Critics Say Credit Monitoring Isn't Worth The Money

Online, June 1, 2012 (Newswire.com) - It is so important to keep your credit clean. But there are thousands of identity thieves out there just chomping at the bit to make sure it doesn't remain clean. In fact, these criminals would like nothing more than to take your good name - and your credit ¬- and smear it in the mud.

The experts say that in order to make sure your credit remains clean, you should monitor it regularly. Not everyone has time for this, so credit monitoring services have stepped up to say they will be more than happy to do the monitoring for you. But there are critics that say these services aren't all they are cracked up to be.

Credit monitoring initially sounds like a great way to make sure identity theft doesn't happen to you. But critics of the service say credit monitoring services are overpriced and not worth the money. These experts claim you can do the monitoring yourself, for free.

But again, who has time to monitor their credit daily? Or for that matter, who has the resources? You only get one free copy of your credit report a year; that's it. If you want any more, you have to pay for them. How is this helpful if your goal is to monitor your credit daily?

Credit monitoring services offer around-the-clock monitoring, and many of them give their customers 24/7 access to their credit reports. But credit monitoring can do so much more for you than this.

In addition to monitoring your credit all day, every day, credit monitoring services help consumers to more effectively manage their credit. This can be invaluable if a person has damaged credit, for whatever reason, and wishes to rebuild it. Since you have constant access to your credit report, you can find what needs to be fixed, and get it fixed. Then you can watch your report to be sure the changes are made and that your good credit is restored.

Probably the biggest criticism of credit monitoring services is that they don't prevent identity theft. Well - the fact is, no one, no service, no device can do this.

But by closely monitoring your credit report, you'll see very quickly if there is any questionable activity. Even better, with a credit monitoring agency, you'll be notified if anything untoward happens, any time of the day or night. So in other words, the credit monitors are watching for the bad guys when you can't be.

Sure, credit monitoring services can't stop identity theft from happening. But they sure can point it out quickly, enabling consumers to squelch it before any serious damage can be inflicted.