Now, I know what you’re thinking—identity theft protection might not sound like the most thrilling topic. However, in today’s digital age, it’s a topic that couldn’t be more relevant or crucial for safeguarding our personal lives.

Check out the links to my most recent deals and recommendations, and to see the best way to get protected:

Imagine you’re going about your daily routine, chatting with family on social media, managing your finances online, and ordering dinner from your favorite take-out place.

Just a regular day, right?

Little do you know, lurking in the shadows, there are criminals waiting to snatch your personal information. If you’ve ever been the victim of identity theft, I don’t have to tell you how emotionally and financially devastating it can be if your information falls into the wrong hands.

Don’t worry, though! We’re going to turn the tables on them and arm you with the knowledge to choose the perfect shield for your identity.

I’ve used seven different identity theft protection solutions to learn how they really work inside and out. So how do IDShield and Identity Guard stack up?

Let’s take a closer look at exactly what each one of these programs offers and whether or not it could be the right identity theft solution for you!

Identity Guard vs. IDShield: Overview Comparison

Today, our focus is on a head-to-head comparison between IDShield and Identity Guard. Like most protection solutions, both companies provide basic features such as personal information monitoring, credit monitoring, and dark web surveillance. 

However, if we take a closer look at the specifics of each feature and how customers can access them, the differences become apparent.

For instance, while Identity Guard offers an array of features, many of them are only available in their top-tier Ultra plan. This includes perks like three credit bureau reports, monitoring your debit and credit cards, and keeping tabs on changes of address.

All important things if you want to fully protect yourself.

On the other hand, IDShield takes a different approach. They offer a more, comprehensive package that encompasses all of their features and benefits. The only potential upgrade you may consider is opting for three credit bureau monitoring.

We’re going to dive deeper into the features, benefits, and drawbacks of each company here in a minute, but before we do, let’s take a moment to discuss personal information monitoring and how IDShield and Identity Guard measure up.

Personal Information Monitoring

Let’s start with a quick overview. Personal information monitoring is the process of scanning and tracking various forms of your information to identify potential threats like unauthorized use or exposure of any personal data.

While most companies offer personal information monitoring, some truly go out of their way to provide the most comprehensive coverage possible. The good news is that both IDShield and Identity Guard go above and beyond in this area.

They both allow users to monitor basic information like email addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers, which is a common feature across most identity theft programs.

With personal information monitoring set up, both companies will perform scans of the dark web, court records, public records, and more.

So, if someone were to get arrested and use your name, you would receive an alert. Pretty impressive, right?

Both IDShield and Identity Guard also offer social media monitoring, ensuring that you’ll be promptly notified if someone attempts to take over your account.

I would feel comfortable saying that both companies are pretty equal in terms of personal information monitoring. But here’s the kicker—with IDShield, you get all of these features bundled into their individual plan for just $14.99 per month.

On the other hand, with Identity Guard, these features are spread across three different plans, and you only get access to all of them if you subscribe to their Ultra plan, which is $25 dollars a month.

While both companies excel at information monitoring, there are other factors you should consider before making a final decision. So, let’s shift our focus to credit monitoring and see how these two stack up in that department.

Credit Monitoring

Knowing that your personal information is being safeguarded is a good feeling, but what happens if your data has already been compromised?

That’s where credit monitoring comes in—with comprehensive credit monitoring, you can keep track of your credit score and scan your credit activity for any unauthorized inquiries or transactions. So even if someone already has your personal information, you can take immediate action the second they try to use it for financial gain.

Both IDShield and Identity Guard have the potential to offer exceptional credit monitoring coverage. They both provide access to credit scores and monitoring from all three major credit bureaus.

Plus, with their transaction monitoring features, you can link and monitor bank accounts, investment accounts, and both credit and debit cards while also setting transaction thresholds.

At first glance, IDShield and Identity Guard seem pretty equal in terms of credit monitoring and what each company offers. However, when we dive deeper and examine how each company structures their packages, that’s when we start to see the difference between these two protection solutions, and a clear winner emerges.

So, let’s dive deeper!

With IDShield, their basic plan gives you access to all of their credit monitoring features. Plus, they throw in a nifty Vantage score from TransUnion so you can track any changes to your credit.

Here’s the catch though—the basic plan only provides credit monitoring from one bureau, and if you want credit monitoring from all three, you have to upgrade your account. It’s also worth noting that even if you upgrade your account, you still only get a VantageScore from one credit bureau.

Even though all of their features are included in their basic plan, I did find some drawbacks with IDShield. For example, they don’t offer annual credit reports, and even though their agents can help you set up freezes with credit bureaus, they don’t offer a credit lock feature, which would allow you to do it yourself with the click of a button.

Meanwhile, Identity Guard does offer annual credit reports from all three credit bureaus, and they give you keys to a credit lock feature, giving you more convenient control.

Unfortunately, though, you don’t get any credit monitoring features with Identity Guard’s stripped-down Value plan, and many of their comprehensive benefits are only included in their top-tier Ultra plan.

So while you can get more comprehensive credit monitoring with Identity Guard, just keep in mind that you’ll have to upgrade your plan. 

Dark Web Monitoring

Now that we’ve explored personal information and credit monitoring, it’s time to unveil the secret ingredient that separates a good identity theft solution from an exceptional one—dark web monitoring.

But before we jump into the nitty-gritty, let me share a behind-the-scenes secret with you: I always use the same information across all of the programs that I investigate. That way, you know comparing them on a level playing field.

So, with that in mind, let’s shine a light on the dark web monitoring capabilities of Identity Guard and IDShield!

During my investigation, Identity Guard unearthed a total of 18 dark web alerts related to my personal information, and nine of those were unique. Most of the unique hits were for sites like Adobe, Dropbox, and MySpace.

You caught me; I had a MySpace account back in the day. I even had one for my band!

But moving on…

The non-unique hits were all from breach compilations, which is when someone gathers a bunch of people’s login credentials and puts them all together in a nice little package for their fellow internet pirates.

It’s basically like a one-stop shop for hackers—how convenient, right?

All in all, Identity Guard performed surprisingly well compared to other programs like IdentityIQ, which failed to turn up any alerts at all, and Norton’s LifeLock, which only turned up eight dark web alerts.

But how did Identity Guard stack up against IDShield?

Well, it’s hard to say…

Remember earlier when I said that IDShield had some pretty frustrating interface issues? This is one area where those issues become more than a little inconvenient.

