Lifelock Problems - Don't Bank On It

Recently we saw several Lifelock problems surface but in truth the company were never effected and continued their growth, reaching a million customers in the process. Lifelock is still the leading light in identity theft protection despite several new pretenders hovering in the shadows to step in should the Lifelock problems have proved to be lethal.

Back in May we had the story of one or two customers taking legal action against Lifelock because they claimed 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 show how confident he is in the identity theft prevention provided by Lifelock. It seems they felt, or at least their lawyer felt that this was misleading because actually some guy managed to take out a small loan for $500 using the social security number of Todd Davis.

This made the news and why wouldn't it, it's a good story but then as it unravelled it came to light that actually Lifelock had worked for Davis. The thief who took out the loan was caught and more just as importantly, Davis credit report remained clean.

We also discovered that none of the clients who were attempting the lawsuit had actually suffered a case of identity theft and hadn't even cancelled their Lifelock membership. The story died as quickly as it appeared.

The next Lifelock problems to appear seemed a little more serious. Experian, one of the big 3 credit bureaus were running stories in the press that the service provided by Lifelock could be done by a person without the need of a monthly subscription.

Lifelock, acting on a acting for their customers, place a fraud alert on their credit file which means extra care should be taken when issuing credit, loans etc. Basically it means the person has concern their identity may have been compromised so please double check before opening offering credit or giving out a loan. Incidentally, the person who took out the $500 payday loan in Davis name was able to because the loan company admitted to ignoring the fraud alert.

Experian tell anyone who will listen that you can place a fraud alert yourself so Lifelock are taking monthly fees under false pretences. This appeared like serious Lifelock problems and once more the press jumped in feet first.

A little bit of 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 causes extra work for them. It's for this reason that a fraud alert only lasts for a period of 3 months. You then have to go through the whole process of applying for the fraud alert again.

Lifelock manage this for their customers each quarter and should something go wrong and an identity gets stolen, they guarantee to make good up to the tune of a nice $1 million and it's this their clients are happy to pay the small monthly fee for.

One other reason Lifelock are not the favorite company of Experian is because Lifelock remove their customers names from all the 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 without your knowledge.

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 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 $60K 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, ulterior motives are usually found when stories start breaking in the papers and the Lifelock problems are no different.

If you were considering joining Lifelock, make your decision based purely on the service offered, not on the Lifelock problems that you may have heard about back in the Summer.

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