We’ve all seen the very catchy ads from LifeLock - “I’m Todd Davis and this is my social security number….” It doesn’t get much better than the president of the company plastering his social security number on billboards, banner ads, full page ads in the Wall Street Journal, and everywhere else in between. The concept is simple, take as many steps as possible to reduce the chance of identity thieves working you over. LifeLock’s execution and timing have been excellent. The only catch is you’re not paying for an exclusive LifeLock service. Instead, you’re paying for LifeLock to take care of a government mandated resources that you can do for free. Thus, you’re really paying to save a few minutes of your time. Of course this certainly isn’t a bad thing. We all can only do so much. The question becomes is it worth $10 a month for the next 20 years? For me, it’s not. Therefore, I put together a quick cheat sheet on how to protect your identity for free.

Here’s a breakdown of what LifeLock provides so you can do it yourself. If you think the $10 a month is worth it, visit LifeLock and sign up.

1. Set a credit fraud alert. This is really a new credit request alert that lets you decide if you are the victim of fraud or not. The simple way is to fill out the online form every three months. You can also fill out a letter and mail it in to get coverage for several years. Go the easy route like LifeLock and do the 90 days online. To place your credit fraud alert go to the link below at Equifax which also alerts Transunion and Experian (the three major credit reporting agencies). Here’s the link https://www.alerts.equifax.com/AutoFraud_Online/jsp/fraudAlert.jsp

2. Do step 1 Again in 90 days. Unless you print out the form from the link above and send it into the credit bureau you have to resubmit the form every 90 days to keep the credit fraud alert active. Set an Outlook or Google calendar reminder to go to that link again in 3 months and fill out the form again. Simple. And by doing it yourself you’ll be saving $30 a pop (3 months of monitoring for each submission). That’s enough to keep my subscription to HBO going for the upcoming season of Entourage.

3. Reduce junk mail (most importantly preapproved credit card offers). There’s really three benefits to this. First, you are reducing landfill waste, pollution from the dyes that are used, and junk mail transportation costs. Second, you’re reducing the time you spend shredding the offers. Third, you are reducing the opportunities credit thieves have to fill out a new credit card requests in your name.

To reduce junk mail and preapproved credit card offers go to the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) website http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/credit/prescreen.shtm the specific page to opt out is https://www.optoutprescreen.com/

4. Order free credit reports. By law, all of the credit bureaus must provide you with a free credit card report once a year. Of course, they always try to up-sell you on more advanced features which you often do not need. To get the federally mandated free credit report just go to https://www.annualcreditreport.com/cra/index.jsp

5. LifeLock’s WalletLock. This service just contacts the credit bureaus when you lose your wallet. Here’s an easier and better way to do it. First, keep the credit cards you carry in your wallet to a minimum (sounds simple but a lot of people carry all of their cards in their wallet). Second, for the cards you do carry keep the phone numbers for the banks in your phone or somewhere else that is readily accessible. Obviously, as soon as you lose the wallet you’ll want to contact the banks to cancel the cards. You’d be surprised at how hard it is to track down the right department when you don’t have the exact number that is printed on the back of your card. So keep the numbers handy. When the card is lost first cancel the credit cards then contact the credit bureaus. Third, since closing down credit card accounts hurts your credit, keep the accounts open but shred the cards. Just in case someone breaks in to your house, they won’t have any cards to steal. Fourth, keep you important personal documents safely hidden e.g. your birth certificate, social security card, etc.

6. Insurance. Since this is a free post I’m sure as hell not going to offer insurance for your identity theft. But if you follow the steps above the chances of having your identity stolen are significantly reduced. Is $10 a month worth the insurance? Not for me.

7. Bonus link - National do not call list. Get rid of telemarketers fast. Go to https://www.donotcall.gov/

Summary - 10 minutes to save $10 a month

Is LifeLock worth it? Maybe for some. But the above links detail what they do for you so it’s your call. To LifeLock’s credit they are very clear that the steps LifeLock takes to protect your identity can be done for free. Go through the steps above then ask yourself is it worth $10 a month for the next x number of years?

If you found this do it yourself guide useful please link back to this page.

A great new partner of Fruition is Goodnewsclothing.com. They sell the highest quality Christian clothing including Christian tshirts.

While cruising through their site I thought the Christian biker tshirts were some of the best. They have original designs that would look great on and off of your Harley (and if you don’t have a harley you still look cool).  A couple of my favorites were “Ride Free” and “Celtic Cross.” Those are shirts that would look good anywhere.

As it’s currently snowing in Denver even though it’s late spring, the Christian hoodies are another good buy. Hoodies are great almost any time of the year, especially in Colorado. In the winter you can wear them as a middle layer, in the summer they are perfect for that nighttime cool down.  My favorite hoodie design is the “princess.” I could totally see my sister in law wearing that. So head on over to GoodNewsClothing.com and get some Christian hoodies.

File an extension to postpone your income taxes just got a lot easier. A web design/ marketing associate of Fruition’s just launched FileLater.com. Talking about easy. Just file your extension via filelater.com and you’re set. Stop searching for unnecessary forms or wasting time on the irs website. It’s easy on filelater.com

Here’s a link to the site on how to file quickly file your income tax extension for 2008.

Fruition.net a Denver Internet marketing services company announces free web site hosting and search engine marketing consulting for nonprofit charities. Fruition.net’s goal is to help out nonprofits by helping reduce their Internet related expenses and help with fund raising by offering tips and suggestions on how to properly market charity web sites online. The offer is open for US based charities only.

Brad Anderson founder of Fruition.net stated that “this is just a small token of appreciation to help out charities by offering our expertise and extra server space.” Brad added that he hopes charities benefit not only from the “free hosting but also from our expertise in creating search engine friendly web sites.” Charities can benefit from Fruition.net’s expertise in order to increase the visibility of their sites thus improve their fund raising therefore increase their impact on their selected mission.

Fruition.net is a Denver SEO services firm specializing in measuring and converting traffic on lead based and e-commerce web sites. Fruition.net’s services include Search Engine Marketing (SEM) including Search Engine Optimization (SEO), conversion optimization, and Pay Per Click (PPC) management, Fruition.net has clients in the US, China, and the United Kingdom.

For more information or to request Fruition.net’s free charity hosting or SEO services please visit Fruition.net. Some limitations do apply. Visit the web site for all details.

Here’s a fun site we did for a client here in Denver - Ski Racing Videos.com. It’s a big site with lots of ski racing videos. It was meant just for alpine skiing, but within a few days of launching visitors were posting jet ski videos, water skiing videos, nordic videos, etc. No one even thought about other types of ski racing! Any way check out the site and the cool user videos.

The site is a php mysql driven video sharing website developed in house and hosted on Fruition’s servers.

Secure tunnel - Surf anonymously using secure tunnel.
It always freaks me out when I’m traveling and have to get online to check email or other items online. Even with a VPN setup I worry that email passwords and bank account information will get snagged when using a WIFI connection.

To avoid these issues I use secure tunnel. It works great, it’s secure, and only a few bucks a month.

Secure web surfing