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I have an entire article about how wrong and stupid the "Nothing to Hide" argument is: http://www.jeremyduffy.com/privacy-security/nothing-to-hide/ If you're looking for a comeback argument, I've got several.

Like I said, Credit Freezes (as long as your state supports it anyway). A second alternative is to get your free credit report every three months to monitor it for free. Granted it's not as fast, but it's free. http://www.jeremyduffy.com/top-issues/credit-secur ity-freezes/

From http://www.jeremyduffy.com/money-credit/credit-mon itoring-ripoff/ : * It doesn't stop ID theft, it just let's you know that it's happening faster than you would otherwise. * It's worse than insurance - At least with Insurance, you can control your level of risk. For example, if you don't drive much, your risk of an accident is much lower than someone who delivers pizzas. But you have no way to know if you are at more or less risk for ID theft. So you'll pay and pay and might never see any benefit from the money lost. * There's a free alternative available - With the new law requireing that the credit companies give you one free credit report per year, if you stagger them to get one every three months, you will be able to constantly see your credit report anyway. While this is not as good as monitoring would be, it's better than paying $150 or more per year for the "service". Remember that there is only ONE legitimate site to get your free reports! * It's a type of fear-based extortion - The credit companies are the reason the problem exists in the first place, but they will let you pay them "protection money" to stop it. Oh wait, they don't stop anything. That's right, now you're paying them protection money, but they don't protect you (If at this point you want to point out the ID Theft insurance included with the plan, don't even bother). * Credit monitoring is big money - Did you every wonder why there are SO many outlets for credit monitoring? Here's a hint: why were there so many outlets for home-equity loans? Because people are making money hand over fist on it. Any time you see some financial service that seems to have a million knockoffs seemingly overnight, (e.g. payday loans), you can bet that something is wrong. * They charge WAY too much for the service - So you get an e-mail any time your credit file changes. There's almost no cost associated with this! If you subscribe to the RSS feed off this site, then any time I make an update to this page, you will know. What does it cost me? Nothing. What does it cost you? Nothing. * It's not necessary if you live in a state that allows credit freezes - There is nothing, NOTHING that credit monitoring buys you if you have a credit freeze on your account (as long as your personal password hasn't been compromised). That's because without your personal password that you use to thaw your account, no one can get access to your credit file.

Sure he has some good advice, but he supports credit monitoring which is like paying protection money to the credit reporting companies. Does he mention credit freezes at all? If not, why bother listening to him. Solving ID theft is two part: lock down your credit reports and lock down your data (the much harder of the two).

Sure he has some good advice, but he supports credit monitoring which is like paying protection money to the credit reporting companies. Does he mention credit freezes at all? If not, why bother listening to him. Solving ID theft is two part: lock down your credit reports and lock down your data (the much harder of the two).

Sure he has some good advice, but he supports credit monitoring which is like paying protection money to the credit reporting companies. Does he mention credit freezes at all? If not, why bother listening to him. Solving ID theft is two part: lock down your credit reports and lock down your data (the much harder of the two).

I also hate the "Nothing to Hide" statement just about as much as the "If you don't like it here, then why don't you leave" (when referring to complaining about the state of America today). Anyway, here's my basic response: "It's a proven fact that there are more strangers than people you know. A large percentage of strangers can't be trusted to handle your private information in an appropriate way. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with keeping information to yourself. In fact, it's quite irresponsible to offer private information to just anyone." My full posting on it is here: http://www.jeremyduffy.com/privacy-security/nothin g-to-hide/