Credit Monitoring is very affordable and with credit playing such a large part in everyone's lives monitoring your credit scores has become an absolute necessity.
Identity theft is on the rise, affecting more than 10 million victims annually. Those figures make it clear that monitoring your credit regularly is more important than ever. For the past decade, identity theft has topped the Federal Trade Commission's list of most common consumer complaints, so it is no surprise that credit monitoring is becoming increasingly popular with individuals throughout the United States.
Tech-savvy consumers are trying to shield themselves from the identity thieves and other financial predators that stalk the Internet and use new technology in numerous ways to victimize the unwary.
The Benefits of Credit Monitoring:
First of all, credit monitoring acts to keep identity thieves from doing significant damage to your credit. It works by tracking trends and changes in your personal data from the major credit bureaus.
If there is an aberration, such as a break from your normal pattern or a suspicious change in your personal data, the credit monitoring agency immediately notifies you. If the oddities are due to attempted identity theft, you can cancel your cards, change your accounts and take other preventive actions before the thief has the opportunity to do significant damage to your credit.
In addition to notifying you of potential malfeasance, many monitoring agencies offer services that will immediately alert financial institutions and law enforcement agencies about suspicious activity. The major credit monitoring companies even provide identity-theft insurance.
In addition to thwarting identity thieves, monitoring services are is useful because they allow you to keep a close eye on your credit. Each time a company or other agency reports new information to the credit bureaus, your credit report and scores change.
By closely monitoring these changes, you can see how different factors positively or negatively affect your credit scores. Armed with this information, you can avoid actions that significantly lower your scores. By keeping your report free of blemishes and your scores high, you can be sure that you will not run into credit-related problems when applying for loans, credit cards, employment, etc.
While many credit problems are caused by your mistakes, some are due to inaccurate reporting. By using a credit monitoring service to keep tabs on your reports, you can identify and fix these mistakes before they cause problems. In fact, many monitoring companies will assist in correcting any inaccuracies on your credit reports.
Given the benefits of credit monitoring, the price for the service is a great bargain. For a small monthly fee, you can protect yourself from the heartbreak of identity theft, take a positive step toward securing your financial future and correct any damaging false information that could hurt your financial prospects.
Early detection of Identity fraud is the key to a swift recovery. If you do not monitor your credit regularly, you will never know when your credit scores may be declining due to no fault of your own. |
