Am I protected against identity theft under my home insurance policy in Wayzata, Minnesota?

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Identity theft can happen to anyone, even people living along Lake Minnetonka in the small city of Wayzata, Minnesota. Well Wayzata is a nice quiet place to live and everyone is friendly, but, there are evil-doers out there, lurking on the Internet and trying to find ways to steal your identity.

If you use a computer to bank online, make purchases at Amazon, or stay in touch with your friends on Facebook, you are at risk of becoming a victim of identity theft. No insurance can protect you 100 percent of the time from having your private information compromised.

The best thing you can do is take as many steps as you can to make it harder for an identity thief to steal your identity. Chang passwords frequently. Don’t open emails from unknown senders. Check your bank and credit card statements to make sure there are no withdrawals or purchases that you don’t recognize. Even with all that, you still are at risk.

Your standard home insurance policy will not cover identity theft, but many home insurers will offer you some protection against the hideous invasion of your privacy by giving you the option to add an endorsement for identity theft to your policy.

An endorsement under your home insurance policy will not reimburse you for the monetary losses you may suffer if someone hacks into your bank account, but what it will do, is pay for the expenses that you incur to restore your identity and credit.

For instance, when you find out that your identity has been stolen, you might want to do things like cancel all of your accounts and open new accounts. It can take a lot of time and be expensive if you have to get a new passport, birth certificate, or driver’s license. You may have to send certified letters to all of your creditors, need notary services and even miss time at work. When you add an endorsement for identity theft, it will cover some, if not all of those expenses.

As your independent agent, please give us a call and we can see if adding this type of coverage to your home insurance policy makes sense for you.