Lifelock Problems

Over the Summer we saw several Lifelock problems come to light but in truth the company never broke stride and continued to grow, passing the 1 million satisfied customer mark a while back.

Lifelock continues to be the leader in identity theft protection despite several new pretenders waiting in the shadows to step in should the Lifelock problems have proved to be lethal.

In May we had the story breaking of several customers taking class action lawsuits against the company 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 Lifelock advertisements to show how confident he is in the protection provided by Lifelock. It seems they felt (or rather their lawyer felt) this was misleading because actully someone took out a payday loan for $500 using the social security number of Todd Davis.

This made the news and why wouldn't it, it's a great story but then as it unravelled it came to light that actually Lifelock had worked for Davis.

After all, the person who took out the fraudulant loan was caught and much more importantly, Davis credit report remained squeeky clean.

We also learnt 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 to appear seemed a little more serious. Experian, one of the big 3 credit bureaus were telling anyone who would listen that the service provided by Lifelock could be done by anyone without 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 issuing credit, loans etc. Basically it means the person fears their identity may 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 able to because the loan company admitted to ignoring the fraud alert.

Experian say you can place this fraud alert yourself so Lifelock are taking monthly fees under false pretences. This looked 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 a good story again showed that what appeared to be Lifelock problems, actually had alterior motives.

Experian do not like fraud alerts on a person's credit file. It slows down the loan business and creates work for them. It's for this reason that a fraud alert only lasts 3 months. You then have to go through the whole process of applying for it again.

Lifelock do all this for their customers automatically and should they forget and an identity gets stolen, they guarantee to make good up to the tune of a cool $1 million and it's this their customers are happy to pay a small monthly fee for.

Another reason Experian have been trying to cause Lifelock problems is because Lifelock remove their clients names from mailing 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.

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 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 know for a fact already has several cards and an income of $100K a year instead of merely posting to the masses and hoping for the best?

With a little digging into the Lifelock problems, like most other new successful companies, ulterior motives can usually be found.

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 back in the Summer.

Yes you can do what Lifelock does yourself. You could probably also service your car yourself if you so wanted and some folk do. Others though prefer the peace of mind that comes with knowing a professional has done it for them and should they mess up, the garage offer a full guarantee.

For an alternative take on Lifelock check out Lifelock Scam