ID theft is a real thing. It's always a good reminder especially if you are using credit cards for FREE travel to utilize the services of various credit monitoring services. Even if you don't open credit cards on a regular basis, data breaches are becoming more and more common. For example, just recently, Toyota, Facebook, and Aerogarden announced breaches. Of course, in 2017, Equifax, one of the three credit reporting agencies, revealed that it had also been breached.
In 2018, it is estimated that 4.5 billion records were exposed and already in 2019, a collection of 2.7 billion records were found for sale on the dark web.
You might be surprised to find that credit card issuers will actually offer free monitoring services and free credit score checks. In 2014, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau urged all issuers to offer this service.
Bank of America, Discover, Capital One, Chase, Barclaycard, Citi and American Express each offer some credit information on at least some of their cards. Capital One and Discover offer free services and you don't even have to be a customer to use them.
Love that right after I applied for a Capital One Venture card, all of these emails showed up in the inbox. Remember even if you use a service or a few of them, monitor your credit cards for unusual activity and examine your credit report a few times a year.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.