We’ve all been there, flipping through TV channels late at night trying to find something to watch when you can’t sleep. You eventually come across an ad that warns about your information being on the “dark web” and urges you to sing up for their identity theft protection services.
These ads have been proven to be so effective that according to a recent study, thirty-six percent of consumers think that identity theft protection series can remove their personal information from the dark web and stop criminals from buying their personal information. Unfortunately, this is a false narrative that many companies in the identity theft services industry are telling. Consumers are conned into spending anywhere from $10 to $40 a month on a service that is downright misleading. “They’re referred to as identity theft protection services, but there’s no such thing—it doesn’t exist,” says Carrie Kerskie, CEO of the identity theft firm Griffin Force, “No one can protect you from becoming a victim of identity theft.”
So, what are you paying for then? Well, many of these identity theft protection companies assert that monitoring your identity will prevent such a catastrophe. There are three interesting things when it comes to monitoring: 1. You can monitor your own identity for free; 2. Monitoring won’t stop a criminal from using your identity; 3. The most devastating forms of identity theft, like medical identity theft and IRS tax fraud, cannot be monitored because there is a lack of uniformity within electronic databases.
These companies are also claiming that they can monitor and prevent your information from being bought and sold on the dark web. Let’s look at this in a pragmatic manner: all types of businesses, from mom-and-pop stores to large corporations, are being targeted for the information that they have on their customers because it’s valuable data. When a company has a data breach, expect that at least some, if not all, of their customers’ information has been stolen, including yours. Once the criminals have that information, the money is made by selling it on the dark web in large files for others to piece together an identity that they can exploit for financial gain. So, when you look at this logically with the sheer number of large data breaches, do you really think that your information is not already on the dark web? Do you think that these identity theft protection service companies that claim they’ll stop your information from being bought and sold on the dark web are doing your bidding? No. These are all false claims of hope.
Both credit monitoring and dark web surveillance are claims to prevent identity theft, which is impossible. What actually you need to have in place is a plan to fix the aftermath if you or a family member happens to fall victim to identity theft. This is where doing your due diligence really counts. You don’t want to be in a situation where you’ve just had your identity stolen and the “protection” company that you were told will fix your identity will actually only help YOU to fix your own identity. Your life is busy as it is, so why should you do the hard work on your own when you can have experts fix the damage for you in substantially less time with a 100% success rate? The answer is fully managed restoration, not resolution (AKA paying for nothing helpful).
The bottom line is that there’s really no better time than the present to become a LibertyID member for identity theft restoration protection. Our extended family plan covers the member, their spouse/partner, the member and spouse’s/partner’s parents and their children. We’re the experts at identity theft restoration, offering a 100% guaranteed identity theft restoration service. But, you have to get covered before there’s an incident. When you sign up for LibertyID, you’re covering yourself and your family from the fallout of identity theft and the potentially hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars lost due to identity theft.