I received a notice in the mail some months ago that I was involved in a data breach a certain massive, multi-national telecomm company was settling. Like many people involved in such settlements, I was not offered a ludicrously small amount of money as a reward for being an unwitting victim. Instead, I was given the mostly useless gift of free Identity Theft Protection.
Identity Theft Protection (ITP) services promise to monitor your financial and online life (so often intertwined these days) and alert you if your personal information is compromised in order to steal your identity. This can involve anything from using your credit cards to make illegal purchases to more complex schemes that use your information to borrow money or open accounts in your name, potentially ruining your credit score and leaving you with an enormous mess to clean up.