Lifelock Problems Aren’t As They First Appear

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Not so long a go we had several Lifelock problems arise but truth be known Lifelock were never effected and continued to grow, passing the 1 million satisfied customer mark a while back. Lifelock is still the the number 1 choice in identity theft security in spite of one or two new companies hoping in the shadows to take over should the Lifelock problems have been critical.

Back in May we had the breaking news of one or two clients taking legal action against Lifelock over claims the Lifelock advertising campaign was misleading.

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

This obviously made the news, it’s a great story but then as the story ran it was shown that actually Lifelock had worked for Davis. The person who took out the loan was caught and more just as importantly, his credit report remained squeeky clean.

We also discovered 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 membership. The story quickly got buried once it became clear the person behind it was a opportunist lawyer who’d found a new fat cow to chase.

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

Lifelock, acting on a customers behalf, place a fraud alert on their credit file which means extra care should be taken when offering loans, credit agreements etc. Basically it means the person is concerned their identity could have been compromised so please double check before opening a line of credit. Incidentally, the person who took out the $500 payday loan in Davis name was successful because the company handling the loan admitted to ignoring the fraud alert.

Experian claim you can add this fraud alert yourself so Lifelock are taking monthly subscriptions under false pretences. This appeared like serious Lifelock problems and once more the press jumped in feet first.

A little digging by a few journalists who prefer to report news rather than just 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. It slows down the loan business and causes extra work for them. It’s because of this that a fraud alert only lasts a limited period. You then have to go through the whole process of applying for it again.

Lifelock manage this for their customers every 3 months and should they forget and an identity gets misused, they guarantee to make good up to the tune of a cool $1 million and it’s this their clients are happy to pay the small monthly fee for.

Another reason Experian have been trying to cause Lifelock problems is because Lifelock remove their customers names from mail lists. The Lifelock logic is that if you aren’t receiving credit card offers through the mail, 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. Just consider sending out your credit card or loan offer to households you already know have several cards and an income of $100K a year instead of merely posting to the masses and then having to go through all the applications to sieve out the good from the bad?

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

If you were considering signing up with Lifelock, make your decision based purely on the service offered, not on the Lifelock problems that you may have heard about a few months back.

It’s worth remembering that yes you can do what Lifelock does for you yourself. You may also be capable of servicing your car yourself if you wanted to and some folk do. Others though like the peace of mind that comes with the knowledge that a professional has done it for them and should the person doing the job mess up, there is a full guarantee on offer as a back up.