If you choose to purchase a credit monitoring service, you want to find the one that offers the most value for your money. For example, different monitoring services will provide notifications when certain activities take place. At the very least you want to be notified when the following items appear on your credit report:

• New Inquiries: Lots of companies will look at your credit report when considering you for credit. This includes pre-approved credit offers as well as inquiries during the course of opening a new line of credit. It’s best if you’re notified in all cases, just so you know who is looking at your credit history.
• New Accounts Opened: If you’re opening a new credit account, you’re going to know about it. But you also want to know if someone else tries to open an unauthorized account in your name.
• Changes In Your Credit File: Your credit report is dynamic, meaning it changes regularly according to what active creditors are saying about you, according to the amount of credit versus debt that you have, and according to changes in your life status (such as marriage or divorce). A monitoring service should catch changes that you’re not expecting, as well as those that you are.
• Changes of Address: You may not realize it, but every time you move a new entry is made on your credit report. A credit monitoring service should let you know of these changes, and if one pops up that’s not accurate, it’s a good sign there is either an error on your credit report or that your identity is being tampered with.
• Changes in Employment: Your employment is another item that’s tracked on your credit report, because it plays a big part in your credit worthiness. But it’s also an indicator of identity theft. If an employer that you don’t recognize shows up on your report, you should investigate immediately.

Know What Your Credit Monitoring Service is Monitoring

For all the good that credit monitoring services can do, the wrong one won’t help you at all. First, you can run into unexpected charges for services that aren’t included in the basic monthly fee you’re charged for the service. For example, most services charge extra if you want to also monitor your credit score or if you request more than the allotted number of printed credit reports included in the service.

Another factor to keep in mind is that many credit monitoring services may only monitor one credit reporting agency unless you specifically request that they monitor all three. Or, the credit monitoring service that you choose may not review your reports as frequently as you expect them to. When considering a credit monitoring service, ask specific questions about what is monitored and how often the review take place.

Finally, keep in mind that no one knows your credit or your history as well as you do. Even if you choose to have a credit monitoring service help you stay on top of your credit reports, you should plan to personally review your report at least twice a year. No one knows your credit or your history as well as you do, and you may catch items that monitoring services miss.

Monitoring your credit report, whether you do it yourself or hire a service to do it for, won’t stop identity theft. It might help you spot identity theft early so you can stop it before too much damage is done and recover from it quickly, but it won’t stop it. There is no magic shield that will stop identity theft, but you can certainly make it harder for a thief to steal your identity by protecting your identity at every opportunity.