Update: I used to think credit monitoring was a waste of money until I saw a 50 point drop from a wrong address

I always figured Credit Karma was good enough and why pay for something free. But last month I overheard a guy at my bank in Austin talking about how his identity got stolen and it took him 6 months to fix because he didn't catch it early. So I signed up for a $15 a month service just to test it out. Two weeks later I got an alert about an address change I never made in another state. I froze my credit right then and probably saved myself a ton of headaches. Has anyone else had luck catching fraud before it wrecked their score?

2 comments

2 Comments

emmafisher1mo ago

Glad you caught that in time. I had something similar happen a few years back when my credit card company flagged a charge for a plane ticket I never bought. Turned out someone had my card number and was testing it out. I was lucky they caught it before any real damage. It's scary how fast these things can happen and how much you have to rebuild if you don't notice it right away. Credit monitoring felt like a waste to me too until it actually proved its worth.

xenar141mo ago

Oh wow, that's a scary reminder of how fast it can happen... Actually I think credit monitoring catches things after the fact though, not before. Fraud alerts are what stop new accounts from being opened in your name. Credit monitoring just tells you somethings already happened so you can clean it up... Still good to have both if you can swing it. I learned that the hard way when I got a collections notice for a phone I never bought.