history downhill, since you won't want to pay for all the criminal's goodies. Your credit score will suffer and getting future loans, mortgages, or credit cards will be nearly impossible.

Thankfully, there are some services out there that can help monitor your credit report and let you know of anything fishy going on. They will notify you of everything new that goes on your credit report, such as change in address, new account opened or change in balance. If you sign up for one of these services and you are notified of something fishy, you can put a fraud alert on your account and help catch or at least stop the criminals before they do any damage to your credit and finances.

Just one prevented case of identity theft will pay for the service itself several times over. Not only is identity theft costly, but it could also eat up a lot of your time and really stress you out.

Here are some online resources available to get you started on shopping for your credit monitoring and identity theft protection services. Many of these offer free credit reports anytime you want!

Credit Report.com - CreditReport.com provides you with family protection for unlimited adults and children, proactive scanning for personal and financial information, protection of medical identity.
Score Direct - For less than the cost of one latte a month ($0.17 per day), Score Direct notifies customers of key changes, which could be signs of possible identity theft, to all three of their national credit reports! * Automatic, daily monitoring (NOT weekly, like some products) of your Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax credit reports * Email alerts of key changes to any of your 3 national credit reports * $10,000 Triple Alert Guarantee* * Dedicated fraud resolution representatives available for victims of identity theft
Free Credit Report - Get 3 Bureau Reports, 3 Credit Scores and Credit Monitoring for 30 days FREE! Free Credit Report Protections offers users: * Unlimited access to credit reports and scores. * $100K identity fraud expensive reimbursement paid for by Chase. * 24/7 credit card monitoring. * Personal representative to help in the event of fraud. * Automatic notification of changes to credit file. * Instant online delivery of report and scores.

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