Discover is now offering cardholders paid identity theft protection insurance for $15 per month. This comes with up to $1,000,000 in coverage. Interestingly they are advertising some of the benefits that all cardholders currently receive as benefits of this identity theft protection. For example free social security alerts. When looking at the coverage limit of $1,000,000 it’s also important to understand what this covers. In most cases this type of protection will cover expenses incurred as a result of restoring your identity, for example:
- Phone bills
- Lost wages (usually only up to a maximum of four weeks)
- Notary and certified mailing costs
- Postage
- Obtaining credit reports (this can be done for free through https://www.annualcreditreport.com)
Discover specifically states that in this case it also covers reimbursement of stolen funds and lost wages. This coverage is actually provided by American International Group, Inc. (AIG). It’s disappointing to see that Discover is launching a paid service like this when they have already made huge cuts to benefits this year (as well as the loss of price protection). The fact that consumers even need to consider such an insurance points to a clearly broken system where large corporations with lax security are putting the private information of consumers at risk with little to no consequence.
