Darius Kingsley said a normal credit score can miss identity theft because credit monitoring mainly flags new accounts, hard inquiries, collections activity and score changes reported to bureaus.
Six common threats may never trigger those alerts: takeovers of existing bank or retirement accounts, tax and benefits fraud, medical identity theft, SIM swaps, payment scams and exposure through data brokers.
Kingsley urged consumers to review bank, investment and medical statements, monitor IRS and Social Security records, and add carrier PINs, port-out protection and non-SMS multifactor authentication.
He said broader identity-protection services can add financial-account, dark-web and phone-takeover monitoring, but they still work best alongside account alerts, strong passwords and regular manual checks.
If theft is suspected, he advised contacting the affected institution, changing passwords, filing with the FTC, notifying relevant agencies and freezing credit with all 3 major bureaus.