Initially, IDShield detected 17 dark web hits, and I’ve received more alerts since then, but I don’t know what the alerts were for because there’s no way to go back and review the alerts once you’ve cleared them.

This limitation surprised me, and it feels like such a missed opportunity.

On the one hand, 17 alerts is actually pretty good when compared to many of the other companies that I’ve used, but  if you can’t see alerts once they’ve been cleared, that’s kind of a deal breaker for me.

All things considered, both companies offer solid dark web monitoring features in their basic plans. However, Identity Guard takes the upper hand by default because of IDShield’s interface limitations.

Resolution and Customer Service

So far, IDShield and Identity Guard seem pretty evenly matched in terms of what they offer for monitoring services, but what would you do if you opened your credit report and found a list of unauthorized inquiries or newly opened credit cards?

The truth is, most people wouldn’t have a clue what to do or even where to start fixing the problem. That’s why you need more than just monitoring services; you also need the support and guidance of a good customer service team because you deserve to know that if the unimaginable does happen, someone has your back.

Both IDShield and Identity Guard offer excellent customer service from US-based agents who really know their stuff. They also both offer a one-million-dollar insurance policy, which covers various types of expenses incurred as a result of identity theft.

Furthermore, they both provide dedicated specialists who make it their mission to help you navigate through the confusing world of identity restoration.

Conclusion

So, moment of truth—which company would I recommend?

If I had to choose between IDShield and Identity Guard, I would choose Identity Guard simply because I find IDShield’s interface to be clunky and outdated.

Plus Identity Guard can be more comprehensive protection than IDShield if you opt for their top-tier plan.

But I’d highly recommend you check out Aura instead—Aura actually owns Identity Guard, and they offer comprehensive packages at great prices.

The post Identity Guard vs. IDShield Comparison Review (Where Should Your Money Go To?) appeared first on Cyber Sleuth.

Both of these programs have established themselves as reputable options for safeguarding your personal information, but does either one of them rise above?

That’s what we’re here to find out!

As someone who has personally tried out seven different identity theft solutions, I’m here to share my insights and help you make a more informed decision by sharing my review based on my first-hand experiences with each company.

If you’ve read my other reviews before, you already know that Aura has a special place in my heart, but both IDShield and CompleteID hold their own as pretty solid programs.

I like CompleteID because of its straightforward pricing structure and comprehensive packages. Plus, if you already have a Costco membership, the pricing of their packages is quite attractive.

IDShield has a lot going for it too, but the interface limitations a significant source of concern for me.

What is an Identity Theft Protection Solution? Do I Need It?

Identity theft is not a joke, and the consequences can be emotionally and financially devastating. If the wrong person gets ahold of your information, they could ruin your credit score, access your bank accounts, or do any number of things—without you even knowing.

This is why having a reliable source of protection is crucial. But not everyone needs the same amount of protection or protection in the same areas, which is why it’s important to understand what your needs are before choosing an identity theft solution.

In this review, we’ll take a deeper look into the features, benefits, and drawbacks of IDShield and CompleteID’s programs.

We’ll compare their costs, usability, and customer service, so that you can make a more informed decision as to which option is best for you!

Before we jump into the nitty-gritty, you might be wondering if you even need to worry about identity theft protection. After all, you’re careful with your information, right?

But imagine waking up one day and finding out that someone opened a credit card in your name. You immediately panic because you know the consequences could be life-altering—affecting your credit score, financial stability, and even your reputation.

Then it dawns on you—you don’t know who has your information or what else they’ve done with it. Furthermore, you have no clue where to start fixing the problem.

Unfortunately, this is a nightmare that millions of people find themselves in every year, which is why having a reliable identity theft solution is crucial.

Not only do programs like IDShield and CompleteID help you detect potential threats (allowing you to take action instantly), but they also provide the support and guidance you need to restore your identity if the worst does happen.

As important as it is to have a protection solution, it’s equally important to have one that meets your individual needs, which is why I’ve worked hard to bring you objective reviews of some of the top contenders in the market.

Features: IDShield vs CompleteID

Both IDShield and CompleteID offer similar protection features, such as change of address monitoring, credit report and score monitoring, dark web monitoring, identity restoration services, and lost wallet assistance.

The difference between the companies starts to show when you take a closer look at exactly what’s offered with each feature.

For example, with IDShield, you only get credit monitoring from one credit bureau unless you pay extra, but CompleteID offers monitoring from all three credit bureaus in all of their plans.

We’re going to take a much deeper look at the features offered by each company in just a bit, but first, let’s take a second to discuss personal information monitoring, why it’s important, and how each company stacks up.

Personal Information Monitoring

Personal information monitoring is the process of scanning and tracking various forms of information to identify potential threats by detecting unauthorized use or exposure of personal data.

Most companies offer some type of personal information monitoring—perhaps the most interesting one for many of you guys is the dark web monitoring. However, some companies better than others.

Both IDShield and CompleteID do a good job with basic coverage. They both allow users to monitor email addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, financial information, and even public and court records.

IDShield goes above and beyond the basic coverage, though, by allowing users to monitor additional information such as employer ID numbers, cryptocurrency wallets, and gamer tags. In fact, as far as personal information monitoring goes, IDShield’s extensive range of monitored information puts them on par with companies like Aura and Identity Guard.

Although CompleteID also offers a wide range of options, they don’t offer nearly as many as IDShield. Also, I noticed that they put limits on the number of things you can monitor. For example, I could only add up to four email addresses, which wasn’t enough for me personally.

Not a deal breaker, but something to be aware of.

Personal information monitoring is the cornerstone of any good identity theft program, and in my opinion, the more personal information a program allows you to monitor, the better!

But personal information monitoring is just one of the things you need to look for in a good identity theft program, and what CompleteID lacks in personal information monitoring it makes up for in credit monitoring!

Credit Monitoring 

Credit monitoring is another essential component of any good identity theft protection program. With comprehensive credit monitoring services, you can keep an eye on your credit activity and quickly detect any new accounts or unexpected charges. So if someone tries to open a Capital One credit card in your name, there will be an inquiry into your credit records and in theory, you’ll get an alert.

Both IDShield and CompleteID offer credit monitoring services, but when compared to other heavy-hitters, IDShield falls a bit short.

One of the most noticeable drawbacks of IDShield is that its basic plan only includes monitoring from one of the three major credit bureaus. To access monitoring from all three, you need to upgrade your plan and pay more.

In contrast, CompleteID includes three-bureau credit monitoring as a standard feature in all of their plans, along with monthly credit scores and annual credit reports from all three bureaus.

