Frequently Asked Questions

To log in to your IdentityHawk® account, please visit our website at www.identityhawk.com. You'll find a "Log On" button in the upper right corner of the page. Click on the button; you'll be asked to enter your Username and Password. Enter the e-mail address you supplied when you enrolled in the program into the Username field. If you can't remember the Password you created, please click the "Forgotten Password" link (located to the right of the "Log On" fields) and follow the instructions.

If you're unable to access your account, please call Membership Services at 1-888-697-0720; our representatives will help you log in.

If you want to create a new password, please log in using your old password, then click on the "My Account” tab. Next, click the "Login Information" link. On the next page, provide your old password and create your new password in the appropriate areas. Once you've created your new password, click on the "Save and Update" button; the page will refresh, and a "Changes have been saved" message will appear, confirming that your password has been changed.

To change your username, please log in using your old e-mail address, then click on the "My Account" tab. Next, click the "Login Information" link. On the next page, enter your new e-mail address in the "E-mail Address" field. (To receive notifications at this new e-mail address, please click the "Set this e-mail as my alert e-mail" box.) When your changes have been entered, just click on the "Save and Update" button; the page will refresh, and a "Changes have been saved" message will appear, confirming that your username has been changed.

To access your program benefits, please click the "Log On" button in the upper right corner of the IdentityHawk.com page, then enter your username and password. Your username is the e-mail address you supplied when you enrolled in the IdentityHawk® program. If you can't remember the password you created, please click the "Forgotten Password" link (located to the right of the Log On fields) and follow the instructions.

The e-mail address you provided when you enrolled in IdentityHawk® is your username.

You also created a password during the sign-up process. If you don't recall the password you created, please click on the "Forgotten Password" link; we'll send you an e-mail containing simple directions for creating a new password. If you don't receive our e-mail within 15 minutes, please check your e-mail program's SPAM filter to make sure it allows e-mails from memberservices@mail.IdentityHawk.com. If you're still having problems, please contact us.

Please note that passwords are case-sensitive. If the password you enter doesn't match the upper- and lower-case letters you used when creating your password, you won't be able to log in.

If the "Forgotten Password" link failed to work, or if you didn't get an e-mail from us in response, please contact IdentityHawk® Member Services toll-free at 1-888-697-0720; one of our Member Services Representatives will help you create a new password and access your membership benefits.

You may need your Membership ID, which is included in the Welcome materials you receive when you first sign up for IdentityHawk®, when you log in to the program website initially. It can also be used for identification purposes if you need to contact Member Services, so please be sure to store your Membership ID in a handy place.

If you forgot your Membership ID number, please contact us to retrieve it.

Each member's e-mail address needs to be different, because e-mail addresses are used as usernames. Please provide different e-mail addresses for you and your spouse/partner for log-in purposes. You can set up the account to receive alert notifications at the same e-mail address, but you need to provide different usernames. New e-mail addresses are easy and free to set up if you go to Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, or any of the other e-mail options. And then, once you set up the IdentityHawk® account, under the "My Account" tab, you can go to "Notification" and use the same e-mail as your spouse for your alerts.

The Identity Theft Resource Center is a non-profit organization that offers a comprehensive library of free identity theft information.

IdentityHawk® was created to help consumers safeguard their assets, their properties, and their good names against the threat of identity theft and fraud. IdentityHawk® members use our benefits to assess the current level of risk to their identities, identify those areas where they're most vulnerable, and take proactive steps to reduce those threats.

Through comprehensive Internet monitoring that combs through public databases, website user forums, black-market chat rooms, and everything in between, IdentityHawk® keeps a constant eye out for threats to our members' identities. As soon as a threat is detected, we send out an alert to the affected member, identifying the risk and suggesting a course of action.

Our 24/7 Internet monitoring capabilities offer state-of-the-art detection services, providing members with enhanced peace of mind about the safety and integrity of their identities.

IdentityHawk® offers consumers a much wider — and, at the same time, more targeted — range of monitoring services than other identity protection companies do to provide our members with the fastest risk-detection alerts possible.

• We monitor the entire Internet, from public databases to chat rooms, around the clock.
• Our members receive a personalized Identity Health Score that measures how vulnerable they may be to an identity breach.
• Our members also receive immediate e-mail notifications as soon as we uncover any personal and/or business data breaches.
• We monitor our members' credit reports, but we go beyond that by tracking the real estate, telephone, and utility information they provide for monitoring purposes. Whenever we uncover any suspicious use of our members' identifying information, we contact the member(s) in question immediately.
• Our Member Services Representatives are trained and certified in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and can provide valuable tips and guidelines to follow should a member be victimized by identity theft or fraud.

