this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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Privacy

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[–] thantik 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This is something that pisses me off about "Identity Monitoring Programs"; I have one because Experian fucked up and I got it for free for a year -- but all I ever get is "Your account was found on the dark web!"

But then they won't tell me WTF ACCOUNT it was!!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

That's one benefit of password managers, many offer a scan to figure out which usernames/passwords were exposed. I just checked, and I have 22 passwords exposed in a breach, but unfortunately I can't do anything about most of them (i.e. they're assigned from work).

I honestly don't see any value in monitoring services from the big bureaus, you're probably better off using:

  • free services like Credit Karma (or Experian) to get pinged when credit is accessed; check this periodically
  • password manager to randomize passwords
  • official credit reports a few times/year (can now do weekly, in the past it was yearly per bureau) to check if anything is messed up
  • credit cards for all online purchases - they tend to be faster at responding to fraud than debit cards
  • 2FA when available - I use an app on my phone (Aegis, but there are plenty of others)

If you can do those, you'll probably catch anything before it becomes a serious issue.

[–] thantik 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yeah, I already use a password manager - and do scan after stuff, but still am not matching things up to accounts. I think they're just seeing my email (in general) and alerting me. Also use TOTP 2FA and additionally have a proper FIDO security token.