[We receive a small commission if you sign up for Credit Sesame. We still think that Credit Karma offers the more complete credit monitoring offering, but if you’re concerned about identity theft then it might be worth signing up to Credit Sesame just for this feature]
Today, Credit Sesame has launched their free identity theft protection feature. This is immediately accessible to all existing and new customers. In the United States over 16.6 million people have their identity stolen each and every year.
This offering was in response from a survey that Credit Sesame conducted on their members that found that:
- 65% of users were worried about identity theft and
- 24% of users had been the victim of identity theft
Contents
Features
- $50,000 identity theft insurance, which covers you for the following expenses incurred in restoring your identity:
- Phone Bills
- Lost Wages
- Notary & certified mailing costs
- Postage
- Obtaining credit reports
- Live access to talk to identity restoration specialists
Make sure you log into your account and turn the free identity theft protection on.
Our Verdict
Previously Credit Sesame was ranked as the worst free credit monitoring program when compared to Quizzle & Credit Karma. This is because they’ve previously failed to differentiate themselves enough and their suite of tools is lacking in comparsion.
This is definitely a step in the right direction to provide better tools to their users. It’s also good to see them tackling identity theft insurance providers, as this is a service in our eyes is doesn’t provide enough value when considering the premiums that some providers are providing.
Our only criticism is that Credit Sesame isn’t automatically enrolling all members into this new program. I understand that they want to drive engagement, but this a feature that all existing members would want. Hopefully they decide to reverse this decision.
It’ll also be interesting to see how useful identity restoration specialists are and how well they deal with large scale data breaches (e.g Target) and the massive amount of additional inquiries they’ll receive because of it.
Credit Sesame is a completely free service to sign up for, you do not need to enter your credit card details to sign up. They do have a premium product which gives you access to more features (and $1,000,000 in identity theft insurance) but they make the majority of their money from selling consumers refinanced mortgages and credit card offers.
What do you think of the new offering from Credit Sesame? Were you a member before this? Will you sign up because of this announcement? Let us know in the comments below.
