With all the hundreds of quests from our survey, it’s a Hass Associates pleasure to answer those today! As what we have observed, identity theft is on the top where individuals get so interested. In fact, identity theft is the fastest growing crime in America, affecting on the average of 500,000 new victims each year, for the past decade. And so, we are glad to discuss this for you to be well- informed and have preventive measures, such as reducing and reporting scams and prosecuting scammers. These topics are followed by:
-online security and hardware concerns;
-earning money from legitimate work-at-home programs and work-at-home scams;
-credit cards and consumer issues;
-Nigerian and lottery scams;
-viruses and spyware;
-phishing scams;
-investment scams; and
-urban legends.
Obviously, many subscribers are interested in knowing out about new scams in these areas. This seems quite related to what we have been writing about. With all your exciting and terrific questions, Scam Busters will become even better. Today, we’ll answer five of your biggest questions about identity theft:
Answers to Our Subscribers’ 5 Biggest Identity Theft Protection Questions
1) How big of a problem is identity theft and how long does it typically take to recover it?
With victims’ losses amounting to about $1.1 billion a year, identity theft reached the top of FCS’s yearly list of consumer complaints for seven years in a row. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) estimates more than the average victims that devote 170 to 300 hours trying to recover his or her identity and to resolve theft-relates issues.
More than 110 million people in the US reported since January 2007 that have been packed letters from the different government branches, universities, corporations, banks, medical professionals, credit unions, no non-profit organizations and others notifying them that their personal information had either been stolen or lost. (Check out more statistics at our Identity Theft Information Centre where you can protect and recover your identity from violators.)
2) Is it necessary to have identity-theft protection?
Based from the survey we have conducted, 98% of respondents do not currently place fraud alert on their accounts like clockwork every ninety days and are not yet subscribed to LifeLock or one of their competitors) and that they should instead spend the money and have it done for them.
We found out that 19% of our respondents said that they used a company such as LifeLock to do these services for them. And, 83% of the remaining respondents said they NEVER place a fraud alert or security freeze on their accounts, although most recognize how important it is. Only about 2% actually place alerts regularly! The rest do it occasionally or rarely.
So, why does almost no one actually place these alerts for themselves? The reasons mentioned included that it was very difficult, they were too busy or things came up.
So, to answer many reader requests for more information about the two most popular identity-theft protection firms — LifeLock and TrustedID – we will focus on whether this protection is right for you. We will also look at which services you will receive from each firm, and for how much.
Read more: http://hassassociates-online.com/articles/2013/03/14/whats-new-in-identity-theft-protection/
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