By Ken Stoll

It appears that a combination of credit report monitoring and the newer identity score monitoring services may provide consumers with the most effective tools in the fight against identity theft.

Analysts say that identity scoring will "overtake credit monitoring" by 2009. But how effective is either measure? There are many solutions to identity theft but there is no ‘single’ solution that guarantees total protection.

For instance, credit reports currently don't report what is going on with variations of a consumer's name and social security number. Newer identity services, on the other hand, don't report changes to your credit report. 

                                     

No one disputes that identity theft is a growing problem. A 2003 study by the FTC found that 27.3 million Americans had been victims in the previous five years, which means that as many as 15% of the adult population may have been victimized. Recently, it was reported that there had been 329,000 victims of identity theft in Ohio alone in 2005.

"What I think is important is that consumers realize the limitations of credit reporting and monitoring, not so much that they watch their identities because it's not realistic," said Avivah Litan, an analyst with Gartner Research. Litan said. "You see more concern in people over 55. The least concerned are the 18-24 crowd so the older you are, the more worried you are because you know all the things that can happen."

It is prudent to monitor your Identity and not only Credit

None of this means that monitoring identity is not prudent. Harold Kraft, an expert in identity monitoring, says that people need to monitor not only their own name and Social Security Number, but also slight variations of them.

"What if somebody modifies your name and social over the course of a few weeks and then takes out a loan? When they default on the loan, the loan collector will trace it back to you and they'll claim that you're the one who fraudulently tried to escape who you were," Kraft said. "The banks will think that somebody is trying to trick them and it is more likely to be you than somebody else."

While consumers are not liable for debt not made in their name, proving that the activity was not theirs can be both time-consuming and costly.

"Your credit report can be adversely affected, and it takes a significant amount of work to get that cleared," said Marc Zwillinger, an information security expert.  "If somebody opens up a utilities type account in your name and then doesn't pay the bill, you wouldn't have a way to know because it wasn't billed to your address. Then your credit history shows a defaulted payment, and there is no way to get that off unless you dispute it with the institution, and they're not that quick to act – it isn't exactly the most important thing on their list of to-do items."

The Gartner report estimates that identity scoring services "will overtake credit report monitoring as effective identity theft prevention tool by year-end 2009." While Litan acknowledges that these services are not perfect, she said you should protect your name and identity to the best of your ability. "If someone steals your real identity, then you're cooked," she said.

That’s why identity theft experts are increasingly recommending a two pronged personal protection strategy which includes monitoring of ones’ credit and personal identity information.