Identity "baselining" services give us a good place to start when we are recovering from an identity theft. But the services are only as good as the databases they look at. And just having an identity baseline lying around won't really protect you from anything. In fact, if you have one, you probably want to keep it locked up somewhere if it's on paper, and behind passwords on your computer.
Baselining is a standard part of any recovery process, I'm really surprised to see that it's taken so long for the concept to start being used against identity theft. Very quickly, it gives you a precise area you need to fix, and tells you what the information *should* be. It wouldn't surprise me if, before much longer, identity baselining becomes a part of every standard identity theft package.