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Is insuring your identity against fraud worth it?

ID theft protection is a booming industry, with new products being launched and existing ones tweaked to help with, and profit from, the anxiety.

By Sarah Max | Updated on March 04, 2015
(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

(Bloomberg Business) — Anyone who isn’t in a high state of alert about safeguarding his or her identity is either in massive denial or is a fatalist. The data breach at Anthem put about 80 million consumers at risk of ID theft, states are seeing a spike in fraudsters using stolen identities to file for income tax refund checks and new hacks seem to be discovered every week. That’s made ID theft protection a booming industry, with new products being launched and existing ones tweaked to help with, and profit from, the anxiety.

H&R Block is the latest player to get into the business. In January, it launched “Tax Identity Shield,” which, for $29.95 a year, does an annual, pretax season scan for your name on websites suspected of selling personal information, sends an e-mail if your information is on another tax return filed through H&R Block, and gives basic help navigating red tape. TransUnion also unveiled a new product in January, a mobile app that, among other things, lets users paying $17.95 a month freeze and unfreeze their credit report with a swipe of their finger. Existing products are going strong: The largest niche player, Lifelock, has posted double-digit revenue growth for the last five consecutive years. 

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