Another limitation of IDShield is the absence of annual credit reports and credit lock features, which are offered across all of CompleteID’s plans. While you can obtain your report for free from annualcreditreport.com, other identity theft programs provide the convenience of accessing your report directly through their platforms.

On a positive note, IDShield does offer some unique features, like payday loan monitoring, which alerts you if someone tries to obtain a loan using your social security number.

Dark Web Monitoring

Now that we’ve explored personal information and credit monitoring, let’s get down to business and discuss what could be considered the most crucial aspect of any effective identity theft program—dark web monitoring.

Imagine dark web monitoring as a diligent sentry stationed at the gates of a fortress, serving as the first line of defense against threats. Just like a sentry keeps a watchful eye on their surroundings, dark web monitoring scans the deep corners of the internet, constantly watching for signs of compromised data—namely, your personal information. If it finds anything suspicious, it triggers an alert, giving you time to take action before your information falls into the wrong hands.

With the growing number of data breaches and cyber threats, it’s more important than ever to have this layer of protection.

So, how did these two companies compare in terms of dark web monitoring?

Well, it’s actually hard to say because of IDShield’s interface issues, which we’ll talk about more in a bit.

With CompleteID, I get 14 dark web alerts related to my personal information, and eight of those were unique. Most of these alerts pertain to login credentials from websites like Adobe and Myspace, and there was even a leaked password from one of my Gmail accounts.

Quick side note—I’ve changed my password since then, but that’s exactly why you shouldn’t use the same password across multiple platforms!

I would love to tell you how CompleteID compares to IDShield, but that’s where we run into a bit of a problem with IDShield’s interface. I know that when I signed up, I had 17 alerts, and I’ve received a few since then. Unfortunately, there’s no way to go back and revisit the alerts once you’ve cleared them.

So, I can’t tell you how many of those alerts were unique or even what it was that IDShield found, which is frustrating because if you don’t know what the alerts are, then you can’t act on them.

However, for the sake of fairness, let’s assume IDShield discovered 17 hits concerning my personal information. That result is relatively commendable when compared to other programs, such as LifeLock, which only turned up eight dark web alerts.

Comparatively, both IDShield and CompleteID turned up close to the same amount of alerts, but I found IDShield’s interface issues to be a significant drawback, especially if you’re somebody who wants to keep track of your alerts over time.

Resolution and Customer Service

Safeguarding your private data is important, but what if your information has already fallen into the wrong hands? Which brings us to our next point—resolution and customer service.

Both IDShield and CompleteID offer comprehensive resolution services from a dedicated team of restoration specialists who help guide users through the complex process of restoring their identity.

Furthermore, both services provide a $1 million identity theft insurance policy to eligible members, covering certain expenses associated with identity theft.

In my personal experience, I found the customer service teams from both companies to be pleasant and willing to go out of their way to help me, which is exactly what you want when dealing with something as traumatic as identity theft!

IDShield’s 24/7 availability and access to licensed private investigators may be beneficial to users seeking immediate assistance. Meanwhile, CompleteID users benefit from the support infrastructure of Costco, which is known for excellent customer service.

Conclusion

While I recommend considering alternative solutions like Aura (check out my Aura review to learn more about why I love it), if I had to choose between IDShield and CompleteID, I would opt for CompleteID. 

Their straightforward pricing structure and comprehensive packages, combined with affordability, make them an attractive option.

Whatever you decide, remember to check my links for the latest deals and recommendations.

The post IDShield vs CompleteID Comparison appeared first on Cyber Sleuth.

If you’re looking for LifeLock alternatives to protect you and your loved ones from identity theft, then you’re in luck. Of the seven identity theft protection solutions I’ve used I would recommend 5 of them before I would recommend Norton’s LifeLock. Keep reading to know why.

If you’ve ever been a victim of identity theft, then you know identity theft protection is money well spent. If you’re just being proactive you may find that it’s more affordable than you would have expected, and it actually does more than you would have expected. I certainly did.

For example, Aura offers comprehensive monitoring and fraud resolution packages at super approachable price—especially if you want to protect your spouse, your kids, and even your parents and in-laws.

So, what’s wrong with LifeLock? I’m guessing if you are reading this review, then you already have a hunch. I’ll get to the bottom of it in just a bit. I’ll highlight where each of the 5 identity theft protection solutions I’d recommend instead outperform LifeLock, and I’ll also rank my alternative recommendations from highest to lowest.

Fasten those seatbelts everybody. It’s going down!

What makes for a great identity theft protection solution?

So let’s think about this for a second. What makes for a great identity theft protection solution?

I’ll tell you what I think, it’s great monitoring and excellent threat resolution—but don’t forget, you want that at a price that makes sense.

All of these Identity Theft Protection companies work on a subscription basis. You pay by the month or by the year, so if you want something that’s going to keep you protected for the long haul, it ought to be affordable. In fact, it should be a no-brainer.

That should hold true not only in that the price  you’re paying is something that you don’t really even have to think about, or at least not too much; but also that what you’re getting is actually useful—not just something that drains your bank account day by day, betting on the statistically probable fact that they’re going to get more money out of you than you’re going to get out of them.

This brings me to my first gripe about LifeLock—their support is just terrible. It’s like they optimized for lowest cost, at the expense of their customers. All the other companies I’ve worked with have fantastic support teams. It’s as if they know that good customer support is the first line of defense in excellent fraud resolution.

Why is that important?

Imagine the situations that would lead you to call support. Maybe its something small, but sooner or later it’s going to be something that spikes your blood pressure through the roof.

If the person on the other end of the line is reading off scripts, you’ll probably wish you could reach through the phone and smack them silly. I’m not saying you’re a violent person. It’s a joke. Kinda like LifeLock’s customer support.

Setting Up Your Identity Theft Protection

Monitoring your personal information with these identity theft protection companies all starts with entering the personal information you want to monitor.

The types of personal information they allow you to monitor ranges from company to company, and LifeLock’s actually not too bad in this regard. What does bother me a little bit is that they only allow you to monitor 5 email addresses. Most of the other companies allow you to monitor more. The only one that doesn’t is CompleteID—they only allow you to monitor 4. In spite of that, I still prefer CompleteID to LifeLock.

Once you’re up and running, Aura and Identity Guard will proactively submit opt-out requests with data brokers which should help to cut down on robocalls, junk mail, and spam emails. They do this on an ongoing basis, as they find your information with more data brokers, they’ll submit more opt out requests for you.

