Lifelock Problems - What Problems?
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Not so long a go we had several Lifelock problems come to light but the truth is the company never broke stride and continued to grow, easily surpassing 1 million customers. Lifelock continues to be the the number 1 choice in identity theft security in spite of a few new pretenders hovering in the shadows to take over should the Lifelock problems have been deadly.
Back in May we had the story of one or two clients taking class action lawsuits 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 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 someone managed to take out a payday 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 thief who took out the loan was caught and more importantly, Davis credit file remained unaffected.
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 story died as quickly as it appeared.
The next Lifelock problems appeared 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 anyone without the need of a monthly charge.
Lifelock, acting on a acting for their customers, place a fraud alert on their credit file which means extra care should be taken when agreeing credit, loans etc. Basically it means the person is concerned their identity may have been compromised so please double check 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 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. 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 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 a person’s credit file. It slows down the loan business and creates work for them. It’s because of this that a fraud alert only lasts for a period of 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 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 $10 fee for.
Another reason Experian have been trying to cause Lifelock problems 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.
It sounds a 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 a huge 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 know for a fact already have several cards and an income of $100K a year instead of merely posting to the masses and hoping for the best?
As with many new highly successful companies, ulterior motives are usually found when stories start appearing in the news and the Lifelock problems are no different.
If you were thinking about signing up with Lifelock, make your decision based solely on the service offered, not on the Lifelock problems that you may have heard about a few months back.
Yes you can do what Lifelock does yourself. You could probably also service your car yourself if you wanted to and some folk do. Others though prefer the security that comes with the knowledge that a professional has done it for them and should they make a mess of it, there is a full guarantee as back up.
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