Questions to ask before paying for identity theft protection
There is a reasonable case for paying someone to watch your accounts, particularly if you have been through a breach and do not want to run the checks yourself. But the case only holds once you know what you already have for nothing, because a large part of what identity protection services sell is a convenience wrapper around free federal and bureau services. This is the list of questions to work through first. It names no products and recommends none.
Free, before you pay for anything
- A credit freeze is free at all three bureaus, lasts until you lift it, and does not affect your credit score. With it in place, “nobody can open a new credit account in your name, including you.”
- Lifting a freeze is also free, and can be done at a single bureau if you know which one a lender will use.
- All three bureaus have permanently extended free weekly credit reports, on top of the statutory free report every 12 months. AnnualCreditReport.com is the only authorised site.
- Fraud alerts are free: one year for an initial alert, seven years for an extended alert, one year for an active duty alert.
- IdentityTheft.gov gives a free personal recovery plan with progress tracking and pre-filled letters, covering more than 30 types of identity theft.
Who this list is for
People deciding whether to start or renew a subscription, and people who were offered monitoring free for a year after a company lost their data and are now being asked to pay for year two.
It is not an argument that every such service is worthless. It is an argument that you should know the free baseline before you can judge what the fee is buying on top of it.
The free baseline, in the FTC’s own terms
The strongest single measure the FTC describes is a credit freeze, and its effect is categorical rather than probabilistic: with a freeze in place, nobody can open a new credit account in your name, including you. It is free to place, free to lift, lasts until you lift it, and does not affect your credit score. The FTC restated this in a consumer alert dated 10 September 2025.
Detection is free too. All three nationwide bureaus have permanently extended a programme letting you check your credit report from each of them once a week for free, in addition to the statutory free report every 12 months. That is a substantial part of what monitoring services resell.
Recovery is free as well. IdentityTheft.gov produces a personal recovery plan that walks you through each step, lets you update the plan and track progress, prints pre-filled letters and forms for credit bureaus, businesses and debt collectors, and carries advice for more than 30 types of identity theft.
The questions
- What does this do that a free credit freeze does not? A freeze prevents; monitoring notices. If the answer is only “it tells you sooner”, price that accordingly.
- Does it monitor all three bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — or one?
- Does it place freezes for me, or only alert me? Placing and lifting freezes is free and must be done per bureau.
- If it includes data-broker or people-search removal: how many sites does it cover, does it give a report of the sites it has opted you out of, and how often does it rescan? Those are the three questions the FTC says to ask.
- What happens after a theft? Compare what is offered against IdentityTheft.gov’s free recovery plan, pre-filled dispute letters and progress tracking.
- What does cancellation cost, and what happens to the freezes and alerts placed on my behalf if I stop paying?
The removal-service caveat in full
Opt-out services deserve particular scepticism, and the reason is not price. The FTC states that people-search opt-outs are impermanent — if the information in your public records changes, your information could re-appear for sale — incomplete, since your information may still appear in the reports of relatives, neighbours or associates, and limited, because opting out does not delete your information from public records.
The FTC also notes you can do it yourself, one by one, for free. A service is buying you time, not permanence, and its own guidance is to check the sites periodically regardless.
How often to redo this check
Once a year, at renewal, and once more after any breach notification. Prices, coverage and included features change; so does the free baseline. Weekly free credit reports began as a temporary measure and are now permanent, which quietly removed one of the standing arguments for paying.
What no service covers
No subscription reports the crime for you in a way that replaces the official channels. Identity theft goes to IdentityTheft.gov or 877-438-4338, 9:00am to 5:00pm ET; the Spanish site is RobodeIdentidad.gov. Fraud that has not yet become identity theft goes to ReportFraud.ftc.gov, and internet-enabled crime to IC3.gov.
And no service replaces the freeze. If you only do one thing after reading this, place one at each of the three bureaus and leave it there.
Sources: FTC — What to know about credit freezes and fraud alerts · FTC — Free credit reports · FTC — What to know about identity theft · FTC — What to know about people search sites that sell your information · FTC consumer alert — Get a credit freeze to stop identity thieves (10 September 2025)
Reviewed 27 August 2026 by the CyberArtical editorial team against primary guidance from the FTC. Security guidance changes over time; where our earlier version of this page said something different, we say so in the article rather than editing it out quietly.
