- Insurance, counseling, a fire extinguisher,
identity theft protection.
What do all of these things share in common?
Well frankly, they all feel like a huge waste of money.
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Welcome to All things Secured, my name is Josh.
And I want to answer this question
for you right off the bat,
and the answer is no,
most people don't need identity theft protection.
As long as you're not at high risk,
you're willing to monitor your own data,
and you don't mind the inconvenience of a credit freeze.
I'm going to explain exactly what I mean
throughout this video and if you stick with me to the end,
I'll share with you some steps that you can take
that are 100% free, no monthly or annual subscription,
that will accomplish a lot of what you need
in terms of protection.
But I also admit that I personally pay for identity
and credit monitoring for me and my family,
but I've been hacked in the past,
so I'm considered high risk,
and therefore a perfect candidate for this kind of service.
The problem I see is that online security
and the online fraud it's supposed to protect you from,
share one unfortunate characteristic,
at least in my opinion.
They both prey on our emotions of fear and worry.
This is a marketing trend I'm seeing throughout
a lot of the online security industry,
whether that's at a virus, virtual private networks,
file encryption, and so on.
Sadly though, fear is often the one thing
that motivates us to take any kind of action
to protect ourselves, so I'm hoping right now
that as you're watching this video,
it's not because you're a victim of identity theft,
but because you're always looking for proactive steps
that you might need to take to protect the identity
of you and or your family.
And the important question we're asking here
is whether or not you need to pay
for identity theft protection?
And we're going to answer that in three parts,
first, I'm going to explain
what these monitoring services provide,
second, I want to describe the exact type of person
that would be a good fit for these services,
and then finally, we'll end by, as I said earlier,
a few free steps that you can take right now,
whether or not you decide identity and credit monitoring
is right for you.
And before I continue on, make sure you're subscribed
to this All Things Secured YouTube channel,
because these are the kinds of helpful videos
that are published every week to make sure
you're up to date on the best online security practices.
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There are number of companies
that offer identity and credit monitoring services,
we're talking about IdentityForce, which is what I use,
LifeLock, Identity Guard, McAfee and many, many others.
Most of what these companies provide
can be summed up in three parts,
monitoring, alerting and recovering.
In regard to monitoring,
they'll keep an eye on a lot of different information
that could be harmful to you,
including your change of address monitoring,
which can be used to get access to your statements, bills,
and other financial records.
They'll monitor court records, credit reports, the dark web,
which is just another term for the online black market
for your personal information.
Sex offender registries, which you definitely
don't want your name accidentally appearing on,
and then of course, social media.
Let's be brutally honest here,
you've made it this far in life
without that level of monitoring.
So again, we're coming up against that fine line
between fear and proactive security,
but we've all had that family member or friend
who's had someone create an imposter social media account,
and the reality is whether you realize it or not,
with the various security breaches
that have happened over the past few years,
there is a very high likelihood
that some of your information
is floating around the internet somewhere.
And 95% of the time, it leads to nothing.
But that's where the second part of alerting comes in,
I get alerts from IdentityForce anytime they think
my data has been found in a place it shouldn't be.
But most of the time it's either a false alarm
or it is in fact me, but the alerts give me the ability
to see what is happening.
And finally, the part that I hope
none of you ever have to worry about,
these companies offer recovery services
in the event that your identity or credit is stolen.
In most cases, this includes up to $1 million
in insurance policy which may sound like a lot,
but you have to keep in mind that in 2019
identity fraud resulted in $16.9 billion lost,
and it impacted 5.1% of consumers.
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That's what these services offer,
but who would actually benefit from using them?
The best way to answer this is to ask you another question,
do you need a home security alarm system?
Well, if you live in a neighborhood
with a good community watchdog program,
you're home a lot, or you put up your own cameras,
well, then the answer is that you don't.
Well, in the same way with your credit and identity,
if you're not at high risk,
meaning you haven't had your identity stolen in the past,
and you're willing to self monitor,
there's not much that these companies do
that you can't do yourself for free.
But the unfortunate reality is a lot of us are lazy,
I mean, come on, when was the last time
that you checked your credit report?
If the answer to that was anything more than
let's say even a year ago,
you either need to make some changes
in your personal monitoring habits,
or you do in fact need an identity monitoring service.
This goes for any age person,
but it becomes more and more important the older you get,
or the more that you have to lose.
So if you fit in those categories,
or know that you won't be vigilant to monitor
your own data and credit, then yes,
I suggest you consider an identity monitoring service.
I've listed the one I use and the others I recommend
in the description below this video.
For everyone else who's willing to do
a bit of DIY monitoring, this next section is for you.
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Believe it or not, you have the ability
to do your own identity and credit monitoring.
It starts with your credit report,
which for US citizens is something you have free access to.
You can request one free credit report
from the three major credit bureaus once a year,
which means that if you space it out
to once every four months,
you can access a fairly up-to-date view
of your credit profile.
In addition to this, you can also place what's known
as a credit freeze with each of these credit bureaus,
and that's something that even a credit monitoring service
can't do for you.
When you apply for a loan or a credit card,
the lender or bank will do What's known as a credit inquiry,
where they'll ask the credit bureaus
about your financial history.
If you put up a credit freeze,
these applications will be automatically denied.
It's inconvenient for you if you actually do want to apply
for some sort of credit,
I mean, you just have to jump through a few more hoops,
but it's basically the best way to prevent credit fraud
on your account.
You can find more resources on how to set up a credit freeze
in the description of this video.
Finally, another excellent DIY method
to prevent identity theft is using a password manager.
Our passwords are often the weakest link
in our online security,
and a password manager app does a good job of fixing that.
There are free options, like Bit Warden that I like,
but if you go for something like 1Password,
which is what I use on a daily basis,
they even include dark web monitoring
that I was talking about earlier.
If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up,
make sure you check out all the links
and additional resources in the video description below.
I wish you the best keeping all things secured.