A Class-Action Settlement for Nearly Every Consumer

Although more than a 150 million consumers are potentially eligible, only a fraction have signed up for the monitoring service, according to Chris Micheletti, an attorney with the law firm Zelle, Hofmann, Voelbel, Mason & Gette, which is representing plaintiffs in the class-action case against TransUnion.

Micheletti said that as of Aug. 22, about 380,000 people had registered for a cash payment or monitoring services or both.

If you register to receive credit monitoring, you'll have six months after the court grants final approval of the settlement and all appeals are resolved to activate your monitoring benefit. Any cash payout won't become available until at least two years after the settlement is finalized by the court.

The six months of credit-monitoring services retails for $59.75 and includes the ability to lock your credit report so third parties, such as lenders or other companies, will not be able to access your credit report without your consent (unless allowed by law). This option also gives you unlimited daily access to your TransUnion credit report and credit score.

The nine months of enhanced credit monitoring retails for $115.50 and includes all the services listed for the six-month option. You also get insurance scores and a mortgage simulator service.

At this point it's hard to predict the payout amount to people who opted for the cash option. That's because what they get depends on what's left in the settlement fund.

TransUnion is required to pay $75 million into the settlement fund. From the fund, the credit bureau has to donate $150,000 to nonprofit organizations. Other deductions include legal fees and expenses from any settlements or judgments for damage claims related to lawsuits brought individually by class members against TransUnion.

Identity theft has increasingly become a problem as people's personal information has become so easily traded or stolen. Certainly enough companies have given people reason to worry about the safety of their credit information.

It's the maddening ineptness of businesses that has allowed customer or client data to be lost or compromised by identity thieves.

The Identity Theft Resource Center found that consumer data breaches by various private and public entities reached an all-time high this year. Between January and June, the center recorded 342 data breaches, an increase of more than 69 percent compared with the same period in 2007.

If you were thinking about signing up for a credit-monitoring service, here is your chance to try it out. I had a monitoring service for a year but didn't find it very helpful. The downside to this service is that you're contacted about a potential or a real identity theft problem after the fact. Credit monitoring is fraud detection, rather than protection against it.

Although credit monitoring has its limitations, I'm still going to take advantage of this chance to keep an eye on my TransUnion credit report, even if the service is only temporary.

· On the air: Michelle Singletary discusses personal finance Tuesdays on NPR's "Day to Day" program and athttp://www.npr.org.

· By mail: Readers can write to her at The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071.

· By e-mail:singletarym@washpost.com.

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