LifeLock will scan the public web and when they find your information they’ll let you know where they found it, what they found, and how you can opt out. If you want them to opt out for you, then you’ll have to fork over some extra cash.

Beyond that, there are tons of different types of scans these identity theft protection solutions perform. A lot of the companies, LifeLock included, tend to spread the different scans and other benefits across a tiered pricing structure, which tends to push you towards the top-tier plan.

This marketing tactic kinda gives me heartburn. I much prefer the straightforward and comprehensive packages that you get with Aura and CompleteID.

Of course the most interesting and in many ways the most important aspect of personal information monitoring is the dark web monitoring. I’ll go over how LifeLock compares to the alternatives when monitoring the dark web for my personal information later in this review.

Financial Monitoring

Before that, I want to talk a bit about financial monitoring, and what you should really look for ideally among LifeLock alternatives.

Credit Monitoring

The biggest one is credit monitoring, and to get the most thorough and responsive protection you want a plan that includes three bureau credit monitoring with Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. This makes sure you get alerts if there are any inquiries into your credit file, like if someone opens a credit card in your name or takes out a loan.

Furthermore, you should be getting monthly vantage scores from all three bureaus and annual credit reports from all three bureaus right in your dashboard.

In the best case you get a convenient credit lock that prevents unwanted inquiries into your credit file with the click of a button.

Once again, Aura and CompleteID include this on all of their plans. With LifeLock you can get most of the way there on their top-tier Ultimate Plus plan, and you can even get updates to credit reports and scores daily from one bureau.

While you can get annual reports from all three bureaus on LifeLock’s Ultimate Plus plan, you never get monthly scores from all three bureaus. The most you get is annual scores. That’s only if you get LifeLock’s top tier plan. If you get even their mid-tier plan you’re stuck with 1-bureau credit monitoring with monthly reports and scores from only one bureau. Although you do get a credit lock, and even a payday loan lock. On LifeLock’s Standard plan there are no reports and scores at all.

Just to reiterate, the big winners in the credit department are Aura and CompleteID.

Transaction Monitoring

Then there’s transaction monitoring. This you allows you to link bank accounts and credit cards to keep an eye out for fraudulent charges all in one place, and set alert thresholds to get notification of any charges over a limit you specify.

You need LifeLock’s mid-tier Advantage plan to unlock this, but it comes standard with all plans from Aura, as well as ID Shield and IdentityForce.

So as you can see, it’s a little bit tit-for-tat as to who offers more monitoring services—although you might be starting to see a bit of a pattern here. Even more important is how well these monitoring services actually work.

Dark Web Monitoring

The most significant way to visualize which LifeLock alternatives offer better monitoring in my mind is to take a look at what they find on the dark web.

I monitor the same personal information across all of the identity theft protection solutions I use. Although in the case of LifeLock and CompleteID which don’t allow me to monitor all of my email addresses, I leave out addresses that don’t turn up any dark web hits on the other platforms.

Lucky for me, my dark web alerts only turn up leaked login credentials to various websites. Not ideal, but could be worse.

LifeLock finds a total of 8 dark web hits for my personal information and they are all unique—meaning they’re not hits of the same login credentials posted in different places on the dark web.

How does that compare?

It could be worse—IdentityIQ turns up absolutely nothing for my personal information on the dark web.

However, it also could be better. IdentityForce turns up a total of 20 dark web hits, 10 of which are unique, and both Aura and Identity Guard turn up a total of 18 dark web hits, 9 of which are unique.

ID Shield turns up more than 17 dark web hits, but there’s a bit of an asterisk here because ID Shield’s interface doesn’t allow you to view your cleared alerts so I can’t get a total, I can’t say how many are unique, and I couldn’t even tell you what the hits were. I’m lucky I wrote down that total when I signed up.

Last but not least we have CompleteID which turns up 14 dark web alerts, 9 of which are unique.

So LifeLock comes in 6th place of the 7 companies I use.

Now as I always caution there’s usually not perfect overlap in what these companies find on the dark web, so it’s not like there’s one company that definitively offers the best dark web monitoring.

Clearly, though, there’s quite a bit that LifeLock is missing. Plus, they don’t even find my leaked gmail credentials that all 5 of these alternatives find.

In my mind, that’s enough to ditch LifeLock in and of itself. Unless you’re so in love with Norton that you’re willing to let your relationship with LifeLock go down the path of Pam and Tommy, you’re probably right to be looking elsewhere.

Fraud Resolution

So I’ve already talked about how LifeLock’s support is terrible, but in the event you’re a victim of identity theft, their plans include US-Based Identity Restoration Specialists.

However, there’s no mention of white-glove fraud resolution to do all of the heavy lifting like you get standard with Aura and IdentityForce, or with Identity Guard’s top-tier Ultra plan.

Now in terms of financial backing, $1M in identity theft protection is pretty standard as a minimum across all of these companies.

With LifeLock’s top-tier Ultimate Plus plan you do get up to $3M in coverage, although that’s broken down into up to $1M for lawyers and experts, up to $1M in stolen funds reimbursement, and up to $1M in personal expense reimbursement.

That’s pretty good, and if you’re on their family plan that’s up to $3M per adult and up to $1M per child—although there are some asterisks that indicate that the $1M in coverage for lawyers and experts is collective, among other things. So it’s not necessarily quite as good as it looks.

Aura’s family plan is competitive here, they offer up to $1M per adult which is up to $5M on their family plan as it covers 5 adults and unlimited children. LifeLock’s family plans cover a maximum of 2 adults and 5 children.

While more insurance is good, with LifeLock you’re still going to be stuck with poor customer support and nearly bottom-rung dark web monitoring.

5 Better Alternatives For LifeLock

We’ve covered all the major things to consider when choosing a LifeLock alternative, so here are my recommendations. All of these are better options than LifeLock in my experience.

ID Shield

At the bottom I’d say is ID Shield. My biggest complaint with ID Shield is that their interface is terrible, so much so that it even impacts how well you can use their dark web monitoring.

CompleteID

One better than ID Shield is CompleteID. They offer affordable and comprehensive plans with no tiered structure, but they are a little bit light in what they allow you to monitor. You also need a Costco membership to use CompleteID.

Identity Guard and IdentityForce

Even better than CompleteID would be Identity Guard and IdentityForce. Both of these are great solutions, and with Identity Guard you’re getting the same technology as you get with Aura. I’d say they’re probably a bit more robust than IdentityForce if you upgrade all the way on both.

Of course my biggest complaint with Identity Guard and IdentityForce is that tiered pricing structure—once you upgrade to the top to unlock all the benefits, Aura is a better deal.

