Do you protect your good name and your credit from criminal elements?
What would happen right now if someone tried to get a loan or a credit card in your name?
Has anyone ever tried to impersonate you to gain access to your private records?
These are questions we all should be asking, and it doesn't matter where in the world we live or which place we call home. Identity thieves are thick and rich because we are too trusting of a credit and banking system that too easily allows the bad elements to rip us off.
Restoring our good name after an identity theft can take a lot of time and effort to make things right again and, unfortunately, many of the banks and credit reporting agencies treat you as the criminal instead of the actual criminal when an identity theft occurs.
What can you do about it?
Enter Debix.
Debix is an identity protection service that I have been using for six months. I am not being paid for this review and there is no link to Debix in this review. If what I say interests you, Debix is easy enough to find on your own. I'm sharing this information with you now because I like to celebrate genius ideas.
The Debix solution -- for $99.00 USD a year -- is one of the many protections I now have in place to protect my good name and my identity and my credit worthiness.
Debix -- like no other identity theft solution out there -- cuts off the bad guys before they can even start to rip you off by denying their false credit application in your name during the approval stage.
When Debix automatically sets a fraud alert on your behalf with all of the credit agencies every three months, the bad guys have a much harder time impersonating you to get money in your name.
Here's how Debix compares with other identity theft prevention services:
What I like most about Debix is that the buy guys are cut off right at the application stage. Most identity thefts are discovered only after the credit has been provided and then the real person must go back and cancel out those fraudulently acquired loans and credit cards. It's a real mess.
With Debix, you directly approve or deny any and all credit taken out in your name.
Debix was hired by the
State of Connecticut to protect its citizens and employees after one of their laptops was stolen: Over 400,000 names and identification bits were on that laptop! If Debix is good enough for Connecticut, it's good enough for me.
Do you worry about identity theft?
If you do not live in the USA, what sort of native protections do you have in place to try to prevent identity theft? Does your government protect you, or must you seek third party protection like Debix? What steps have you taken to preserve your good name and credit record?
I had no idea these programs were necessary.
I was surprised to learn of these programs as well, Anne. I happened to stumble upon the CT story a while back and I wondered what a Debix was and I did some research and found a great article about these protection services in the NYTimes, I think, and it just hit me in the gut as being something totally sensible and necessary to add to your armament in an ongoing effort to try to stop bad intentions.
I will do research on this.
I suspect that if I had a good credit record I would want to protect it and this looks like and excellent way to do so.
As mine is not very pretty - any identity thief wouldn't get very far applying for credit in my name!
Let me know if you need help, Anne! Remember these ID protectors do much more proactive work than just getting a regular credit report from The Big Three.
Nicola!
Ha! Now that's funny! How did your credit get damaged?
Credit ratings in the USA are strange things. They are variant and unreliable and it is rare when all three of the big companies agree on your score. It's all a big numbers game with no way to win, really. It is in everyone's interest but yours to give you a low score because then the banks and their ilk can charge you a higher interest rate.
You'd be surprised what the baddies can do. They might hit you up for a series of $200 loans in your name just like the new theft ieal in hotels now is to pull only one credit card from your wallet instead of stealing the whole thing. They kill you in little pieces now instead of trying to swallow you whole.
I'm so glad that I'm done with credit cards. :) This sounds like a good deal, though. I'm most likely going to sign right up for it. The cost of identity theft is much greater than $99! :o
Hello Gordon!
You're smart to sign up -- it's a magical thing, really. So smart. So simple.
You may be done with credit cards -- wonderful for you -- but even greater for the baddies because they can try to clean you out since you have no revolving credit and they can wipe you out before you know you were hit!
You're right $99 a year is nothing compared to the man hours you have to heft cleaning up the mess of an identity theft.
Short answer 3 kids through private education and home care bills for my mother. Still paying for both!
I do not have a credit card and anyone applying for a loan from this address would get laughed at.
Yipes! I get it now, Nicola. Yeah, that's rough stuff.
I suppose the best way to ruin the wants of the identity thieves is to ruin your credit all on your own first. :mrgreen: Oh, and that's free, too. :wink:
You got it - two less things to worry about - the stress of a credit card and the stress of ID theft.
Actually on a more serious note - I think there is going to be a financial collapse/squeeze/stock market crash/downturn this year. I think I would add that to your predictions.
Nicola --
I actually know people who keep their credit awful to deter anyone trying to steal their identity. They were never really good with money things and so their protection is in their credit slothiness. :wink:
Oh, and yes, Nicola, you're right about financial empires folding in 2008. It will be a desperate time. The Olympics are in China this year. It will be a China revolution all over again as they take the world stage and buy the rest of the world's debt.
Think this is also the year the Olympics get tarnished beyond repair ............ just in time for the UK to host the next time around!
That's a wild take on the Olympics, Nicola. I think it will the cleanest Olympics ever. The Chinese will enforce the law and protect everyone and the drug testing will be brutal and unforgiving. They can't afford any more Marion Jones stories or the whole thing really will be finished as a ruse!