If you’re deciding between Identity Guard and LifeLock for keeping you and your family safe from identity theft, then the answer is simple.
Identity Guard is going to be the better choice for most people out there, and I’ll show you why in this review.
However, whoever you sign up with LifeLock, Identity Guard, or otherwise, check out my links for my latest deals and recommendations.
Now I use seven of these Identity Theft Protection companies so that I can really understand how they all work and how they’re there to help you when things go south. While Identity Guard isn’t my favorite, it’s definitely a pretty good option especially if you just want a bare-bones Identity Theft Protection plan at a great price. Their dark web monitoring is excellent, as you’ll see later in this review.
If you want something more comprehensive and especially if you want to cover your spouse, your parents, and your kids then Aura is an even better option. Aura actually owns Identity Guard, so a lot of what you’re getting is quite similar. Simply put, I just think Aura is a better deal.
LifeLock on the other hand is kinda near the bottom of the list. It’s not that they’re absolutely worthless, it’s just that there are quite a few better options out there. At least 5 in my experience.
But we’ll dig deep here and put Identity Guard and LifeLock head to head on their monitoring capabilities and fraud resolution. And of course, we’ll consider everything in light their pricing structures.
Customer Support: Identity Guard vs LifeLock
One of two major reasons why LifeLock really pales in comparison to other Identity Theft Protection companies is that their customer support really leaves a lot to be desired. You get sent to an obvious call center, you’re read scripted responses, and you’re left with your head hurting, wondering why you even called.
It’s kind of like when you have to call Comcast to troubleshoot your internet. Not so much fun, and definitely not the kind of support you’re looking for when you’re sweating bullets because someone opened a credit card in your name and took it for a spin.
My experiences with LifeLock are the main reason I started vetting the support teams of these different Identity Theft Protection companies in the first place. And luckily, most of them have excellent support teams. Identity Guard does. Their agents really know their stuff, and they’ve always been incredible helpful and thorough in my experiences with them.
Setup: Identity Guard vs LifeLock
So now let’s dive into monitoring.
Like all of these Identity Theft Protection companies, to get started with monitoring your personal information with Identity Guard and LifeLock you first need to input the information you want to monitor.
Now they allow you to monitor quite a few types of personal information, but typically your name, SSN, and birthdate at least are monitored by default. You can also add things like phone numbers, driver’s license numbers, gamer tags, and so on.
Worth noting is that LifeLock only allows you to monitor 5 email addresses, which isn’t quite enough for me. Identity Guard allows you to monitor 10. Once you’ve input the personal information you want to monitor they’ll perform all sorts of scans and send you alerts if they come across your personal information.
Plan Structures
Both Identity Guard and LifeLock have tiered plan structures, so the different types of scans they’ll perform will vary based on the plan you’ve signed up for. A lot of the Identity Theft Protection companies do this and I’m not a huge fan of it, I far prefer all-inclusive plans like you get with Aura and also CompleteID.
But immediately upon signing up with Identity Guard they’ll submit opt-out requests with data brokers on your behalf to cut down on email spam, junk mail, robocalls, those types of things. And as they come across your information with more data brokers they’ll submit more opt-out requests for you on an ongoing basis.
LifeLock also scans to find instances where your personal information is posted with data brokers, but they only point you to where you can submit opt-out requests yourself. If you want them to do it on your behalf, you have to pay extra.
Credit Record Monitoring
Both Identity Guard and LifeLock will monitor your credit records so you’ll get an alert if there are any inquiries or new accounts opened in your name, but on their baseline plans it’s only 1-bureau credit monitoring.
If you want monitoring with all three bureaus – Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, you’ll have to upgrade to Identity Guard’s mid-tier Total plan and LifeLocks top-tier Ultimate Plus plan.
Identity Guard will also send you a notification if someone tries to open a utility account like an electric service in your name, and LifeLock did just start offering this on all of their plans as well.
I’ll give a more detailed comparison on credit monitoring further below.
Public Record Monitoring
Both Identity Guard and LifeLock will perform public record monitoring so that you get alerts if someone tries to add their name to your home deed or if someone uses your name during an arrest, but you’ll need an upgraded plan with both companies to unlock this.
Dark Web Monitoring
And of course what a lot of people find most interesting is the dark web monitoring, and I’ll show you what Identity Guard and LifeLock turn up for me on the dark web in a bit.
More on Credit Monitoring
But there are just a few more aspects of monitoring I want to cover here first, and I want to circle back and dig a bit deeper into one of my favorite things to analyze, which is credit monitoring.
Credit Report, Scores, and Lock
Now, as I mentioned before, ideally with Identity Theft Protection you’re getting 3-bureau credit monitoring. That way you’ll really get the most responsive and thorough coverage on your credit report activity.
But beyond that, it’s really best if you also get access to your VantageScores from all three bureaus, typically on a monthly basis at least, as well as access to annual credit reports right in your dashboard.
A nice added touch is a credit lock so that you can prevent unwanted inquiries into your credit file with the click of a button, without having to head over to the bureaus directly to initiate a freeze.
