Identity Theft Insurance

[prohornblower]

Does anybody have this? Is this +EV to own? It seems like identity theft is becoming more epidemic in recent years with the advent of the internet (thanks Al Gore).

[Karmic]

Insurance is -EV but may reduce variance!

[Jeff311420]

Most credit cards and banks won't stick you with the bill. I did see a story of a guy down south that plainly stole people identities and took out 6 figure HE loans from banks.

[prohornblower]

I know that, but I've heard that your agent will actually go through all the hassle of clearing things up for you, so that you don't have to.

Not getting stuck with the bill still sucks if you have to sit on the phone all day with all of your creditors, etc.

[Lucky]

http://www.lifelock.com/

They're a big advertiser on Rush Limbaugh, making media rounds, anyone tried this yet? Looks like goo idea, esp if company is legitimate and 1 million guarantee is good.

[Newt_Buggs]

I've only heard of credit monitoring services offered by credit card companies. Maybe we are talking about the same thing? I wonder if the credit monitoring services are useful beyond insurance, such as detecting ID theft sooner and possibly limiting the damage.

I also wonder if doing a lot of online banking and having dozens of online accounts with sensitive information makes me and many other members on this forum much more vulnerable to ID theft than the average CC user, thus possibly making it +EV.

[binki]

Lifelock looks like a good program if it is true. They need to be in business a little longer for me to start paying them but having one of my credit card numbers stolen a while back I can tell you it is truely a pain to straighten it out when you have auto-debits to your card for your bills. I had to change all of that, get a new online account with the cc company, pay the final statement, change my cc number, start getting new statements, get my history transferred so it didn't look like a new card, and on and on and on.

That was just for 1 card being stolen.