Identity Theft Protection

These days, identity theft protection strategies and tools are important ways to help protect your Social Security number and other personal information. A stolen identity can cost you money and time as you may have to hire professionals and work with credit bureaus to clear your good name. Identity thieves can use your information to open fraudulent credit card accounts that can show up on your credit report and hurt your credit score. ID thieves can even commit medical identity theft. By just monitoring your credit, you could miss certain identity threats. LifeLock sees more†, like if your personal information is sold on the dark web. And if you are a victim, LifeLock’s ID protection helps with identity restoration and even lost wallet coverage.

S.C. taxpayers can check their eligibility for coverage and sign up on the department’s website. The coverage, offered through CSID, has nothing to do with the recent data breach at the Equifax credit-reporting behemoth. Be the first to know. No one covers what is happening in our community better than we do.

And with a digital subscription, you'll never miss a local story. Instead, it is part of the state’s promise to provide free credit monitoring to potential victims of a 2012 hacking that struck the Revenue Department. That intrusion compromised the personal and financial information of about 6 million S.C. 16.4 million to offer free credit monitoring to about 220,000 people in connection with that breach. However, that number is down dramatically from the nearly 1.5 million who signed up the first year the service was offered.

The state’s five-year contract with CSID to provide coverage to South Carolinians runs out in October 2018, meaning S.C. South Carolina offers free credit monitoring through CSID for state taxpayers affected by a 2012 Revenue Department data breach. Relax. Your coverage with CSID will renew automatically. It’s not too late. Check your eligibility and sign up here at the S.C. Pro tips: When signing up, use your address in late 2012, when the breach occurred.

You have made a very wise financial decision the decision to monitor your credit reports. Now you are left with the dilemma of which service to choose, There are hundreds of credit monitoring services out there, here are some tips to help you find the best one for your needs.

Credit monitoring can vary in price dramatically and many times for no obvious reasons. 29.95 per month. You will also see many advertised for "Free" be very careful and read the fine print. The "Free" is usually the first month is free, then they bill you every month, and these ones are usually the most expensive ones.

Most of the reputable companies will give you a short no obligation trial period; this is usually around a week. 15 dollar range. This will give you the protection and features you need for the best price. As with price, the features which are included in your credit monitoring service will also vary widely. The most basic services will only include your single credit report (there are three credit reports for every consumer) and they will not include a credit score, let alone all three credit scores.

You will want to make sure you are monitoring all three credit reports, as information on them can vary. The next important feature is your credit scores, as mentioned above you will want a service that provides you with at least one credit score, but having all three shown will even be better.

Since information varies in each report, your credit scores will also vary. You will also want to take notice of how often they credit monitoring service will send out alerts to the changes on your credit reports. I would highly recommend a service that reports every 24 hours if there is a change on any of your credit reports.

This is very important because if there is fraudulent activity on your credit reports you will want to make sure you react as quickly as possible. There can be many other features, but I consider these to be the highest priority's when selecting a credit monitoring service. Other features can include various financial calculators, budget helpers, and other tools to help you with your personal finance.

The last and perhaps the most important thing to look for is easy to read data. The data these companies receive from the credit bureaus is in a jumbled mess which can be very hard to read, and even harder to make sense out of. You will want your data to be presented in a easy to understand way, and with explanations as to what it all means.