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Credit Monitoring Update

Please take a look below for some information regarding the Experian credit monitoring service that many of you signed up for following last year’s hacking incident. There has been a little confusion of late as you may have received a renewal notice from Experian, and some of you indeed may have renewed and paid for your service (the previously free Experian service was for one year only). Experian is not bidding on the state contract going forward, and I want everyone to know that the state soon will be contracting with a new provider of identity security services and that those services will be free of charge to SC citizens.

The new contract will be selected next week and will be more comprehensive than what Experian is currently offering. Experian only offers credit monitoring which is very different from identity theft monitoring.

At a minimum, the new service going forward will provide:
• Daily monitoring of at least one credit bureau.
• Identity Theft monitoring services. Examples might include scanning black market or underground websites to detect whether personal information is being used, Social Security Number monitoring, non-credit (payday) loan monitoring, and change of address monitoring.
• Identity Theft insurance of at least $1 million.
• Identify Theft resolution and restoration services, available on a 24/7/365 basis.

In the meantime, if you signed up for a paid extension of Experian’s services, thinking you were supposed to pay now, you can get a refund.

If you have any questions, here are some helpful links:

Experian offering refunds: http://www.southcarolinaradionetwork.com/2013/09/18/experian-will-offer-refunds-for-hacking-victims-who-unwittingly-re-enrolled/

Identity Theft information: http://www.consumer.sc.gov/consumer/IdentityTheft/Pages/default.aspx

And, as always, feel free to contact me anytime.

Sincerely,
Shane