Ask HN: Is free identity theft protection after a data breach worth the bother?

[daoboy]

Following the most recent in a long line of data breaches (AFLAC this time), I am wondering if it is worth taking advantage of their 24 month free CyEx Medical Shield.

Has anyone ever used one of these after a breach? Any compelling reason not to use it?

[apothegm]

I got two of these for free in back to back years and signed up for both.

One alerted about an online release of PII (mostly phone numbers and addresses) at the rate of a few per month, but there wasn’t really anything one could _do_ with that information.

The other never alerted me to anything.

Agreed that freezing credit is table stakes and much more useful than these services.

[al_borland]

I froze my credit at the 3 bureaus. I figure this is enough of a stumbling block that they’ll move to the next person in the breach. I’d rather stop anything from happening than have a company claim they can clean it up once it happens.

[Ruddybuilds]

Most of those “protection” services just notify you after the damage is possible. A credit freeze blocks new accounts entirely, which is the only thing that actually changes the math for attackers. I treat monitoring as noise, freeze as defense. Freeze takes 10 minutes and works 100% of the time.