PSA: Credit Protection from Target Expiring? Sign Up with Staples or Kmart

Many of us enjoy the real-time Experian credit monitoring alerts we get, back from when Target gave us a free year of credit protection via Experian/ProtectMyID. The bad news is that the service was just offered free for a year, which will come to a close soon. Mine is expiring on January 14, 2015, but it will depend on when you signed up. We’re now getting emails from ProtectMyID trying to convince us to sign up for a paid plan at $9.95 a month. I personally don’t think it’s worth it at that cost; there are other ways of keeping tabs on your credit report.

The “good” news is that there were lots of other data breaches since then, and you can get credit protection from those as well. Particularly of interest are Staples and Kmart, since they’re using the same ProtectMyID system which many of us found useful.

Direct Link (Staples)

Direct Link (Kmart)

[If the links aren’t working, open them incognito.]

The Staples offering is only for those who shopped at the Staples locations listed here. We wrote more details on the Staples breach here.

The Kmart offering is only for those who shopped at any Kmart between September 1 – October 9, 2014.

My local Staples stores weren’t affected, but I did lots of ‘shopping‘ at Kmart and I am very eligible for the credit protection. I was able to sign up while my Target protection is still ongoing by using a different User ID. It’s probably smarter, however, to wait until the Target monitoring expires, so as to maximize the amount of time you get alerts and protection.

I mentioned awhile back that I signed up for the Home Depot credit monitoring, but I found it less useful. Home Depot offered AllClearID credit monitoring, and they use a phone system to let you know about any alerts, so there’s no account to log into and see all past activity. I’m also not positive that they alert you about every hard pull or new account, though they probably do. I don’t think they use Experian, probably Equifax.

In any case, I liked the ProtectMyID better, so I was happy to be able to sign up for another year via Kmart.