Why Do People Use Credit Monitor Services?

Credit monitor services can be utilized as a way of alerting individuals that certain changes have occurred within their credit report, either via text message or email. Generally, most people use automatic credit monitor systems as a method of watching over their credit histories, as it can be useful in warning them about possible fraudulent activity, such as identity theft.

According to the Federal Trade Commission in the United States, it can take up to a year before consumers notice that their credit identity has been compromised and that somebody has stolen their identity and is obtaining debt using their name. By using a service to monitor credit, such as the one provided by Identity Guard® (http://www.identityguard.com), it is possible to detect identity theft much faster than if you were simply relying upon the information gleaned from annual credit reports.

What Does a Credit Monitor Service Do?

When you decide to use a credit monitor service, such as the Identity Guard® automatic credit monitor, you will be receiving alerts whenever certain changes occur in your credit reports. For a fee, your credit monitoring service of choice will be able to provide you with frequent information, although the nature of that information can differ slightly according to the company that you choose.

However, one important thing for consumers to understand about credit monitoring, is that it cannot promise that identity theft will not take place. Although accessing credit monitoring services can be a great way to help you keep a closer eye on the changes that may take place within your report, making the identification of problems more quickly, they will only help to protect you against identity theft - which means that you are able to detect its occurrence much earlier.

A good credit monitoring service is there to inform its customers of when certain changes take place within their credit files. Information is obtained through data from the three major credit bureaus. Oftentimes, the service will not provide actual credit scores but simply data computed based on the credit reports as a way to detect changes that could possibly be due to identity theft.