Aura

If you haven’t figured it out by now I’d say the best LifeLock alternative is Aura. Their plans are comprehensive, they’re priced to be approachable, and they’ve really raised the bar for what you can expect from an identity theft protection company.

Remember to check out my latest recommendations and links to any deals I have.

The post 5 Better Alternatives For LifeLock (See My #1 Choice) appeared first on Cyber Sleuth.

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.

The post Identity Guard vs LifeLock Comparison Review appeared first on Cyber Sleuth.

While both come from brands we know and trust, in my experience IdentityForce is a better solution.

It’s not a landslide—LifeLock has some edges over IdentityForce. But where it really matters, IdentityForce decisively takes the upper hand.

Whichever company you choose for identity theft protection, make sure you check out the my latest recommendations and links to any deals that I know of.

Whether you’ve been a victim before or you’re just getting ahead of the game, getting identity theft protection is a smart long-term plan. Of the seven identity theft protection companies I’ve used, Identity Force is a top performer when it comes to fraud resolution and monitoring—including dark web scans.

While I think Aura is arguably a bit more comprehensive and usually a better deal all things considered, IdentityForce covers pretty much all the bases. Unfortunately, I can’t quite say the same for LifeLock.

Let’s put them head-to-head and compare IdentityForce with LifeLock on a deeper level so you can decide for yourself which identity theft protection solution comes out on top.

Plan Structures: IdentityForce vs LifeLock

I want to start off by saying that both of these companies use a tiered plan structure, meaning that you don’t get all of the benefits on all the plans you use.

By contrast, with Aura and CompleteID all of their plans include everything—the price you pay only changes depending on the number of people you want to cover.

Identity Force

Now IdentityForce isn’t so bad in this regard, they only have two tiers—the UltraSecure and the UltraSecure + credit.

At least they’ve bundled it up neatly – basically what you’re not getting on their standard UltraSecure plan is credit monitoring.

LifeLock

On the other hand LifeLock really takes the tiered plan structure for a ride. You get a mere taste of credit monitoring on their baseline Standard plan, a bit more on their mid-tier Advantage plan, and finally all of it is unlocked on their top-tier Ultimate Plus plan.

Furthermore with LifeLock, they spread many of the different benefits across all pricing tiers—not just credit monitoring. They’re not the only company that do this, and I can understand why they do it. If you want even a few of the benefits that aren’t included in the baseline plan, it is pretty likely that you’ll have to upgrade all the way to the top.

From a revenue standpoint, I’m sure the marketing team at LifeLock made their bosses proud. So these tiered structures make it a little difficult to compare functionality across brands. I’m going to do my best, but please bear with me.

Setup: IdentityForce vs LifeLock

So we’ll start with monitoring, and monitoring all starts with inputting the personal information that you want IdentityForce or LifeLock to look for when performing their scans.

Now, they’re quite similar in the types of personal information they allow you to monitor, the only difference I see is that LifeLock allows you to monitor gamer tags, which Identity Force doesn’t, and IdentityForce allows you to monitor a passport number, which LifeLock doesn’t.

The other thing that always comes up is the LifeLock only allows you to monitor 5 email addresses, which isn’t quite enough for me—and that will come back into play when we look at dark web monitoring.

Once you’ve added your personal information, IdentityForce and LifeLock will start performing their scans, and there are all different types that they perform.

Public Web Scanning

They first is public web scanning and opt out requests, and neither of them do an awesome job with this like you get with Aura and Identity Guard. Although LifeLock does do marginally better than IdentityForce in this case.

Basically LifeLock will scan the public web and if they find your personal information available with data brokers you’ll be able to see what’s there and they’ll tell you how you can submit an opt-out request.

If you want LifeLock to submit the opt-out requests for you, you can do that but you have to pay extra. The reason that I like Aura and Identity Guard better here is that they do it proactively for you, as part of the plan.

With IdentityForce, they give you links to all sorts of databases where you can submit opt-out requests, they’re not actually doing scans to see where your information is actually available as far as I can tell, and they’re definitely not submitting opt-outs for you.

Utility Account Monitoring

Another place where LifeLock wins is that all of their plans include Utility Account monitoring, so if someone tries to open an electric service in your name for example you’ll get an alert. I don’t see this from IdentityForce at all.

Credit Monitoring

Of course with credit monitoring, you don’t get anything at all with IdentityForce unless you get the upgraded plan and with LifeLock’s Standard plan you’re only getting 1-bureau monitoring.

We’ll talk quite bit more about credit monitoring in a bit as it is important. At its simplest you’ll get notifications if an identity thief tries to open a line of credit in your name like a credit card or a loan of some sort, but you can also get access to quite a bit more as you’ll see shortly.

Public Records Monitoring

Now in terms of public records monitoring, both companies provide change of address monitoring on all their plans so if someone redirects your mail with the USPS to access your bills, paystubs, whatever it may be, you’ll get an alert for that.

Both will send you an alert if someone puts your name down for a crime they’ve committed, although with LifeLock you do need at least their mid-tier Advantage Plan for that.

Payday Loan Monitoring

With IdentityForce you get payday loan monitoring so you’ll get an alert if an identity thief uses your SSN for short term cash loans, and on LifeLock’s mid-tier Advantage plan or higher you get a payday loan lock which will prevent them from happening in the first place.

Home Title Monitoring

Finally, with LifeLock’s top-tier Ultimate plus plan, you can get home title monitoring so if an identity thief tries to add their name to your home deed, you’ll get an alert for that. This isn’t available from IdentityForce.

But of course, what everybody is most interested in is dark web monitoring, and we’ll put this to the test by seeing what IdentityForce and LifeLock turn up for my personal information on the dark web later in this review.

More on Credit Monitoring

I want to dive deeper into credit monitoring. As I mentioned earlier, with IdentityForce you’re not getting any credit monitoring at all unless you upgrade to their UltraSecure + Credit plan, in which case you get 3-bureau credit monitoring from Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. Three-bureau monitoring is going to give you more thorough and responsive protection than 1-bureau, because the different bureaus aren’t necessarily always in sync.

While LifeLock’s Standard plan includes 1-bureau credit monitoring, it’s not until you upgrade to their Ultimate Plus plan that you unlock 3-bureau monitoring. 

Once you’ve upgraded to include credit monitoring with IdentityForce, you also get credit reports and VantageScores from all three bureaus on a quarterly basis, as well as monthly credit score updates from one bureau.

