Identity Theft Protection

Recently we witnessed several Lifelock problems make the news but truth be known the company never broke stride and continued to grow, reaching a million customers in the process. Lifelock is still the the number 1 choice in identity theft security despite several new companies hovering in the shadows to step in should the Lifelock problems have proved to be deadly.

Back in May we had the story of a few clients taking legal action against the company because they claimed the Lifelock advertising campaign was misleading.

The claim was based on the fact that Todd Davis gives out his social security number in Life Lock advertisements to prove how confident he is in the protection provided by Lifelock. It appears they felt, or at least their lawyer felt that this is misleading because actually some guy took out a small loan for $500 using the SSN of Todd Davis.

This obviously made the news, it’s a good story but then as it unravelled it came to light that actually Lifelock had worked for Davis. The person who took out the loan was caught and more just as importantly, the CEO’s credit file remained squeeky clean.

We also found out that none of the customers who were seeking the class action had actually suffered a case of identity theft and had not even cancelled their Lifelock subscription. The words ambulances and chasers sprung to mind and the story died a quick and relatively painless death.

The next Lifelock problems seemed to be a little more serious. Experian, one of the major credit bureaus were claiming that the service provided by Lifelock could be done by a person without the need of a monthly charge.

Lifelock, acting on a on behalf of their clients, place a fraud alert on their credit file which means extra care should be taken when issuing loans, credit agreements etc. Basically it means the person fears their identity has been compromised so please act with caution before opening a line of credit. By the way, the person who took out the $500 payday loan in Davis name was successful because the loan company admitted to ignoring the fraud alert.

Experian claim you can add this fraud alert yourself so Lifelock are taking monthly fees under false pretences. At first glance this appeared like serious Lifelock problems and again the press jumped in feet first.

A little digging by a few journalists who prefer to report news rather than simply a good story again showed that what appeared to be Lifelock problems, actually had ulterior motives.

It seems Experian do not like fraud alerts on credit files. Fraud alerts slow down the the business of issuing credit and creates work for the credit bureaus. It’s for this reason that a fraud alert only lasts a limited period. You then have to go through the whole process of applying for the fraud alert again.

Lifelock manage this for their clients every 3 months and should they forget and an identity gets stolen, they have a guarantee that kicks in to the tune of a nice $1 million and it’s this that their clients are more than happy to pay the ten buck fee for.

One other reason Lifelock are not the favorite company of Experian is because Lifelock remove their clients names from all the financial mailing lists. The Lifelock logic is that if you aren’t receiving credit card offers through the post, they can’t be stolen and accepted in your name.

This sounds a really good idea right? Well guess who sells the credit card companies the names of affluent middle class Americans who the credit card companies want to target? This is huge business for the Experian and the other 2 credit bureaus as these lists are extremely targeted and thereforeextremely valuable. Imagine sending out your credit card or loan offer to homes you already know have several cards and an income of $90K a year instead of merely posting to the masses and hoping for the best?

As with most new highly successful companies, deeper motives can usually be found when stories start appearing in the papers and the Lifelock problems are no different.

If you were thinking about teaming up with Lifelock, make your decision based solely on the service they offer, not on the Lifelock problems that you may have heard about a few months back.

Yes you can do what Lifelock does for you yourself. You could probably also service your car yourself if you wanted to and some people do. Others though prefer the security that comes with knowing a professional has done it for them and should they make a mess of it, there is a full guarantee on offer as a back up.

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