Fraud and Identify Theft are now common everyday attacks and a matter of concern for any business, no matter what their size, or market sector. It is therefore essential that they take proactive steps to defend the business. Garlik offer a security solution to these issues under the brand name of DataPatrol.

The most comprehensive service is called DataPatrol Defence Level 2, which purports to provide a wide range of services that encompass varying levels of protection. These include options to customise just how the solution meets your businesses specific requirements. In short, DataPatrol Defence Level 2 offers a very effective way to protect against identity theft, a every increasing risk, both reputational and financial.

DataPatrol Defence Level 2 provides individuals and either businesses’ own staff or their customers with the ability to take proactive steps to defend and protect their sensitive personal and financial information online. It does so by searching through billions of web pages, and millions of public records and commercial databases to give individuals an accurate reflection of where their personal information is available.

The product covers the main information types targeted in identity theft attacks. It provides the ability to protect most types of personal and financial information e.g. Names, Email, Store Cards, User ID’s & Aliases, Debit & Credit card Numbers, Password Number, Address, Bank Account, and Drivers License details, and so forth.

The Service monitors financial information such as credit cards, debit cards and bank account numbers on a daily basis, whilst making weekly checks for other, less risky data types.

The Service is very proactive. If Level 2 discovers that an individual’s information has been compromised online, it will immediately issue an alert, along with clear direction as to what action that individual should take to protect against possible identity theft or financial fraud.

In our opinion a further credit to this service is that the people behind Garlik are dedicated individuals. Unlike some services, we feel the service they provide has a much closer home-grown and personal feel, which is very different from some of the other large industry players.

Just because individuals are not high profile businesses does not protect them from the attention of Fraudsters and Criminals; every day thousands, if not millions of attacks are performed against ordinary people in an attempt to steal their hard earned assets, including their own identities.

Every day we add to our Digital Footprint, and it is easy to lose track of just how much information about us we expose to misuse by fraudsters, looking to steal our identities.

DataPatrol, from Garlik, is an on-line service that provides continuous monitoring of the Web and other Internet sources for personal and sensitive information. It generates a quarterly report on users’ information exposure, and provides them with weekly updates and easy to use tools to manage the results. This service will also alert users if it locates specific personal and sensitive information that has been exposed online.

As with the similar service that Garlik offers to businesses (click here), we feel this service has a home-grown and personal feel, which is very different from some of the other large industry players.

CreditExpert, an offering from Experian, is described as a personal credit check and anti-fraud service. Users subscribe to this service via one of a number of regional delivery points. The service purports to alert users to credit applications made in their names, and other uses of their personal details which could indicate a past fraud or even a current attempt at fraud. However, unlike the other sites, and services we reviewed, Experian do not provide detailed information on what their service offers to potential subscribers; it is hard to ascertain what exactly they will get for their money. Instead the service seems to concentrate more on providing credit reports, rather than the anti fraud service. Clicking on 'Get ID fraud alerts via SMS or e-Mail' to get more information only takes users to the page to make payment and to set up their accounts; users do not seem to be given any further information on the service!

There is an option to trial this service for free for 30 days. However, we do understand from some users who have tried the service and decided to cancel it after the trial period that they have found it a challenge to cancel their payments (users need to provide their credit card details when they apply for the free trial), so please keep this in mind when you sign up.