6 Reasons Why Identity Theft Protection is Key to Staying Ahead of Cyber Criminals

The modern-age financial system is a complex web of amenities, ranging from traditional bank accounts to new-age credit cards, e-wallets, and more. Since we tend to use most of these, it’s very easy to lose track of where our personal information lives, leaving it exposed for cybercriminals to obtain and conduct fraudulent activities.

This is usually how identity theft occurs—hackers try to obtain your personally identifiable information (PII) from your credit card or bank account data. While you cannot stop this from happening completely, taking safety measures like getting the best identity theft protection service adds an extra layer of security and decreases the likelihood of your PII getting stolen. Let’s break this down.

1. Monitoring Your Financial Data Continuously
   Digital information moves at light speed, meaning even the highest vigilance may not be enough to detect fraud before it has happened. This is where automation comes into play, where you can have another set of eyes always monitoring your accounts for suspicious activities, which is what an identity theft protection service does. It will continuously monitor your accounts and provide alerts as soon as there’s any suspicious activity, such as a new credit card application or bank account opening that you haven’t authorized.

   

2. Monitoring Your Credit Profile
   It’s all too common for fraudsters to use stolen information (names, passwords, Social Security numbers, etc.) to get credit cards and loans in the names of the victims. Identity theft protection services are one of the best ways to tackle this, as they continuously monitor your credit profiles and alert you proactively about unfamiliar activities like new entries on your credit report.
3. Monitoring the Dark Web
   The dark web is essentially where criminals traffic stolen data. It’s a network of illegal websites inaccessible to regular web browsers, and people don’t realize how common it is for their data to pop up on the dark web after exposures like a data breach. An identity theft protection platform will notify you if your data is exposed on a dark web site. A reputable identity protection service monitors the dark web 24×7 to check if your information appears on any such website, allowing you to take prompt action and update security settings right away.

   

4. Removal from Data Broker Lists
   Data brokers have a notorious reputation for scraping websites, social media, and public records to build files on people—files of personal information to sell to government agencies, marketers, and sometimes even scammers. As a citizen, you can request data brokers to remove your data, but there are thousands of them, and they are rarely easygoing. Modern identity theft protection solutions provide data broker removal services. Meaning, they can scan databases for the presence of your information and send takedown requests, instead of you having to do this entire process manually.
5. Criminal Record Alerts
   It’s not uncommon for fraudsters to use victims’ stolen identities when being arrested. And it’s almost impossible for you to know if your identity has been used, and you will usually be notified by authorities much later. A robust identity theft protection service will offer criminal records monitoring to monitor if your identity gets linked to a criminal record, such as a jail intake or an arrest. If it does, you will be notified immediately and can react promptly to clear your name.

   

6. Insurance and Coverage
   If you unfortunately do fall prey to identity theft criminals, the right protection service will offer coverage—typically of up to $1 million—to reimburse expenses you incur, such as legal fees, miscellaneous charges, lost wages, or dependent care needed while working on the theft case. Such tools also provide online fraud coverage to reimburse you up to a pre-defined amount, in case of scenarios like losing money to fraudulent sites or transferring money to an impersonator.

Cyber criminals are becoming smarter, which is why you need to upgrade your own safety as well. When it comes to your financial information, you can’t leave any stone unturned. Be cautious with transactions, always stay on top of your payments and applicable bank or credit charges, and invest in a reliable identity theft protection service for data monitoring and timely action.