The Sounding Board

I am a big believer (as many of my readers, clients, and colleagues already know) in preventing headaches before they start. No, I don’t mean that literally (although, for those of us who suffer regular headaches, there’s value in learning how to prevent them too.) What I’m talking about are those headaches - that b.s. - we sometimes set ourselves up for without realizing it. Not having enough insurance when we need it, not having the right business processes in place to handle hiccups, not safe guarding ourselves enough from theft, etc. Those are the kinds of headaches that are easier to prevent before they ever have a chance to start. I’ve posted about this sort of thing before (preventing unnecessary headaches in your life, that is.) This is another one of those an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure kind of posts. And believe me, I mean it when I say that some things you’re much better off paying someone else to deal with so that you never have to.

What am I talking about, you might ask? Today, I’m specifically talking about identity theft and some of the headaches it can cause and what you can do to cure that headache before you even get it.

I learned some of these lessons the really hard way myself. Last summer I found myself the victim of identity theft. I learned quickly and most unpleasantly what a headache that can be. Granted, my invisible identity marauder didn’t get far before I pulled the carpet out from under them, but it still was a huge pain to deal with (not to mention coming at the worst possible time!) My oldest daughter called home with an emergency situation. To sum it up, I needed to get her on a plane home asap. I went online, found a great fare, and tried to purchase her ticket, only to find out that not just one, but two of my accounts had been zapped for almost $8,000 worth of unauthorized charges! I couldn’t so much as buy my daughter a bag of peanuts, much less get her on a plane heading home!

I was lucky in that my bank(s) provide for fraud protection on my cards. I had the $$ back within 48 hours, but spent the next few weeks finding out all the things I still had to do. Things like changing ALL of my bank accounts, notifying the credit bureaus, etc. You would not believe all the time I had to spend on the phone - just to find out what I needed to do to protect myself from further issues! Not to mention the time to actually get the stuff done. Then, to add insult to injury just a few weeks later, I found out that the fraud alerts I filed with the credit bureaus start expiring after 90 days. I’ll be darned if the little devils didn’t try it again when the alerts dropped off! (No one told me I had to keep filing those alerts on a regular basis!) What a pain in the neck!

Now I have a really bad habit (okay, not really bad, per se, but you get the idea) of checking ALL of my accounts online every single day. Had I been a little bit more diligent last summer, I might have caught the unauthorized charges before they accumulated to such a high amount. I don’t ever want to get caught with my proverbial pants down again - EVER. (Talk about embarrassment when I had to ask a friend to put my daughter’s plane ticket on their credit card so we could get her home! Ugh!)

Now, like most of us, I started seeing those commercials last year about LifeLock. You know - the ones where the guy’s driving through the city in a semi truck with his Social Security number written all over the side of the truck? I thought to myself - shoot, I can do all that stuff myself for free. Why am I going to pay someone else to do something for me when I can do it free on my own? Yeah, okay. After having done it all on my own once now? I think I’d rather pay someone else to deal with it all for me next time, thank you. I just don’t have the time or energy to deal with the hassles and drain on my mental space.

So, I started taking a second look at LifeLock. I was surprised by what I learned from browsing their site. First of all, it only costs $10 a month (or $110 a year.) Wow! That’s pretty cheap peace of mind. (And after having been through for myself what they offer to deal with for you? Definitely worth the $$!!) Plus, they back up what they say with a $1,000,000 guarantee. So, that means that any of my cards/accounts that don’t offer fraud protection already - it’s okay. I’m covered through LifeLock.

I was even more impressed to see some of the companies who have partnered with LifeLock to offer protection to their members/customers. Man! They’ve grown by leaps and bounds over the past year or so! I’m not talking little Mom & Pop companies, either. I’m talking about groups like AAA, Ident-A-Kid, US Airways - big companies who have chosen to offer LifeLock services to their members at a discounted rate. That says alot to me that these big companies think enough about the services offered that they want to be able to offer LifeLock to their members/customers. It also shows how big a market there is and how needed companies who offer identity protection services are. Take a look at some of the press releases on the LifeLock website & you’ll see what I mean.

Yup! I will definitely sign myself up for their services so I don’t ever have to deal with that headache again. I’m also going to make sure I’m covered with their WalletLock service. The time-saving ability to have someone else call all my card companies, banks, the DMV, etc. if my wallet’s ever lost or stolen? Oh yeah. Definitely a feature I want. (Too bad it doesn’t cover any cash that was in my wallet, but hey. You can’t have everything, right?)

Oh! And if you live in the Tempe, AZ area? They’re hiring too! Just go to the LifeLock jobs section of their site and you can see the kinds of positions they have open…if anyone’s looking. I like what the company stands for, so I’d be a little more inclined (if I was still in the employee market) to apply for a job with a company whose products/business ethics are in line with mine. Just thought I’d pass that along for any of my readers out there who are considering going back to a 9-5.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 26th, 2008 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Personal time. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.