Credit Reports and Scores

Upgrading to LifeLock’s mid-tier Advantage plan gives you access to monthly VantageScores and reports from 1-bureau on a monthly basis, but again if you want reports and scores from all three bureaus you need the Ultimate Plus plan.

Worth noting is that the reports and scores from all three bureaus are only updated annually on LifeLock’s Ultimate plus plan, although from one bureau they are updated daily.

And last, LifeLock offers a convenient credit lock so that you prevent unwanted inquiries into your credit file with the click of a button. You don’t get this with IdentityForce.

Just for reference, with Aura and CompleteID you get 3-bureau monitoring, monthly vantage scores and annual credit reports from all three bureaus, and a credit on all of their plans.

Transaction Monitoring

Then there’s transaction monitoring, which allows you to link bank accounts, credit cards, and investment accounts so you can monitor your financial activity all in one place.

You can even set transaction thresholds so that you’ll get an alert if there are charges over a certain dollar amount that you set. This helps you stay on top of fraudulent charges and resolve them quickly.

So that’s the majority of the monitoring offerings, now let’s get into to everyone’s favorite part – the dark web monitoring.

Dark Web Monitoring

I monitor the same personal information information across all of the identity theft protection solutions I use. Since LifeLock only allows me to monitor 5 email addresses and I usually monitor 6, I leave one out that doesn’t turn up hits with any of the other companies.

Lucky for me, my dark web hits are limited to leaked login credentials from various websites. Obviously I’d prefer if they weren’t out there, but at least I don’t have more sensitive personal information out in the open.

Although, as you’ll see here, the stakes can still get uncomfortably high with leaked login credentials.

IdentityForce returns a total of 20 dark web alerts for my personal information, and of those 20, 10 of them are unique. The unique hits are mostly the results of data breaches at websites and apps I’ve used. Many of them are big ones like Adobe, Myspace, and Dropbox. However, most concerning is that the login for one of my gmail accounts is in there. I’m not quite sure how that got out, my guess would be they figured it out with credential stuffing. Once they have your gmail, if you think about it, they could get access to an awful lot. Luckily I changed that password years ago.

The non-unique hits are just repeat instances of the same login credentials posted in different corners of the dark web, typically as part of breach compilations to make life a little easier for the identity thieves and other cyber pirates among us.

How does LifeLock compare? LifeLock finds a total of 8 dark web hits for my personal information. Eight!

All of them are unique hits, but I’m disappointed that they’re not even finding my leaked gmail credentials. Of the seven identity theft protection solutions I’ve used, 5 of them find more than LifeLock—and all of those 5 find my leaked gmail credentials.

Fraud Resolution

Dark web monitoring alone turns the tides in favor of IdentityForce, but we still have to cover fraud resolution.

Identity Theft Insurance

LifeLock comes out swinging with up to $3M in coverage per adult and $1,050,000 per child if you opt for their top-tier Ultimate Plus plan for a family with kids.

That covers 2 adults and five children. You might be inclined to do the quick math and say “Woah, that’s $11,250,00 in coverage”! But if you read the asterisks, the $1M in coverage for lawyers and experts for each “up to” is collective.

So really, if my math is correct it’s up to $5,250,000 in total coverage if you buy the most expensive plan LifeLock has to offer.

It’s definitely more coverage total than IdentityForce offers, which is $1M in identity theft insurance, and that’s a pretty standard number as a minimum. It’s even slightly more than you get with Aura, which is up $1M in identity theft insurance per adult, or up to $5M on their family plan.

But notice that LifeLock allots the coverage into up to $1M in lawyers in experts, up to $1M in stolen fund reimbursement per adult or $25,000 per child, and up to $1M in personal expense reimbursement per adult or $25,000 per child on the Ultimate Plus plan for a family with kids. And that coverage drops off FAST as you move down to their Advantage and Standard plans.

Fraud Restoration Assistance

In terms of how they actually help you in the event you’re a victim of identity theft, IdentityForce’s plans include white-glove fraud restoration for any family member of your household.

Beyond the typical restoration assistance, they do all the heavy lifting to save you tons of time and headaches—things like making calls, filling out paperwork, and grinding through fine print—all to ultimately restore your identity to the way it was before the incident.

LifeLock offers US-Based restoration specialists. That’s it. And you have to get to them first, which would be fine but LifeLock’s support is TERRIBLE.

The last thing you want is to feel like you’re talking to the support team from some run-of-the-mill internet provider on the day an identity thief made off with your life savings.

Like most of the other identity theft protection companies out there, IdentityForce’s support team is fantastic.

Conclusion

So I guess the question is, do you want to buy expensive insurance, or do you want to buy great identity theft protection with excellent monitoring and fraud resolution? The choice is yours.

Remember to check out my latest recommendations and links to any deals I know of.

While IdentityForce is great, I’d recommend you watch my Aura review if you haven’t already—their protection is comprehensive and priced to compete.

Beyond that I have tons of reviews and comparisons of identity theft protection companies right here on this website. And I have tons more in the queue for you guys, so stay tuned!

The post IdentityForce vs LifeLock Comparison Review appeared first on Cyber Sleuth.

I’ll share my experiences as a customer of ID Shield and show you where it stands among the 7 identity theft protection solutions I’ve used.

ID Shield has a lot going for it, but the interface is a bit clunky and leaves me with a couple of gripes that hold it back from being one of my favorites. There are definitely worse options out there—some of which you may be familiar with, but there are better options too.

My personal favorite right now is Aura, they offer comprehensive packages at a competitive price. Especially if you want to get coverage for your spouse, your parents and in-laws, and your kids.

If you’ve been a victim of identity theft in the past or you’re just being proactive about keeping your identity safe, you’re headed in the right direction by taking interest in identity theft protection.

Let’s open the kimono and see what’s going on with ID Shield under the hood.

ID Shield Customer Support

My first gut-check with any identity theft protection company is the quality of their customer support team.

If you think that’s lame, imagine what it would be like to call up your cell phone provider on the day that some identity thief opens a new credit card in your name.

Now, maybe your cell phone provider’s customer support’s not that bad, maybe they’re great! But I’m sure you’ve had a bad customer support experience before, so hopefully you catch my drift.

When I had to call ID Shield for clarity on my dark web alerts I was greeted with a US-based agent who was knowledgeable of my problem and got it sorted out quickly and efficiently.

The agent even went beyond that and guided me through the steps to set up my credit monitoring and gave me a direct line to reach her if I encountered any issues.