Aura provides all of this on all of their plans, as does CompleteID. But with Identity Guard you need their top-tier Ultra plan to unlock all of it, although you get 3-bureau credit monitoring and monthly VantageScores from Experian on their mid-tier Total plan. With LifeLock, you’re never getting monthly VantageScores from all three bureaus, but everything else is included on their top-tier Ultimate Plus plan. Their mid-tier Advantage plan only includes 1-bureau credit monitoring and a credit lock—no scores and reports at all.
Transaction Monitoring
As for transaction monitoring, if you want to link your bank accounts and credit cards so that you can monitor activity all in one place, both Identity Guard and LifeLock offer this, although you do need upgraded plans.
It allows you to set transaction thresholds so that you’ll get alerts of any charges that are over a specified limit, so you can look into them right away to make sure they’re legit, and take action if not.
Extra Perks Offered
VPN and Antivirus
With Identity Guard, all of their plans are supposed to include safe browsing, which is a VPN and antivirus – although for some reason they aren’t active on my Value plan. I haven’t looked into this, because I use other solutions, but if that’s something you’re interested in you might want to get in touch with Identity Guard to make sure.
LifeLock doesn’t offer this, probably because Norton has other products for VPN and antivirus that they’d prefer you sign up for. I mean, come on. Who hasn’t heard of Norton Antivirus?
Password Manager
Identity Guard also includes a password manager, and while LifeLock doesn’t have one integrated, Norton does offer a free password manager for anyone to use.
Social Media Monitoring
Identity Guard’s top tier plan includes social media account monitoring, so you can get alerts if someone takes over your accounts and starts posting inappropriately under your name.
Payday Loan Lock
LifeLocks mid-tier plans and higher come with a payday loan lock, which is much like the credit lock but for short-term loans.
Dark Web Monitoring
Alright, now for the fun stuff. Let’s see what Identity Guard and LifeLock turn up for my personal information on the dark web.
I always monitor the same personal information across all of the Identity Theft Protection companies that I used. In the case of companies like LifeLock that don’t allow me to monitor all of my email addresses, I make sure that the ones I leave out don’t turn up any dark web hits with any of the other companies.
Let’s start with Identity Guard. They find a total of 18 dark web alerts for my personal information, and of those 18, 9 of them are unique. All of these hits are leaked login credentials, typically my usernames and passwords that were made available as the result of a breach.
And luckily for me, it’s nothing worse than that, for the time being anyway.
Many of these 9 unique hits are from websites you probably know like Adobe, MySpace, and Dropbox. The username and password for one of my gmail accounts is even out there for the world to see, that’s awesome!
The remaining non-unique hits are composed of breach compilations, which are aggregates of unsuspecting victims’ login credentials – kinda like a public library for identity thieves.
So how does that compare?
Well, of the seven Identity Theft Protection companies I’ve used only one turns up more than Identity Guard—and that’s IdentityForce. They find 20 total dark web hits and 10 of them are unique.
Now, dark web monitoring isn’t a perfect science, and one company is always finding some hits that another company isn’t. But there are definitely examples of good monitoring and bad monitoring.
One great example of bad dark web monitoring is IdentityIQ. They turn up absolutely nothing for me on the dark web.
And the next worst of the seven Identity Theft Protection companies I’ve used? Unfortunately, that’s LifeLock. They only find a total of 8 dark web alerts, though all 8 are unique. And they’re not even finding my leaked gmail credentials—which is definitely the most important one of all of my dark web hits.
So really, Identity Guard takes the cake in terms of dark web monitoring. They’re sitting right up at the top alongside IdentityForce and Aura.
Fraud Resolution
Now let’s not forget about fraud resolution.
Fraud Restoration Assistance
While Identity Guard has a great customer support team like I mentioned at the top of this video, the amount of help you’re going to get from them is limited unless you upgrade to their top-tier Ultra plan.
The Ultra plan gives you access to their white-glove fraud resolution team that basically does all the heavy lifting for you in the event that you’re a victim of identity theft. By contrast, Aura includes this on all of their plans. But otherwise, you’ll get great support from Identity Guard, but you’re probably going to have to do all the legwork—which could mean hours upon hours of filling out forms, making phone calls, and grinding through fine-print.
With LifeLock, all of their plans give you access to US-based Identity Restoration Specialists, but there’s no mention of a white-glove service that I can see.
Identity Theft Insurance
In terms of financial backing, all Identity Guard plans come with $1M in identity theft insurance, which is fairly standard as a minimum across Identity Theft Protection companies.
LifeLock plans start with $1,050,000 in coverage and as you increase tiers you can get up to $3M in coverage per adult—although they do allot their coverage into different buckets for lawyers and experts, stolen funds reimbursement, and personal expense reimbursement.
Conclusion
So if you do choose to upgrade all the way to the top, LifeLock takes the upper hand when it comes to insurance. But while more insurance is definitely nice to have, personally I don’t think it makes up for poor support and sub-par monitoring.
If you just want stripped down personal information monitoring then Identity Guard’s Value plan is a pretty good deal.
However, as soon as you go above the stripped-down plans from Identity Guard and LifeLock, from a pricing standpoint Aura immediately starts to make more sense.
Whatever you choose for Identity Theft Protection, remember to check out my links for the latest deals and recommendations.
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