Lifelock Problems And Experians Unhappiness
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Recently we saw several Lifelock problems make the news but truth be known the company didn’t seem to be effected and continued their growth, now having over a million customers. Lifelock continues to be the the number 1 choice in identity theft prevention despite a few new companies hoping in the shadows to step in should the Lifelock problems have proved to be critical.
In May we had the story breaking of several customers taking legal action against Lifelock over claims 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 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 was misleading because actually some guy took out a small loan for $500 using the social security number of Todd Davis.
Obviously this made the national news, 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, his credit report remained unblemished.
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 membership. The words ambulances and chasers sprung to mind and the story died a quick and relatively painless death.
The next Lifelock problems appeared to be a little more serious. Experian, one of the major credit bureaus were claiming 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 offering credit, loans etc. Basically it means the person fears their identity could have been compromised so please act with caution before opening offering 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 tell us you can add a fraud alert yourself so Lifelock are taking monthly subscriptions under false pretences. This looked 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 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 credit files. Fraud alerts slow down the the business of issuing credit and causes extra work for the credit bureaus. It’s for this reason 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 clients every 3 months 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 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 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.
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 huge business for the credit bureaus as these lists are extremely targeted and therefore worth a lot of money. Just consider sending out your credit card or loan offer to households you know for a fact already have several cards and an income of $80K a year instead of just posting to the masses and hoping for the best?
As with many 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 considering signing up with Lifelock, make your decision based solely on the service offered, not on the Lifelock problems that you may have heard about back in the Summer.
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 so wanted and some people do. Others though prefer 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 as back up.
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