Congratulations! Experian, one of the three major credit bureaus, just got majorly hacked. The data of 15 million people who have applied for service from T-Mobile in the past 2 years have had their names, birthdays, addresses, and social security numbers stolen.
Why is this great news? Because it means you now get your credit report for free, + 2 years of free extensive credit monitoring from Experian!
Truth be told – while Experian sells this service as “ProtectMyID® Elite” – you should never have to pay for it. Someone gets hacked so often that you can probably get it for free in perpetuity for the rest of your life. Just two examples:
www.protectmyid.com/kmart (Kmart hack)
www.protectmyid.com/target (Target hack)
https://corporate.homedepot.com/MediaCenter/Documents/Required%20Regulatory%20Notice.PDF (Home Depot hack)
That said, this is normally $16/mo, and while it’s not strictly necessary and in most cases would be little more than a scam, when you’re getting offered it for free, there’s no reason not to take them up on this deal.
If you just want to jump straight into it, here’s what to do. Just go to this link: https://www.protectmyid.com/default.aspx?sc=678628, and sign up, and you’re good to go for the next 2 years.
What exactly does this get you?
From Experian:
- We monitor your credit daily and alert you when key changes are found.
- We provide you with an easy-to-read Experian credit report to look for signs of fraud.
- $1 Million Identity Theft Insurance Coverage.
- A Fraud Resolution Agent is assigned immediately to work closely with you to resolve any identity issues.
Pro-tip: while many of you legitimately probably are T-Mobile customers or have applied for their services in the past, they ask for no verification and anyone can sign up for this. I’d recommend basically anyone sign up, as chances are you *have* been compromised in some data breach in the past, and Experian probably owes you this service that costs nothing to them but is pretty valuable to you. For example, the Target hack back in 2013 breached 40 million credit and debit cards. And a whopping 200 million records were also breached at Court Ventures, an Experian subsidiary recently. That’s like…2/3rds of the US population (320 million).
Chances are better than not that you’ve probably been a customer at some store/service that’s been hacked…and obviously not all hacks are discovered. These are just the ones the corporations are owning up to and actually doing something about.
So yeah, feel free to sign up. At the very least, this is a nice way to get your Experian credit report for free and take a look to make sure everything’s kosher.
PS: T-Mobile’s claiming to be working to offer an alternative credit protection service too, since it’s admittedly pretty ironic to be offering credit protection from the very service that was hacked in the first place. So stay tuned for that.