If we're unable to verify your information, it's probably because your information doesn't match the data you have on file with the credit bureaus. Please follow these steps to ensure that we have your correct information.

• Check your last name. If it contains a hyphen, please enter just the second half of that name (or just the first half, if you recently married). If there's a space in your last name, please remove it, and type both names without a space between them (e.g., "vanBuren" rather than "van Buren").
• Check your first name. Again, if there's a space in your first name, please remove it (e.g., "Mary Jo" becomes "MaryJo").
• Verify your address. Is the street number correct? Did you spell the name of the street correctly? Did you remember to include the street reference (St., Ave., Dr., etc.)?
• If you changed addresses within the last year, please try your old address rather than your new one.
• If you entered a nickname, please enter your legal name instead — i.e., the name you used to secure credit cards or open up bank accounts. If you got married within the last year, please try entering your maiden name.

At IdentityHawk®, we realize that you may find yourself in a situation that calls for specialized help in addressing and undoing the harm that results from compromised personal information. That's why we provide you access to experts who can help you restore your name to its pre-theft status. For more information, please call us toll-free at 1-888-697-0720.

Your Identity Health Score is a personalized, up-to-the-minute assessment of your risk of identity theft or fraud, based on the personal information you provide us and our monitoring of that information across the Internet. The lower your score, the higher your risk is.

The highest Identity Health Score is 100, but please note that achieving a score of 100 does not and cannot guarantee that your identity is untouchable. In fact, every person's identity faces a certain level of daily risk (e.g., a lost wallet, a compromised computer, or even a recent mugging), and your Identity Health Score is also highly dependent upon the personal information you choose to provide us for monitoring purposes.

The more data you provide about yourself, the more information about you we can search the Internet for, and the more accurate your Identity Health Score will be. At the same time, we may uncover certain "events" (i.e., the use of information that closely mirrors your own) that you don't recognize. These "unrecognized" events in your dashboard will lower your Identity Health Score and thereby raise your level of assessed risk, even if they're ultimately not associated with your identity.

The goal of the Identity Health Score is to measure how secure your personal information is at the present time. Your Identity Health Score is neither a guarantee that your information is safe (if your score is high) nor a definitive indication that you have recently been or will soon be an identity theft victim (if your score is low). Much like a grade measures your current knowledge of a specific subject, your Identity Health Score is a snapshot of your current level of risk for identity theft or fraud.

A variety of factors are used to determine your Identity Health Score. You have control over some of those factors, while others are out of your hands. Here are a few tips for guarding your identity and increasing your Identity Health Score:

• Close dormant credit accounts in your name, such as rarely-used credit or retail cards, a home equity line of credit (HELOC) that you don't use, and other lines of credit.
• Sign up for paperless financial statements that you can access online. This will prevent thieves from stealing your financial information out of your mailbox.
• Secure your mail by installing a locked mailbox, putting a mail slot in your front door, or opening a P.O. Box account at your local post office.
• Take steps to safeguard your personal data:
  • Put all financial and other personal documents through a cross-cut shredder before throwing them away.
  • Instead of carrying your Social Security card with you, memorize your Social Security number (SSN), and never share it with anyone unless it's absolutely necessary. Never write your SSN on a check, and never provide it over the phone unless you initiated the phone call and you trust the person or institution on the other end of the call.
  • Store your personal documents and information in a secure location — a well-hidden, locked filing cabinet or safe at your home, for instance, or a safe-deposit box at your local bank.
  • Never trust e-mails from anyone you don't know — and never click on links contained in e-mails from unknown or untrustworthy sources. If you want to check out a website, type the URL into your browser's address bar yourself.
  • Install protective software on your computer, and update that software as soon as the latest version is released.

For additional tips on how to avoid becoming an identity theft victim, visit the Federal Trade Commission's identity theft website at http://www.ftc.gov/idtheft.

Your profile is comprised of all of the data you supplied to IdentityHawk®. Our monitoring technology uses the information you provide to search for unauthorized usage of your data as well as other suspicious activity that may be a sign of identity theft or fraud.

That's why it's critical that you provide accurate information and update your profile whenever your information changes or expands. When you need to update your profile, please click on the "My Identity" tab after you log in. On the "My Identity" page, you'll find a variety of categories for your personal data, including names, addresses, Social Security number, phone numbers, and affiliations. Simply enter new information, edit current information, or deleted outdated information to keep your profile up-to-date.

A breach occurs when a company or institution loses, through theft or other causes, unique identifying data about a group of people. Breaches can occur by accident (e.g., when an employee leaves behind a laptop after dining in a restaurant) or through carelessness (e.g., when an employee leaves classified documents on a desk after hours). Breaches also occur on purpose — hackers and identity thieves, for example, actively pursue the personal information of others on a daily basis.