On top of being professional, the agent was super friendly and pleasant. It was definitely a positive experience.

While most of the identity theft protection companies I’ve worked with have excellent customer support teams, you do have to be careful. There’s one very well known company out there whose customer support team is just bad, for lack of a better word.

Customer support is the just the first aspect of threat resolution, and we’ll come back to that later. For now, let’s shift over to monitoring.

Setting Up ID Shield

With any Identity Theft Protection solution, personal information monitoring all starts by entering the personal information that you want to monitor. Mind blowing, I know!

ID Shield allows you to monitor quite a few different types of personal information. Of course there are your standard fields like email addresses, telephone numbers, and your SSN. They even allow you to monitor things like your Employer ID number, cryptocurrency wallets, and gamertags. It’s quite extensive, and they’re definitely up there with companies like Aura and Identity Guard in terms of how many types of personal information they allow you to monitor.

In fact, they don’t list any limitations on how many of each type of personal information you can monitor, but I haven’t hit any ceilings yet. Whereas with companies like LifeLock and CompleteID, the number of e-mail addresses you can monitor is somewhat limiting—they only allow you to monitor 5 and 4 email addresses, respectively. And that doesn’t cover all of mine.

Once you’ve added the information you want to monitor, ID Shield will be able to start performing their scans and sending you alerts if they come across anything of interest.

Now, I haven’t seen that they submit any opt-out requests with data brokers on your behalf to reduce junk mail, robocalls, and email spam like you get with Aura and Identity Guard.

Furthermore I don’t see them monitoring the public web to alert you where your information is available in the first place if you want to submit opt-out requests on your own like you get with LifeLock.

I also don’t see any Utility account monitoring with ID shield so if someone opens an electric service in your name for example, I’m not sure they would pick that up.

Features of ID Shield

Dark Web Monitoring

Most importantly to a lot of people, ID shield plans include dark web monitoring. We’ll go over what they turn up for my personal information on the dark web further below.

Public Record and Address Monitoring

ID Shield offers public record monitoring, so a typical example is if someone tries to add their name to your home deed you’ll get an alert.

They also offer address monitoring so that you’ll get an alert if someone tries to redirect your mail with the USPS to gain access to things like your bills and paystubs, which they can use for all sorts of identity theft. Additionally, they offer court records monitoring so that you can get alerts if someone puts your name down during an arrest for example.

Credit Monitoring

Credit monitoring is important because if there are any inquiries from lenders like credit card companies, car dealers, or mortgage brokers you’ll get an alert. So if someone opens a credit card in your name or takes out a car loan or whatever it may be, you can act fast and nip it in the bud.

As for the most important scans, they do offer either 1- or 3-bureau credit monitoring, but if you want monitoring with all three bureaus – that is, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, you will have to pay a bit extra. However, worth noting is that it does include monthly credit score tracking by providing your VantageScore from TransUnion.

If you’d like more robust protection by monitoring all three of the major bureaus continuously, you have the option of upgrading your plan.

However, from what I can tell, even if you upgrade you’re still only getting monthly VantageScores from TransUnion, rather than from all three bureaus.

Furthermore, you don’t get access to annual credit reports from any of the bureaus pulled into your dashboard. Of course, you can head over to annualcreditreport.com and get them yourself, but a lot of the other identity theft protection companies take care of it for you.

While ID shield will provide assistance with setting up freezes with the credit bureaus, you don’t have access to a credit lock to prevent unwanted inquiries with the click of a button.

For comparison, with Aura and CompleteID all of this included on all of the plans they offer – that is, 3-bureau credit monitoring, monthly credit scores and annual credit reports from all three bureaus, and a credit lock.

But ID Shield does offer payday loan monitoring in addition to credit monitoring, so if someone takes out a short term loan using your SSN, you’ll get an alert so you can track it down right away.

Financial Account Monitoring

While we’re on the topic of finances, like most of the other companies ID Shield plans include financial account monitoring so you can link bank accounts, credit cards, and investment accounts and monitor them for suspicious activity all in one place.

You can take it one step further and set transaction thresholds so you’ll get an alert if there are any charges or withdrawals over a certain dollar amount that you specify.

Social Media Monitoring

You also get social media monitoring as well as a reputation manager. Not only can this help you identify account takeovers, but you can also use it to improve your reputation online if you’re trying to grow a following for example.

VPN, Password Manager, and Antivirus

I want to mention a few other perks ID Shield has to offer. Their plans include a VPN, password manager, and anti-malware software to further improve your cybersecurity. I haven’t touched these, however, because I use different solutions.

Downsides of ID Shield

I have to address my grievances with ID Shield’s interface like I mentioned at the beginning, because they do ultimately impact my impression of the product as a whole.

What you’ll notice pretty quickly upon entering the dashboard with ID shield is that this is no Apple product where they’ve poured tons of effort into making it clean, pretty, and easy to use.

The most apparent way this shows up is that the website is designed in all of these different portals. So right away it’s a little bit of an annoyance because first you log in to your ID Shield account, then if you want to see your credit  and dark web monitoring you click a button, it opens a new tab, and you gotta sign in again.

Beyond the annoyance, the interface actually impacts the usability of the dark web monitoring

Dark Web Monitoring.

In this section, I’ll dig deeper into ID Shield’s performance when it comes to Dark Web Monitoring. I always monitor the same personal information across all of the identity theft protection solutions I use so that I can like-for-like comparisons.

In the case of LifeLock and CompleteID which don’t allow me to monitor all of my email addresses, I leave out addresses that don’t turn up hits from any of the other companies.

So what does ID Shield turn up for my personal information on the dark web?

I’m sad to tell you, I can’t really say for sure!

I know for a fact that when I signed up I had 17 alerts because I wrote that down so I could refer to it later. And I know I’ve received at least some alerts since then. But once you’ve cleared your alerts, there’s no way that I can see to go back and revisit them!

So I can’t tell you how many of these alerts are unique versus how many of them are from breach compilations, and I can’t even tell you what it is that ID Shield found.

How does ID Shield compare to other Identity Theft Protection Solutions?

Dark Web Monitoring

Just to make the comparison, let’s say ID shield turns up at least 17 hits for my personal information on the dark web.

Examples of poor monitoring would include IdentityIQ—they turn up zero hits for my personal information on the dark web. Norton’s LifeLock turns up a total of 8 dark web alerts, all of them are unique. On the other end of the spectrum IdentityForce turns up the most dark web alerts with 20 total and 10 unique hits, while Aura and Identity Guard turn up 18 total and 9 unique hits.

