American Express thinks I’m an idiot, or at least they’re hoping I am.

Why else would they send me a very important letter offering me “advanced internet surveillance scouring websites and public records,” “high priority alerts […] for immediate action,” and, best of all, “continuous benefits and convenient billing”? I’d be a fool to pass up their Single Identity™-brand “24/7 monitoring and scouring [scouring must be important] of black market websites,” wouldn’t I?

All for the extremely reasonable price of $9.99 a month (“plus sales tax, where applicable”).

Or, to put it another way, $120 a year to do something I can do myself, namely keep an eye on my credit card statements, bank balances and credit reports.

They don’t even promise to do a good job, instead stating in the fine print that they “may not be able to apprise [me] of all [my] personal information that may have been compromised” and that they “may not be able to apprise [me] of all instances in which [my] Social Security Number may have been compromised.”

Say what? You want $120 a year, and you can’t even do a good job?

Perhaps I instead should take advantage of Kroger Personal Finance®’s generic identity theft protection, available now in your Kroger checkout lane for only $5.99 a month.

Oh, wait! Kroger has practically the same fine print! At least I’d be saving 40% with Kroger.

Update: PNC really thinks their customers are idiots, charging $12.99 a month for the same service Amex and Kroger sell (check PNC’s very similar footnotes).

Update 02/19/2013: Looks like Amex has gotten out of the identity theft protection business. Their singleidentity.net domain now redirects to a page on their main americanexpress.com site that says their ID Protect program has been discontinued as of January 1, 2013:

Update 04/10/2013: It turns out that American Express has a new, more expensive service for idiots, CreditSecure®.