Equifax Company Profile
Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Equifax is commonly known as one of the three largest Credit Reporting Agencies along with Experian and Transunion. After watching companies like Lifelock and Trusted ID dominate an industry in their backyard, Equifax has finally decided to enter the consumer protection business with a host of products designed to offer comprehensive consumer protection.
How Do They Protect You?
- Control Your Equifax Credit File
- Equifax WebDetect
- Credit File Monitoring
- 24/7 Customer Support
- $1,000,000 ID Theft Insurance
Equifax gives you the ability to lock or unlock your Equifax credit file for all companies or specific companies quickly and easily online.
Scans the interent continuously for your private data, alerting you if your information is being traded or sold.
Equifax will monitor your credit file on all three consumer reporting agencies and will alert you daily if there are any changes.
If you have any questions or need immediate assistance, Equifax has protection specialists to help you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
This policy is underwritten by Travelers Casualty and Surety Company of America and covers expenses related to recovering from an identity theft including wage losses.
What Do They Do Better Than Anybody?
Being a consumer reporting agency certainly has its advantages. Nobody else can offer the flexibility in monitoring and placing credit freezes on your Equifax credit file. Equifax Credit Report Control feature allows you to quickly and easily lock or unlock your Equifax file online. You can even choose to have all companies locked out or just one. No other service provides this degree of flexibility or control over your Equifax credit file.
What Kind Of Customer Prefers This Service?
This service is great for the consumer who repeatedly locks (credit freezes) and unlocks their credit file. While a company like TrustedID offers the same service, there is a fee every time you lock and unlock your file as well as a TrustedID processing fee. (Credit reporting agencies charge a fee based on your home state for credit freezes. ) With Equifax, there are no fees for locking your Equifax credit file.
Why Should You Consider Anybody Else?
The only problem with this service is the unavailability to lock Transunion or Experian credit reports. ( Although at the time of this review, they were very helpful in instructing me how to do place the credit freezes myself. The obvious point would be if I can go to the trouble of placing credit freezes for two credit agencies, why not three? ) Although TrustedID charges a fee to place credit freezes, they do place them on all the credit reporting agencies.
Give It To Me Straight
We love the flexibility Equifax provides for monitoring your Equifax credit file, we just wish it applied to Experian and Transunion as well. However, Equifax does monitor the other agencies and will alert you within 24 hours if there are any changes to your Experian or Transunion credit file.
The advantages to be able to recognize and react quickly to any changes in your credit file cannot be understated. Certainly IdentityGuard provides a degree of monitoring and control over your information no other company offers. Add the plethora of additional useful products such as ID Vault, Privacy Protect, Mobile LockBox, and the award-winning Zone Alarm Internet Security Suite and you’re talking some serious value for the consumer. Personally, I prefer IdentityGuard Total Protection and find all the products and features incredibly useful. However, I make my living on my computer but will admit for some consumers, this may be more “protection” than they’re able to comfortably handle.
If Lifelock and TrustedID claim to lock the doors to your house with fraud alerts and credit freezes, even they’ll admit there are cracks in that door. IdentityGuard may leave that door open, but they’re keeping a watchful eye if anybody comes in and they’ll text you if they see anything suspicious.