Lifelock Problems Causing Identity Crisis?
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A few months a go we had several Lifelock problems surface but in truth the company didn’t seem to be effected and continued to grow, reaching a million customers in the process. Lifelock continues to be the the number 1 choice in identity theft protection in spite of one or two new pretenders waiting in the shadows to step in should the Lifelock problems have proved to be critical.
In May we had the news of a few customers 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 show how confident he is in the identity theft prevention provided by Lifelock. It appears they felt, or at least their lawyer felt that this was misleading because actually someone took out a cash loan for $500 using the SSN of Todd Davis.
This made the news and why wouldn’t it, 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 fraudulant loan was caught and more just as importantly, the CEO’s credit report remained squeeky clean.
We also discovered that none of the customers who were attempting the lawsuit had actually suffered a case of identity theft and hadn’t even cancelled their Lifelock membership. 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 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 on behalf of their clients, place a fraud alert on their credit file which means extra care should be taken when agreeing loans, credit agreements etc. Basically it means the person has concern their identity may have been compromised so please act with caution before opening a line of credit. Incidentally, 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 tell anyone who will listen that you can add a fraud alert yourself so Lifelock are taking monthly fees under false pretences. At first glance 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, more than likely had an ulterior motive.
It seems Experian do not like fraud alerts on a person’s credit file. They slow down the the business of issuing credit and causes extra work for them. It’s because of this that a fraud alert only lasts for a period of 3 months. 4 times a year you have to go through the whole process of applying for it again.
Lifelock take care of all this for their customers every 3 months 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 more than happy to pay a $10 fee for.
One other reason Lifelock are not the favorite company of Experian is because Lifelock remove their clients names from mail lists. The theory being if you aren’t receiving credit card offers through the post, they can’t be stolen and accepted in your name without your knowledge.
Sounds reasonable 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 big business for the Experian and the other 2 credit bureaus as these lists are extremely targeted and therefore worth a lot of money. Imagine sending out your credit card or loan offer to households you already know have several cards and an income of $90K a year instead of just posting to the masses and hoping for the best?
As with most new highly successful companies, ulterior motives can usually be found when stories start breaking in the papers and the Lifelock problems are no different.
If you were thinking about teaming up with 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 may also be capable of servicing your car yourself if you wanted to and some people do. Others though like the security that comes with the knowledge that a professional has done it for them and should they mess up, there is a full guarantee on offer as a back up.
Tags: experian, identity theft, life lock, lifelock problems