Whenever a breach occurs at a company or other organization with which a member declares an affiliation, that member will receive a breach alert from IdentityHawk® detailing the steps he or she should take to safeguard his or her personal information and identity.

Breach alerts are notifications informing you of a data breach at an institution, which could be a company, a college or university, or even a government agency. Breach alerts are sent to IdentityHawk® members via e-mail or text message, based on the format in which the member chooses to receive them. They're used to alert members to the reported loss of personal data at firms or organizations with which a member has declared an affiliation.

For instance, if your IdentityHawk® profile includes a credit card account with ABC Bank, and ABC Bank reports that it's fallen victim to a hacker, you'll receive a breach alert from IdentityHawk® as soon as we learn of the data breach. The alert will pass along as much information as we can gather on the breach, including the name of the institution, its location, the type of breach that occurred, the size of the data loss, and the potential risk the data breach poses to your identity.

Our breach alerts are intended to provide you with the information you need to investigate and address a potential threat to your identity as quickly as possible.

Detected events occur when our monitoring service uncovers the usage of some portion of the data you entered in your personal profile, or an incident in which the information we uncover is very similar to your own information (the use of your first and last name, for example). These events may be authorized by you, they may have been a result of an input error, or they may be a sign that your identity is at risk. IdentityHawk® members receive e-mail or text-message notifications whenever we come across a detected event through our monitoring activity. Should you receive such a notification, you're urged to log in to www.identityhawk.com and investigate the event. Each detected event will appear on your dashboard; to learn more about the event, simply click on the event link.

Affiliations are groups with which you've declared some sort of association in your personal profile. This can include past or present employers, schools that you've attended, retailers that have issued you a store credit card, or business groups to which you have ties. IdentityHawk® members enter their affiliations when they create their personal profiles and are encouraged to include as many affiliations as possible. The more comprehensive that list is, the greater the likelihood is that our monitoring service will identify all relevant data breaches that could affect the integrity and security of the member's identity.

If you want to change the e-mail address through which you'll receive notifications, start by clicking on the "My Account" tab after you log in. From there, click on the "Notification" link. Enter your new e-mail address into the appropriate field, then click the "Save and Update" button to confirm the changed e-mail address.

Please note that the e-mail address you use for notifications can differ from the e-mail address you use as your username. If you wish to change your username, please click on the "Login Information" link, and change your username on the next page that appears.

IdentityHawk® e-mail alerts are sent out to members as soon as we learn of a data breach or whenever we detect an event that could pose a risk to a member's identity. Because these alerts are sent out on a targeted, need-to-know basis, there's no "schedule" for e-mails. If you don't receive an e-mail alert for an extended period, that simply means we haven't discovered any activity through our monitoring service that could threaten your identity.

From time to time, you may receive e-mails from IdentityHawk® that share useful information regarding identity security, your IdentityHawk® account, and other news that we feel is relevant to your interest in protecting your personal information. However, because we respect your privacy and remain vigilant about safeguarding it, you have the ability to unsubscribe from any or all of our e-mail lists. To do so, simply click on the "My Account" tab after you log in, then click through to the "Notification" page and follow the instructions for removing yourself from alert e-mails and/or optional e-mails. You can also call Member Services toll-free at 1-888-697-0720 to request that you be removed from these e-mail lists.

After you sign up for the IdentityHawk® program, "MVQ*IdentityHawk" will appear on your credit or debit card statement as the billing descriptor for each payment period. It will only appear on these statements after your trial period has concluded, and only if you remain a member.

To cancel your IdentityHawk® membership, call 1-888-697-0720, and follow the prompts. For your convenience, please have your Membership ID number handy when you call.

To change your billing address, you can send us an e-mail through our Contact Us page, or you can contact Member Services toll-free at 1-888-697-0720. If you contact us via e-mail, please select "Change Billing Address" from the "Subject" dropdown menu. Also, please be sure that you include your name, e-mail address and/or Membership ID, old address, and new address in your address-change request.

To send us an e-mail, please visit our Contact Us page. To contact us over the phone, please call Member Services toll-free at 1-888-697-0720.

Yes. Our website uses 128-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption for all of our communications; this is the same encryption standard that's been installed on the websites of global financial leaders. We also apply world-class security practices to ensure that our members' data are safe and secure. Our members' passwords are stored via industry-standard encoding methods that bar outside parties as well as IdentityHawk® staffers from seeing our members' password or viewing or retrieving any of their other information.

Members who use a Netscape or Microsoft browser can see a small key or padlock icon at the bottom right of their browser window. This icon is a sign of a secure transaction.

