It's such a shame that the companies we trust (and pay) to protect our credit records still don't seem to know how to make an honest dollar. The State of Florida recently confirmed that it is investigating Freecreditreport.com for the same reasons so many of these firms have been investigated before - misleading advertising, negative opt-in enrollment, and failure to honor cancellation requests.

And it's not the first time. Freecreditreport's parent company Experian settled a similar lawsuit with the FTC in 2005, and other companies in the same business have been accused of the same practices. One of these lawsuits was lead by the Attorney General of California and I was even a victim.

I'd heard many complaints against Experian and decided to try for myself. I signed up for a free credit report (which I don't recall ever getting in the end) and as expected was immediately enrolled in a credit monitoring service for $79 per year. Although I cancelled in the time alloted, lo and behold I was still charged the $79. After a few phone calls and a lot of effort I finally managed to get a credit a few months later.

The greatest shame is that most of these firms offer credit monitoring services as a defense against identity theft, and I believe that if used properly (and provided by an honest firm) these services can be of great benefit. I've been using a credit monitoring service for nearly three years and am more than happy to pay the $12 every month for the peace of mind.

But the behavior of these firms continues to erode consumer confidence in the credit monitoring industry, and in the services they need and want to trust. And given the enormous benefit and growing demand for good credit monitoring, you'd think these companies could make even more money if American consumers actually trusted them?