More than 27 million people have been victimized by identity theft in the past five years, spending nearly $5 billion to restore their credit. Identity theft has become one of the most popular white-collar crimes, and this year alone, the identities of more than a half million people will be taken. The headlines are full of these crimes.
Yet it often takes several weeks or even months for the victim to discover the crime. It most often happens when the victim is turned down for a loan or credit card, despite the good credit he or she has built.
What can a person do to prevent this? And how does this type of theft happen so easily?
One of the easiest ways thieves obtain information is through using a change of address. By diverting a person’s mail to any other address, the thief then has access to all sorts of personal information, including credit card and bank account numbers. This information can be used to open new accounts or drain existing ones.
Thieves also use the information to create new identities to connect new utility services, gain employment, or buy or rent a home. This can go undetected for years, because the victim never receives any kind of bill notification.
But LifeLock can help. Identity SDS™ provides complete protection service by searching public records of all addresses associated with your name or other personal information. LifeLock can go back as far as 25 years, so that you can be sure every address is valid.
Identity SDS™ works with LifeLock’s TrueAddress™, which monitors national databases in search of address changes from your current address. If any such activity is found, you will be notified immediately so that you can take corrective action.
LifeLock offers these services as part of a suite of services in its LifeLock Command Center, which includes eRecon™, which searches the Web for an illegal selling or trading of your information.
And this all comes with a $1 Million Total Service Guarantee, which means that if you ever fall victim to identity theft as a LifeLock customer, LifeLock will spend up to $1,000,000 to make things right.
Now that’s a headline.
