Trusted ID Review
TrustedID offers a full suite of identity protection services centered on an innovative metric: the Identity Threat Score, a measure of a person’s risk of identity theft. From medical insurance monitoring to trolling black-market Web sites for compromised personal information, TrustedID works hard to secure their customers’ identities, and provide a number of services for doing so.
Plans and Features
TrustedID emphasizes proactive protection—a unique feature among identity protection companies, as many only take action after your identity has been compromised. The company offers a few different protection programs:
IDEssentials is TrustedID’s primary protection program, a 15-point system that provides credit monitoring, junk mail reductions, and anti-phishing measures, among other things. IDEssentials is also available in a family plan, so an entire household can be protected. Individual plans start at $125 per year, while the family plan is $240 per year, a little more in both cases if you decide to pay monthly.
CreditLock places a lock on your behalf with the three major credit reporting bureaus, making it impossible to issue a new loan or credit card to you. (You probably shouldn’t go this route if you’re buying a house in the near future, as your credit will be checked very frequently during this process. CreditLock involves a one-time fee that depends on your state of residence and your age.
• TrustedID offers employee benefits program for employers who want to offer ID protection to their workers, complete with special group-rate pricing. Quotes vary according to company size.
• The Data Breach Defense Service provides victim protection as well as a rapid response strategy for businesses, government agencies, and other organizations that experience data theft. Again, cost for this service depends on the size of the organization.
Strong Credentials & Proprietary Protection
TrustedID was founded by financial and credit experts who saw that consumer information was left largely unprotected. Even worse, once that information was stolen, those consumers had very little recourse or good information available to them. To provide this protection, TrustedID has come up with a proprietary suite of programs that monitor customer credit, troll black market Web sites for illicit consumer information, protect medical information from data breach, and otherwise ensure identity protection. The company also lobbies Congress for stronger identity protection measures, relying on its high-profile board of directors for political capital.