Credit Monitoring includes monitoring of changes reported to one or all three national credit bureaus (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion) depending on whether you have single or tri-bureau monitoring enabled. Changes monitored include personal information, public records, inquiries, new account openings, and existing accounts reported past due.

A Credit Report is a snapshot of your experience with credit-related accounts. Aside from some basic personal information, such as your name and address to help identify your report, there are three main types of information on your Credit Report:

• Public Records: Court-related information, including bankruptcies, state and county court records, tax liens, monetary judgments, and in some states, overdue child-support payments.
• Credit Inquiries: Names of businesses or individuals that have obtained a copy of your credit report, including lenders, landlords and employers.
• Accounts: Payment history on all your Real Estate, Installment, and Revolving Credit Accounts.

In some cases, errors may appear on your credit file and the incorrect information may trigger an alert. Nevertheless, if you see a credit alert that is not accurate please contact Experian IdentityWorks at 877-890-9332.

Credit bureau alerts are generated through consistent monitoring, and are distributed daily. A credit bureau file is monitored daily and any alerts triggered as a result of new inquiries and/or adjustments made to a credit file are sent to you via email.

Internet Surveillance’s data comes from Internet forums and websites, web pages, IRC channels, refined PII search engine queries, Twitter feeds, P2P sources, hidden and anonymous web services, malware samples, botnets, and torrent sources.

Your first Internet Surveillance report includes data from the previous 8 years. This means that Internet Surveillance searches the prior 8 years of records it has collected for a match to the personal information you are monitoring.

Your Internet Surveillance service tracks Internet activity for signs that the personal information you’ve asked us to monitor is being traded and/or sold online. This alert means that our surveillance technology has discovered information on the Internet that is a match to your monitored identity elements.

Even if only some of your personal information has been detected by Internet Surveillance, it is recommended that you contact the appropriate institution to have your account information changed, or change your account information yourself if possible - like changing the password to your email account. It is safe to assume that if some of your information is compromised, all of it is. You may also want to review a copy of your credit report to ensure that all of the information that appears there is familiar to you.

This activity is illegal in the United States, but other countries do not necessarily have the same laws as related to cyber crime. United States regulatory agencies have no jurisdiction to prosecute fraudsters acting on websites and chat rooms located in other countries.

Internet Surveillance reduces your risk of identity theft by letting you know sooner if your personal information is compromised, and in turn enabling prevention or quick resolution of an identity theft incident. In addition to Internet Surveillance, you also have identity theft insurance and recovery services to help alleviate some of the financial burden of identity theft and guide you through the often confusing and difficult process. Unfortunately, no identity protection tool can prevent identity theft altogether.