Each fraud alert deactivates itself on a preset expiration date. You can have a fraud alert lifted before its expiration date if you wish, but you must contact each credit bureau individually to do so. In a nutshell, non-credit loans include payday and quick-cash loans that don’t require a credit inquiry or social security number to secure.
IDnotify Plans and Prices
One of the only disappointments is that IDnotify does not offer a free option. However, it does offer free trials occasionally on a promotional basis. If you happen to see promotions like that, that would be the best time to try out IDnotify’s services. Overall, we liked the interface and the pricing is certainly not exorbitant.
Data safety
- Again, since we signed up for the top-tier plan, we saw our credit scores from all three bureaus, which saved us from having to go to each individual website.
- Although our credit scores were good, we wanted to see how we could make them even better, so we clicked on Score Simulator in the credit center.
- We did like the “why monitor this” tabs for each item, though.
- According to IDnotify’s privacy they will never sell or share our personal information for marketing purposes, a huge relief.
- On the first page, we entered some basic information to set up our account.
Victims of identity theft and fraud can spend a lot of money and countless hours recovering — that is if they aren’t protected. Do you have a vague sense that your personal information isn’t safe? That someone could be using your Social Security number to be opening a credit card as we speak?
A good pick for Identity Theft protection especially if you use TurboTax
We don’t typically see this from the average ID theft protection service out there. Under Change of Address Monitoring, we could take a idnotify look at our report. This function monitors changes in address that have been processed through the United States Postal Service (USPS).
Ratings and Reviews
https://turbo-tax.org/ provided us with several scenarios, along with how much they would affect our credit scores. It was awesome to see that just by getting our credit card and retail accounts down to $0, our credit score could raise 16 points to 758, which is remarkable. This service can be a useful tool in helping prevent further exposure of information. By monitoring your personal and financial information we can alert you to internet exposures and provide recommendations on what to do to keep you safe for further exposure. Your credit score may be different among the 3 credit bureaus – Experian, Equifax and TransUnion because each bureau is independent and contains unique data regarding your credit history. Requesting a fraud alert at any one of the credit bureaus automatically applies alerts to your credit files at all three bureaus.
As far as using IDnotify goes, we really only opened the app or went to the IDnotify site on our desktop when we received notifications. For example, when we paid off a hefty chunk of an old credit card, IDnotify let us know via a push notification that our credit score changed. Once we went on the desktop site, as you can see above, we clicked on the credit center to view our new score, which was thankfully better than it had been a few days ago. Again, since we signed up for the top-tier plan, we saw our credit scores from all three bureaus, which saved us from having to go to each individual website. We didn’t find a single unique feature with IDnotify, especially compared to Experian IdentityWorks and some of the other leaders in the identity theft protection field. That left us with a feeling that this is more of a ‘No frills,’ or generic offering than we would have liked.
Any technical user who looks below the surface of IDnotify and IdentityWorks will find that both products likely use the same codebase. They function about the same, although IDnotify has a friendlier, lighter look with more white space and a spacious look and feel. You can find the basics easily enough in tabs along the top. Maybe it’s even the exact same product but the cleaner interface with IDnotify is our preference, and makes it easier to use than IdentityWorks.
There are a lot of ways for your personal information to go amiss online. We tested out the Premier Plan from IDnotify, which provided comprehensive identity theft protection. If you’re looking to protect your whole family, you’re in luck.
It’s worth mentioning one of the most compelling reasons to consider IDnotify, however. If you sign up for TurboTax and choose the Plus, Max, or Premium plans, then IDnotify is included for free for the entire year – a big savings from the monthly pricing plans. There is a caveat in that the window for adding these plans is not quite open yet – as, TurboTax will likely offer IDnotify again as part of the 2021 tax year. We recommend checking the TurboTax site to see if that’s the case and if IDnotify is part of the bundles. It’s quite similar to Experian IdentityWorks, although the features, pricing, and plans are slightly different.