MyIDScore.com: What's an ID Score?

If you’re a frequent reader of this (or any other personal finance blog) you’re familiar with credit scores and credit reports, and the advice to check them often.

These resources detail your financial history and provide a measure of your supposed financial risk. They’re also useful tools to determine the safety of your identity. However, when was the last time you checked your ID Score?

MyIDScore.com is a new company that offers what they call, “a new way to quickly assess your risk of identity theft.”

Your ID Score is:

A statistical score that’s based on technology currently used by leading communications, financial services, retail companies, healthcare providers, government agencies, and consumers to assess your risk of identity theft. These companies use ID Analytics’ scoring technology to ensure that fraudsters do not apply for goods and services in an innocent consumer’s name.

Basically, your ID Score will give you an overall picture of the security of your identity, just as your credit score gives you an overall picture of the state of your finances. Monitoring every single part of your identity that gets tossed around is a big job, and MyIDScore.com wants to help.

The interesting thing is, even though you’ve probably never heard of ID Analytics, you’ve almost certainly had your data analyzed by them, notes an MSNBC.com article:

ID Analytics is not exactly a household name. That’s because most of us never deal with the company directly. But if you’ve purchased a wireless phone, have a credit card or applied for a retail charge card, there’s a good chance the company analyzed the information on your application.

How does it work?

After providing your personal information, ID Score utilizes information provided by retailers, governmental bodies, financial service providers, healthcare companies, communication providers and other companies to determine how you can protect your identity.

What about privacy?

Obviously, if you’re providing all of your personal information, MyIDScore.com will have access to quite a bit of what goes on in your life. By doing this, it’ll be easier to monitor what goes on in your life, but you won’t be the only one doing it. The site does take privacy very seriously, and you can choose how your information is used.

Is it worth it?

Monitoring your identity is becoming more and more of priority, especially since the ways in which someone can access your personal information are increasing exponentially. IDScore may be the right fit for some people, and it seems to be an extremely useful and powerful tool.

Am I going to use it? Probably not right now (knock on wood). I’m comfortable with the “old school” methods I’m using to protect my identity for the time being. I can see myself considering IDScore.com in the future, however.

It’s good to know that there are tools out there that can help you keep your identity safe. Many people would benefit from a product like this, and I’d recommend it to anyone who is even moderately worried about their identity.