Any value in getting free Experian credit monitoring service?

April 18, 2024 8:16 AM

So Institution X screwed-up and some of my personal info got loose, including my full name, SSN, and possibly my driver's license number. To compensate, Institution X is offering free "Experian IdentityWorks Credit 3B" for 24 months ...

This includes credit monitoring, identity restoration specialists should I need them, extended identity restoration support, and $1M identity theft insurance.

I've had security freezes active at the three major credit bureaus for years now. In order to sign up for the above, I'd have to remove the freezes, sign-up, and restore the freezes. It seems like a big hassle, so I want to know: Is it worth it?

posted by ZenMasterThis to Work & Money (7 answers total)

I'm in the same boat. Thanks for the tip that I'll have to remove my freezes to activate. I do intend to activate the monitoring, but I'm waiting a few weeks.
posted by intermod at 8:27 AM on April 18

Data point of one: I've had this monitoring activated for at least 4 years now due to similar institutions, and have not gotten any hits from them for fraud, nor has there been any fraudulent activity on my credit or bank cards (who would notify me themselves). I did have someone try to claim unemployment in my name during the pandemic, but my employer immediately spotted that and reported it, Experian did not report on this at all. I only get "don't forget to check your credit score!" marketing emails from them, and that's it.
posted by Melismata at 8:38 AM on April 18 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: intermod: YMMV; this is just what the letter I received said.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 8:39 AM on April 18

I am a lawyer but I'm not your lawyer and this is not legal advice. One issue with these credit monitoring services is that when you sign up you may be agreeing to take any disputes to arbitration instead of court. See the linked document from the National Consumer Law Center for more details.

A few years back Equifax removed the forced arbitration provision from at least one credit monitoring product after pressure from consumer groups and parts of the federal government, but it may be worth reviewing the terms of the particular service you are being offered.
posted by Handstand Devil at 10:25 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]

My experience with a similar service has been that they periodically send me an email saying something like "we found your SSN on the dark web!!!" and I'm like...cool? There's literally nothing I can do with that information that would help, except keep an eye on all my financial accounts and check my credit report periodically, which I do anyway. I've never had anyone actually try to steal my identity, so I can't speak to whether this service would actually help in that situation. But short of that, I haven't found it very useful.
posted by peperomia at 1:06 PM on April 18 [2 favorites]

I have had n of these monitoring service subscriptions (free) after being in n different data breaches. I have not found any actionable alerts, and I think that if you don't reuse passwords and have frozen your credit with the big three, it's unlikely you'll get anything either.

My alerts have been of the form "oh hey, someone tried to sign up for a merchant account three months ago and was denied" or "your myspace password from 2005 was found on the dark web."
posted by zippy at 4:31 PM on April 18 [1 favorite]

I started using it for the exact same reason a few years ago. My experience has been the same as other commenters except I did spot a credit report error more easily than I probably would have otherwise. It’s was astonishingly easy to correct through the app. The error was clearly not from anything I did, which is probably why it was so easy to correct, but going through the app might have helped.
posted by pearlybob at 3:08 AM on April 19 [1 favorite]