The URL address can also indicate a secure transaction. A URL that contains "https://" at the beginning is a sign that a secure server is being used to transmit credit card information.

Click here to read our Privacy Policy.

If you have unresolved questions, please send us an e-mail via our Contact Us page, or call IdentityHawk® Member Services toll-free at 1-888-697-0720.

Once you log into IdentityHawk®, follow these steps:

1. Click the “My Credit” tab on your dashboard.
2. Next, click the "Get My Credit Scores" button on the "My Credit Report and Scores" page.
3. You'll then be asked to complete a one-time verification of your identity with our credit service provider by answering a series of multiple choice questions based on the information found in your credit information and public records. You may be asked questions about your:
   • Social Security number
   • Loans and mortgages you have had
   • Previous employers and addresses

After you've completed the identity verification process, click "Next" to view your Triple Bureau Credit Scores!

Your credit score is determined by several factors, including:

• Your payment history (35%)
• Your debts (30%)
• The length of your credit history (15%)
• New sources of credit (10%)
• Miscellaneous factors (10%)
• Factors that could damage your credit score:
  • Maxed-out credit cards
  • Bad debt-to-credit ratio
  • Home foreclosures
  • Paying late
  • Blowing off your bills entirely
  • Collection notices
  • Bankruptcy
  • Closing old accounts

As a member of IdentityHawk®, you can request your new Triple Bureau Credit Scores every 30 days. Checking your credit information at all three bureaus each month will help ensure that inaccurate or fraudulent information in your credit profile is corrected promptly — before it negatively affects your credit score.

To request your updated credit scores as a member of IdentityHawk®, follow these steps:

1. After you've logged into www.identityhawk.com, click the “My Credit” tab on the dashboard.
2. Next, click the "Get My Credit Scores" button on the "My Credit Report and Scores" page.
3. Then, click the "Request a New Report" button. Our credit services provider may ask for your permission to access your personal information. Select "I Agree," and click "Confirm."
4. Finally, click the "Credit Center" tab at the top of the page. To view your updated credit scores, click "Credit Score" in the "Credit Center" sub-menu.

Banks, retailers, and other sources aren't required to report your credit transactions to every credit bureau, so the information in one credit bureau file may be different from the information found in your credit file at another bureau. Since your credit scores are calculated based on the information in your credit files, your credit score can vary at each bureau.

There are some instances in which we're unable to provide members with immediate online access to their credit scores. These instances can occur when:

• We aren't able to verify your identity. For your security, we only deliver your credit scores when you pass our online identity verification process.
• We're experiencing a technical issue. If you believe we're experiencing a technical issue, please send us an email through our Contact Us page so we can resolve the problem.
• The credit bureau doesn't return a credit file. Sometimes the credit bureau doesn't have enough information to create a credit file for you.

If you need more information, please contact us online or call us at 888-220-9456.

No, it won't. This is a popular misconception. Accessing your personal credit information is called a "soft inquiry." Soft inquiries do not impact your credit score.

Credit alerts are email notifications that are sent to members of IdentityHawk® when there's a critical change to their credit information at the three national credit bureaus: TransUnion, Equifax, and Experian. Once you request your first credit score as a member of IdentityHawk®, your credit monitoring service is automatically activated. You'll receive an alert whenever one of the three credit bureaus posts new information that could potentially affect your credit score; the alerts will be sent to the email address you provided during enrollment.

As a member of IdentityHawk®, your credit information will be monitored every day, and you'll be alerted immediately via email if any critical changes occur that can potentially affect your credit score. You'll also receive a monthly credit summary email if no activity occurs.

You'll be notified immediately if any of the following activity occurs:

• Suspicious activity that could be the result of fraud
• Activity that could affect your credit score
• New inquiries (companies or creditors requesting your credit score, usually as the result of a recent credit application)
• New accounts opened in your name
• Late payments
• Bankruptcies and other public records
• New addresses
• New employers

Suspicious activity can potentially affect your credit score and could be caused by:

• An identity thief who made a transaction, a loan application, or other credit-related behavior in your name
• An error made by a vendor reporting to the credit bureau
• An error made by the credit bureau itself

If you see suspicious credit activity in your name, you should investigate it immediately. To begin an investigation, contact the appropriate credit bureau; they'll walk you through the process of disputing the information and correcting your files. The contact information for the bureaus is as follows:

TransUnion LLC
P.O. Box 2000
Chester, PA 19022
(800) 888-4213
Web site: www.transunion.com

Equifax
P.O. Box 740256
Atlanta, GA 30374
(800)-685-1111
Web site: www.equifax.com

Experian
PO Box 2002
Allen, TX 75013
(888) 397-3742
Web site: www.experian.com