Discover Identity Theft Protection Review

Discover has about 57 million cardholders all over the world, and they offer identity monitoring services for free to their customers. The company is well established, and has won awards for their customer satisfaction and advances in technology. Their identity theft protection includes monitoring, education resources and fraud specialists to help get your credit back on track.

What We Like

First of all, free is always nice, so there’s really no disadvantage for cardholders to use their services. With it, you get daily credit report monitoring which can give you fast alerts if there is illegal activity happening on your account. In addition to this, you’ll get alerts should a criminal try to open an account in your name or run your credit report without your permission.

It provides up to $25,000 in reimbursement insurance (underwritten by AIG) and gives you access to dedicated fraud specialists 24/7. Plus, Discover has a direct lines to your credit information, considering they’re the ones who are processing your information. Their algorithms are really good at catching purchases that are out of character for you.

They also take care of the paperwork for you, which is a huge help to anyone who finds themselves with precious little free time throughout the week. The company has resources, and there should be a clear chain of command and action when there’s a problem.

What We Don’t Like

There are no options to upgrade your plan, and their coverage is not enough if you’re hoping to fight against identity theft. Credit monitoring can be a great way to stop fraud, but between social security, insurance and medical fraud, it’s possible to rack up a lot of debt that has nothing to do with credit.

Discover only offers $25,000 worth of protection, which will likely not go very far in an identity theft case. Plus, even though they have an A+ rating with the BBB and have been given several awards for how they treat their customers, they’ve had a significant number of complaints in the past. This may be merely a function of working with so many cardholders, but it’s still worth noting if trying to decide between companies.

The Bottom Line

If you don’t want to pay for identity theft services and you already have a Discover Card, this service is definitely better than nothing — especially if you’re not planning to pay for additional services. The fact that it offers thousands of dollars of reimbursement protection (again, for free) will provide some help to those who suffer from a breach. If you already trust and enjoy doing business with Discover, this is the cherry on top. However, you may want to supplement that assistance and monitoring with another company’s services that are more proactive regarding the rest of your information. And definitely don’t let it lure you into a false sense of security when it comes to this complex and increasingly more popular form of theft.