Responding to the millions of identity theft claims made by consumers every year, Affinion Security Center, announced the availability of its most comprehensive identity theft protection solution to date, IdentitySecure. IdentitySecure provides members with a combination of powerful services to protect personal information and financial data. The service is available to businesses seeking to protect their customers from identity theft, and direct to consumers at www.identitysecure.com.
Each feature of the IdentitySecure solution is designed to address the modern threats facing consumers, threats that can't be adequately monitored by an average, or even technology-savvy, individual. With risk of exposure through corporate data breaches, stolen computers and phishing scams, more than 27.3 million Americans have been victims of identity theft in the last five years.
The rising number of corporate hacks and breaches may mean even more Americans are at risk each year. The recent identity theft ring indicted in Boston captured at least 40 million data records from popular retailers such as TJ Maxx. These increasingly common data breaches expose consumer records that could include large amounts of sensitive personal and financial data that are stolen by thieves and then used to make fraudulent purchases or sold to other criminals.
Consumers are very concerned about identity theft. According to a recent survey of 1,000 people conducted by Affinion Security Center, 80 percent of respondents were very concerned about having their identities stolen, and one in four people were most concerned that their data would be leaked by a major retailer who retained their credit card information from a recent transaction. IdentitySecure was developed with these threats in mind.
The IdentitySecure service includes features such as monitoring of social security numbers and public records to detect criminal activity, frequent data sweeps of the internet for personal information, credit monitoring, and monitoring of underground chat rooms that buy and sell personal information.
While breaches are often unavoidable, IdentitySecure provides the proactive searches, early detection and recovery assistance. Purchasing all of these stand-alone services could easily cost more than $40 per month, but an individual subscription to IdentitySecure is available for $1 for the first month and only $14.99 each additional month.
"Unfortunately, identity theft is becoming very common in our society, and even being more careful with credit cards and monitoring one's credit report cannot protect against the types of hacking and data breaches that are occurring every day," said Tom Rusin, CEO of Affinion Security Center. "With IdentitySecure we believe that we can give consumers the best end-to-end protection and detection possible against the many different types of identity theft."
Solutions that offer only credit monitoring and fraud alerts address only a small portion of the identity theft problem while IdentitySecure offers a cost-effective solution for people seeking comprehensive protection against the multitude of threats. IdentitySecure has already been selected as the solution of choice for several major banks and insurance providers who are recommending the enhanced protection to their customers.
IdentitySecure Protection includes the following services:
- CardCops monitoring of the internet and offshore chat rooms for up to 10 credit/debit cards in the subscriber's name.
- Frequent public records searches to discover criminal activity associated with the subscriber's name or address.
- DataSweep automated "sweep" of top internet directories and web search engines for members' personal contact information including address and phone numbers.
- Personalized fraud protection dashboard allows members to track important activities associated with their identity at one secure, central location.
- Computer Security including software enhancements and PC Damage protection.
- Identity theft insurance with coverage increased from $10,000 to $25,000 with no deductible. Not available to New York state residents.
- Fraud Assist Toolbox powered by Truston, an online fraud resolution service that provides step-by-step instructions on how to address different types of fraud and sends convenient date reminder emails to keep the process on track (available shortly). Truston recently received a four-star rating from PC Magazine.
- Comprehensive neighborhood reports including demographics, school ratings, crime statistics and pollution measurements for towns across America.
- FCRA trained identity fraud solution specialist helps victims to resolve any case of fraud.
For more information, please visit www.affinionsecuritycenter.com.
About Affinion Security Center
Affinion Security Center, a division of Norwalk, Connecticut-based Affinion Group, is a premier security, credit monitoring and identity theft protection innovator with nearly 35 years of global experience. It launched HotLine, a leading ID theft, credit card, fraud protection and security service in 1969.
PrivacyGuard, a comprehensive membership credit monitoring product which was created in 1992, remains one of the most widely used in the U.S. In 2006, ID Secure, a sophisticated tool that uses leading-edge public records, Social Security number and credit monitoring technology to fight ID theft, was born. Another ID theft protection service in Affinion's growing security business is PC SafetyPlus, an identity theft software service that protects members with a personal firewall to thwart hackers and other online ID threats.
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