Darling breaks the newsThe disgraceful mislaying of the discs containing 25m people's personal records by the taxman was announced on 20th November. It was a list of people who have received Child Benefit.

That's bad enough, but at least it was a mess-up, not a deliberate attempt to take advantage of a situation (I hope).

Unlike the full page adverts from LoydsTSB TSB that appeared today - seeming to be sympathetic, but actually trying to flog some credit-rating monitoring product of theirs called PrivacyGuard.

This is just taking advantage of people's fears, and should be exposed as such  Let me be clear:

• If you are the innocent victim of banking fraud you will not have to pay, with or without any insurance. 
• This LloydsTSB product offers no protection or insurance anyway - it simply monitors your credit history from only one of the Credit Reference Agencies

If that's what you want, then buy it, although you can get the same service cheaper elsewhere.  But you are still on your own if there's trouble, despite the impression the LloydsTSB advert gave me

If you think you have been the victim of identity theft, you can read some good some specific advice by clicking here.

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