Identity theft is a serious issue, and smart consumers today are doing everything possible to protect themselves and their families. Since identity theft can destroy a family’s credit and tarnish their credit score for a lifetime, it is essential to do everything possible to prevent it from happening.

One basic way that individuals or families can protect themselves is by purchasing Identity Theft Insurance plans. These are easy to obtain, and are usually fairly inexpensive comparatively. These plans include a variety of features, including an insurance policy to help you deal with the expense involved in repairing the damage that will occur if your identity is stolen, credit reports from each of the three major credit reporting agencies, daily monitoring of your records with all three bureaus, a quarterly analysis of the items reported to your credit, and access to experts who can help walk you through the steps needed to recover if your identity is stolen. Plans like this are basically a beefed-up insurance policy that will help you recover if the worst should happen, but will do little to prevent it.

The more expensive option (and the more effective) is to purchase an Identity Theft Protection plan from a company like LifeLock. These services work more aggressively on your behalf, and will work directly with the credit bureaus to monitor for fraud, remove you from mailing lists that send you pre-approved credit applications (a major inroad identity thieves use to get your info), actively searches for your personal information online in an effort to determine if some of it has gotten out there, helps you if any of your information is lost (if you lose your wallet with credit cards in it) to make sure that information doesn’t get into the wrong hands, and will often cover you up to one million dollars to recover if somehow an identity thief gets your information despite their efforts.

These monetary guarantees are critical – especially if you are going to invest the money in a protection plan like this, it is best if they back up their services with a meaningful guarantee. You can be the target of identity theft at any time. Thankfully, it is really easy and often very inexpensive to protect yourself from those thieves.