April 14,2009
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News: Protect Yourself from ‘Protection' as Well.
Credit card consumers are naturally concerned over identity theft as well, they should be. That sends many of them flocking toward paid protection services against this. But, are they getting their money's worth? Some are but others are not. CFA (Consumer Federation of America) tells us that "Most consumers will probably never be identity-theft victims, and the most common problem, fraudulent charges on an existing credit card, is easy for consumers to resolve themselves." It shouldn't surprise us that the most common type of identity theft is credit card fraud.
Many credit card consumers don't realize that their liability for fraudulent charges on a major credit card is only $50. In most cases it turns out to be zero liability. The card associations, aligned with the major lenders don't want panic to spread so they usually try and buffet their borrowers as much as they can. They try to make it so hassle-free that they immediately close compromised accounts and issue new credit cards right away to victims. Most contested charges are eliminated, as well.
But here we have credit card consumers running for shelter anyway by securing the services of a myriad of Identity-theft services and paying between $120 to $180 every year. Some people do well with that while others simply get ripped off. The people at CFA have tagged a few of the good deals. Two of those are : "ID Theft Assist" and "ID Watchdog". Of course, no one is perfect, but these companies go a long way in protecting consumers with such services as:
o Fraud monitoring and;
o Fixing the damage after the theft."Debix" are another good ID-theft company and are highly praised by the Symantec Corp. who recently awarded the victims of their credit card breach in India last week with a year's protection from Debix. For a more in-depth look at the good deals and bad deals from ID Theft security companies and plans, please read on and browse the article series entitled: " Protection w/o a Rip-off ".