Credit Monitoring Services

To be able to use the credit monitoring service that I recommended above, it helps if you fully understand them. Credit report monitoring can be used after bankruptcy to help you as part of identity theft prevention and detection strategy. Although monitoring your credit report may not prevent many of the credit problems that we often find ourselves in, it can keep you up to date with anything that is going awry.

After you filed for bankruptcy, you will want to know exactly what is going on with your credit report if you want to keep it that way. You should understand however, that there are a variety of ways that a credit monitoring service is the best way for you to keep records of your credit report and scoring information. In the era of online identity fraud, you will need this more than ever. Nothing will undermine your efforts to recover from bankruptcy faster than having your identity stolen.

This section will focus on the things that you should know about credit monitoring services, so that if you are considering using one, you can make an informed choice.
You will find many advertisements for credit monitoring services online and off that will make you think that they monitor your credit report so that at the precise moment an identity thief is at work, alarms are sounded, the thief is stopped immediately and you are fully aware of it.

Although this is really why these services exist, the way that they really work is not as spectacular. The general purpose of credit monitoring services can really be explained in these basic points:

Early Activity Detection: The basic benefit and purpose of credit monitoring services is that they help you to quickly detect any unauthorized activity that takes place in your name. As I stated earlier, the victims often have 6 months of activity recorded in their name before they even know about it. Therefore, early detection can save you thousands of dollars in the long run.

It is Convenient: you should know that most of the services that a credit monitoring service provides can actually be done by you. However, hiring a monitoring service to do the work for you frees up much of your time and is extremely accurate.

What these Services Monitor:
Although you can pay for many different levels of service, most of the time, these services will monitor the following:

Credit File Inquiries: The service will keep track of who is inquiring on your credit file and why. This information can be useful in detecting unauthorized activities.

New account activity. These days, a lot of people are learning that it is very common to find that someone has opened up a new account in their name. The service will monitor any new accounts that are opened in your name and report it to you. This will help you in recovering from bankruptcy as you can know exactly when someone makes a query in your name; which will prevent credit score decreases as every query lessens your score.

Address Changes. You can use this service to ensure that no one has changed your address which happens when identity thieves are applying for credit so that they can get credit cards etc. sent to them.

Collection Accounts. Unfortunately, many victims realize that they there identity has been stolen when they apply for and can't get credit. Your monitoring service will alert you to this.

Changes to account information. The service will monitor any changes to account and inform of them, such as if you refinance a mortgage.

Credit limit increases. When someone steals your identification, they will raise your credit limit so as to take advantage of it. You will be notified of this too.
Changes to public records. The service will monitor any changes to public records that would include bankruptcies

Changes to all existing accounts. You will be notified if your accounts become delinquent.

Account Closures. Any accounts that have been recently closed will be flagged and reported to you.

Now that we know what the credit monitoring services actually follow, you need to know what to look for in a monitoring service, which are:

Source. The monitoring services will have to use a credit reporting agency to monitor your credit report. However, depending on the service, the information may be obtained from just one or all three major reporting agencies. For this reason, you will want to purchase a service or plan that monitors all three credit reporting agencies.

Frequency. When looking for a monitoring service how often they check is something that you should consider. Daily or weekly is best. Services vary, providing daily, weekly or monthly monitoring. As you would expect how often they monitor your credit report the better for you.

Credit updates. Some services will also provide periodic credit updates. This is a lot different from the alerts because the alerts only deal in changes. A periodic credit update will add the information in your credit accounts that have not changed.

Credit reports. These monitoring programs will always offer you a copy of your credit report. How often you will get one will vary depending on the service. Some services provide unlimited access to your credit file which means that you can check whenever you want to, while others provide a credit report quarterly. I would suggest that you get one that offers you unlimited access because should you choose to follow any of my advice about rebounding off bankruptcy, you will need a copy on hand.


Identity theft insurance. Some services will offer identity theft insurance as part of the package. Just be sure to read the fine print first.

Cost. Cost is obviously something that you should consider when choosing a monitoring service. These costs range from a per year for a very basic, one bureau monitoring service, to 0 per year for a premium, 3 bureau monitoring service.

When you are trying to recover from bankruptcy, keeping track of all of your credit accounts can be a life saver in keeping you on track. Of course, there is some stuff that a credit monitoring doesn't do, such as take the action for you. Trust me preventing Identity theft in this day and age is necessary in recovering from bankruptcy as it can save you from having illegal attempts made on your account which could put you right back where you started.