Affinion Security Center, a provider of identity theft protection services, has launched a comprehensive identity theft protection solution, IdentitySecure, which provides members with a combination of powerful services to protect personal information and financial data.

 

The company is offering the service to businesses who want to protect their customers from identity theft, and direct to consumers at www.identitysecure.com. According to a Javelin Research study published in February 2007, more than 27.3 million Americans have been victims of identity theft in the last five years. IdentitySecure has the ability to address the modern threats facing consumers and help people combat the rising number of corporate hacks and breaches.

 

Affinion Security Center also refers to the recent identity theft ring indicted in Boston that captured at least 40 million data records from retailers such as TJ Maxx. The company points out that these common data breaches expose consumer records that could include huge amounts of sensitive personal and financial data. Once stolen, the data is used to make fraudulent purchases or sold to other criminals.

 

A recent survey of 1,000 people conducted by Affinion Security Center indicates that 80 percent of respondents were very concerned about having their identities stolen, and one in four people were most concerned that their data would be leaked by a major retailer who retained their credit card information from a recent transaction.

 

Developed with these threats in mind, IdentitySecure includes features such as monitoring of social security numbers and public records to detect criminal activity, frequent data sweeps of the internet for personal information, credit monitoring, and monitoring of underground chat rooms that buy and sell personal information.

 

Keeping in mind that breaches are often unavoidable, the company’s new comprehensive identity theft protection solution provides the proactive searches, early detection and recovery assistance. Although a customer may easily have to shell out more than $40 per month to purchase all of these stand-alone services, an individual subscription to IdentitySecure is available for $1 for the first month and only $14.99 each additional month.

 

Tom Rusin, CEO of Affinion Security Center, noted that identity theft is becoming very common in our society, and even being more careful with credit cards and monitoring one's credit report cannot protect against the types of hacking and data breaches that are occurring every day.

 

“With IdentitySecure we believe that we can give consumers the best end-to-end protection and detection possible against the many different types of identity theft,” he stated.

 

IdentitySecure has already been selected for a number of major banks and insurance providers who are recommending the enhanced protection to their customers.