How To Compare Identity Theft Protection Services In 2026
You’ll find that these plans all come with up to $1 million in identity theft insurance, dedicated restoration resources, and other benefits should you be targeted by fraudsters. Monitoring your credit isn't just about loans or interest rates — a sudden drop in your score is often one of the earliest warning signs of identity theft. Services like LifeLock, Aura, Identity Guard, or IdentityForce provide real-time access to your credit scores and alert you to significant change
We participate in partnerships that we may receive compensation from. However, we may receive compensation when you click on links to products or services credit monitoring insights offered by our partners. However, some services include antivirus protection, which can help prevent your information from being stolen via malware, and VPNs, which can hide your IP address from nefarious websites. For these reasons, these services are best for customers who want a top VPN service and view identity theft protection as the icing on the cak
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Credit freezes and fraud alerts can help protect you from identity theft by making it harder for scammers to open new credit accounts in your name. You can place, temporarily lift or permanently remove a freeze on your Equifax credit report for free online, by phone or by mail. A security freeze (also credit monitoring insights known as credit freeze) of your Equifax credit report is regulated by federal law. Unless you temporarily lift or permanently remove a freeze, or unlock your Equifax credit report, it can't be accessed to open new accounts (subject to certain exceptions). Lastly, you’ll still be eligible to receive prescreened offers of credit unless you opt out. In addition to knowing what makes credit freeze vs lock different, it’s important to know their similaritie
If you have a subscription to a credit monitoring product, you will be able to place or remove your credit lock through the dedicated service page or app. You may have heard about credit freezes and credit locks. Credit freezes are always free, but credit locks may be a part of a paid service offered by a credit monitoring service. For a yearly or monthly fee many companies claim that they will protect you from identity theft brought to you by Money Minute. If you see unauthorized posts, contact the bank, brokerage or credit card company to find out what happened, and then freeze or close your account and request a new card. The information on each report usually is the same so spacing the credit reports out over the whole year – one report every four months – credit monitoring insights should help you spot fraudulent activit
For example, Aura will monitor your financial accounts, three credit reports and your home and auto title as part of your plan. Both ExpressVPN Identity Defender and NordProtect are light on the monitoring they'll do of your identity on your behalf compared to services on our list. For example, features are difficult to find on a user dashboard or aren't really useful. We also test the most expensive tier available so that we can access all features. During testing, we provide our Social Security number to each ID theft service so that our full identity can be monitore
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Aura monitors many elements of your identity online, including your home and auto title, financial accounts and criminal records in case any crimes have been committed in your name. It's a comprehensive catch-all service that gives you the most bang for your buck compared to the competition. Due to the limited scope of the breach, Aura's swift response and the fact that monitored data was not affected, CNET is maintaining its recommendation of Aura at this time. The question is whether that added layer is worth the monthly cost, especially as prices and features keep shifting. We've compared today's top options to see which ones are worth paying for in 2026. If you want to dive deeper into any one particular software, be sure to read our individual reviews, which provided the most detail about our testing and researc
Credit freezes provide a robust layer of protection against identity theft by preventing unauthorized access to credit reports. To initiate a credit freeze, individuals must contact each of the three major credit bureaus – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion – and provide the requisite personal information. Since lenders and credit monitoring insights other companies rely on the information in your credit report to grant loans or open new accounts, freezing your credit prevents any new activity. If your child is under 16, request a free credit freeze to make it harder for someone to open new accounts in your child's name. Here’s what to know about what credit freezes and fraud alerts do and how to use the
