iDEFENCE Identity Theft Defence? Anyone use?

[eblend]

Hey guys,

Wife ordered new cheques from PC financial and in the cheques there was a little insert that says "Your cheque Order includes FREE Identity Theft Prevention Services. Call Now to Activate" and gives a 1800 number to call.

I looked up the company and they appear they list some stuff on their site, and state that they work with a large number of canadian financial institutions.

Their site says the following:
"Davis + Henderson® has been a leader in the delivery of secure financial products through our partnerships with Canada's major banks and other leading financial institutions for well over 100 years. When the problem of identity theft first emerged, we leveraged our considerable experience to create IDefence®, our identity theft solution currently available to millions of Canadians."

The following IDefence solutions and services exceed $300 in annual value and are available FREE to Davis + Henderson customers:

Card monitoring - Using web crawling technology, we'll monitor Internet chat rooms and be able to alert you in real time if your credit or debit cards have been compromised. More...

Restoration - If you do become a victim of identity theft, our team of experts will guide you through the process of getting your affairs back in order. More...

SecureVault™ - Securely store and manage your digital document files with our password-protected and encrypted online data storage service. More...

Filing Cabinet software - Download our software and use it to organize documents on your own computer. More..

PDF Converter - Convert any web page, email or document into a locked PDF document. More..."

Digging in a little bit more, under "Card Monitoring" it says that the free component can monitor up to 10 credit/debit cards for 18 month, so thats the catch, however, I wonder if its still worth it?

Wanted to see if anyone was a customer and has any feedback?

Thanks!

[A790]

Waste of money...

And free shit is never free.

[Feruk]

I'm sure it's free for a "limited trial" (18 months seems long), but just in case you wanna keep it, they'll likely ask for your credit card to keep charging you after the trial. Then it becomes a pain as you forget to cancel. Nobody sells stuff that's both good and free.

As for the actual service, do you need it? Don't you glance through your own reciepts? Doesn't sound like they'd be doing much more than that for free. Also, your credit card already protects you from fraud charges, and there's no reason to be using a debit card to buy stuff any more (no points). Also, why the heck would they offer you a PDF cnverter? Silly.

Be smart about giving out personal info (NEVER give out your SIN over the phone for example) and you'll be fine. Getting products like this is the equivalent of tin foiling your head to protect against the aliens.

[tpurcell4]

It's a secure service, which were are able to offer as well. I believe it is the first 2 or 3 years that are free for the basic monitoring package.

Identity theft can be a hassle, and I have had friends and clients have their credit ruined over a couple hundred dollars, and make them ineligible to financing of any kind until they got this problem fixed which can take a several months to a few years.

That said, is the iDefence product worthwhile? maybe, maybe not. It is an interesting product, but, some parts, yes could be "the equivalent of tin foiling your head to protect against aliens".

That aside, the company providing the service is one of the most secure in the world, and spend a lot of money providing secure online resources, so if you did opt to use it, your information is infinitely more secure than giving your information to sony to sign up for online gaming.

[Mar]

Originally posted by eblend
Card monitoring - Using web crawling technology, we'll monitor Internet chat rooms and be able to alert you in real time if your credit or debit cards have been compromised. More...
Ya, like the fuck. There are millions of chat rooms, many of them private. I don't see how this is possible.

If you're worried about it, call the government and ask them to confirm any time someone wants to use your social insurance number. You nor anyone else will be able to submit it anywhere without getting a phone call from them and confirming it is legitimate, this is also free and available to anyone. Most of these identity protection places simply do it on your behalf without telling you anyone can do it.

[eblend]

Thanks for the info guys.

Only reason I was interested in this is cuz at some point someone ordered a laptop from dell.ca using my name ect, with an address in ontario. I got an e-mail that an order was placed...so perhaps whoever ordered didn't realize I had a dell.ca account, and it cross referenced automatically or something, not sure what happened.

I was able to call dell and cancel the order right away, and cancel my cc, but still, it was my first time where I felt threatened.

I made sure to have a flag set by the various credit score agencies to require a phone call anytime anything is run under my credit

[googe]

Yeah, these are total bullshit and not worth the money. Especially the ones that "monitor forums", haha. That claim is definitely the mark of a charlatan. A lot of companies looking to make a quick buck in an area that is a problem, only they haven't solved it. I wouldn't even take it for free. One of the things they do is flag your account which you yourself can do for free, as you already found out.

Also they do absolutely nothing about fraudulent use of an existing CC.


Originally posted by tpurcell4
That aside, the company providing the service is one of the most secure in the world, and spend a lot of money providing secure online resources, so if you did opt to use it, your information is infinitely more secure than giving your information to sony to sign up for online gaming.

Really? What do you base this on? Do you have any expertise in this field? Full disclosure - do you benefit in any way from signing clients up with such services?

[tpurcell4]

Originally posted by googe
Really? What do you base this on? Do you have any expertise in this field? Full disclosure - do you benefit in any way from signing clients up with such services?

I get paid nothing to sign people up for this service. It is a value add they allow us to offer, but honestly, I don't know that much about the program, just that it is there for anyone who is concerned about identity theft.

If you would like to do your research on D&H LLP, please feel free to enter it into Google, and you will get your information on them, what they do, who they are, etc.

I am by no means a expert on anything computers (A790 can back me up on that, as when I do have questions on all matters computer related I ask him, and he points me in the right direction), I am a finance and numbers guy, which means I see people who come to us after having their identity stolen, and I am the one who gets to tell them that because of this they couldn't finance enough to purchase a paper bag until the situation is fixed. And then we help to educate them on how to go about fixing there credit. This information is provided free on the iDefence website, no sign ups, if you had your identity stolen, the information is there on what to do next.

My knowledge is based as a user of the software and programs provided by D&H, and the level of trust granted to them by the financial world.

Cheers!