Now as I always caution, some companies are always finding some hits that others aren’t, so it’s difficult to say if 20 total hits is better than 18. But you can say that 18-20 is better than 8. Or zero—especially if LifeLock is only turning up 8 hits and is completely missing my leaked gmail login credentials.

I know for a fact that ID Shield turns up quite a few hits for my personal information, but the interface really makes this a missed opportunity.

For completeness, they do have a mobile app, and maybe it performs better. But honestly, I haven’t even tried it. I’m old, I can’t see very well. I have clumsy thumbs and I already hate how much time I spend with my nose stuffed in my phone. I tried installing the app on my iPad, but it doesn’t even turn sideways so I can use it with my keyboard.

Fraud Resolution

So let’s bring it all home with fraud resolution.

I told you already that ID Shield has a great customer support team, and they offer 24/7 emergency assistance. Their plans also include guaranteed identity theft restoration and dedicated licensed private investigators should you be a victim of identity theft. Most of the other companies don’t say their resolution teams are licensed—some do, but most don’t.

Identity Theft Insurance

In terms of financial backing, ID shield plans include $1M in reimbursement for unrecovered costs—which, the way they word it sounds a little bit different than the $1M in identity theft insurance that is a standard minimum offering from most other companies. But I can’t say for sure.

Just to contrast this with Aura, their plans include white-glove fraud resolution to do all the heavy lifting in the event that you’re victim of identity theft. Their plans come with up to $1M in identity theft protection per adult, which is up to $5M on their family plan.

Aura’s plans are also more comprehensive and they’re cheaper, at least at the time of writing. Especially if you pay annually—and that’s before you apply my discounts.

Conclusion

So I don’t think ID Shield is all that bad of a choice, there are definitely worse options out there. But there are some notable limitations with their Identity Theft Protection solution. And personally, they’re not limitations I’d settle with.

But whichever company you choose for identity theft protection, remember to check out my latest recommendations and links to any deals I have.

The post ID Shield Review (The Good and The Bad) appeared first on Cyber Sleuth.

I’ve used seven companies to see which is the best identity theft protection service and spent so many hours digging around under the hood, working with their customer support teams, and collating massive spreadsheets to bring you the most useful review I can.

And whichever Identity Theft Protection you decide on, check out my links here for the latest deals and recommendations.

IdentityForce provides excellent dark web monitoring, and you’ll see just how excellent in this video.

But when you consider the benefits offered at each pricing tier, it’s pretty clear that Aura is going to be a better option for most of us trying to keep ourselves, our kids, and even our parents safe from Identity Theft.

What I look at when evaluating an Identity Theft Protection service is the quality of its monitoring, what it offers for fraud resolution, and of course, its price.
You ready for this?

Let’s dive in.

The first component of fraud resolution often induces from eye rolls. And not just from the kids—from you guys too. And it’s not even a stale Dad joke. But I promise, when it comes to Identity Theft Protection, it’s important.

Ever since my headache-inducing experiences with LifeLock’s customer support I started putting each Identity Theft Protection company’s support team to the test.

If they’re the kind of company with loud call centers, minimally trained agents, and canned responses, then they’re not who I want to be working with on the day someone gets into my bank account and drains 10 grand.

In my experience IdentityForce’s customer support has been exactly what I’m looking for. In one of my calls I was on the line with an agent within 40 seconds of dialing and the call was over with all of my questions answered in under 3 minutes.

Their agents are US-based, they care about you as a customer. They understand your concerns and they understand IdentityForce as a product. They’re really quite helpful, quite professional, and if I do have to pick up that phone, I’m not dreading it.

Now be honest, did you roll your eyes?

I’m doing my best here.

Setting Up the Identity Force

So to set up personal information monitoring with IdentityForce you’ll want to head over to your Identity Vault.

There you can input the information you want to monitor, like your name, email addresses, phone numbers, date of birth, SSN, and so on. It’s perhaps a little light on the types of information you’re allowed to monitor, but not bad.

And how it works is that IdentityForce will scan the dark web for instances of your personal information. If they find anything you’ll get an alert that tells you what they found and all sorts of information about it.

They’ll give you a bit of a description of the source and any specific recommendations related to the breach, as well as general recommendations for next steps as a result of the dark web hit.

IdentityForce also monitors your address in case anyone tries to redirect your physical mail with the USPS so they can get access to your bills, credit card statements, whatever it may be.

IdentityForce also sorts through court and criminal records so you’ll get an alert if anyone uses your name during an arrest or something similar. Plus, they’ll alert you immediately if someone takes out a payday loan using your SSN. All good things.

But just how good is IdentityForce’s dark web monitoring?

I’ll show you what they turn up for my personal information in just a bit here. Before I do, I want to go over a few other components of monitoring and let you know where IdentityForce stands.

Features of IdentityForce

Credit Monitoring

One of my larger concerns with IdentityForce is that you don’t get any credit monitoring unless you sign up for their UltraSecure + credit plan.

So that means that with their baseline UltraSecure plan, IdentifyForce won’t send you alerts if there are any inquiries into your credit file from lenders like banks or auto dealers so you can move quickly if they’re fraudulent.

So if you want 3-bureau credit monitoring from Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian—as comes standard with Aura and CompleteID—you’ll need to upgrade to that UltraSecure + credit plan with IdentityForce.

And similarly, if you want VantageScores and credit reports from all three bureaus you need that upgraded plan. You don’t get any of that on IdentityForces’ standard plan, and even with the upgraded plan there’s no credit lock to prevent unwanted inquiries into your credit file with the click of a button.

All of this comes standard with plans from Aura and CompleteID.

Utility Accounts Monitoring

I also don’t see any alerts for Utility Accounts opened in your name nor changes to your home title like you get with Aura, so if someone tries to open an electric account in your name or tries to add their name to your home deed, I’m not certain IdentityForce would pick that up.

Junk Mail Opt-Out

IdentityForce says they offer a Junk Mail opt-out, which removes your name from the most common marketing databases. Although you still have to submit your information yourself, they just point you in the right direction.

Aura does this proactively on your behalf, and the list of data brokers they contact seems to be a bit more extensive than you get with IdentityForce.

Transaction Monitoring

Like many other Identity Theft Protection solutions, IdentityForce allows you to link bank accounts, credit cards, investment accounts, and other types of financial accounts for transaction monitoring.

This allows you not only to visualize your transactions all in one dashboard, but it gives you the ability to set alert thresholds so that you’ll be notified of any transactions over the limit you set. This way you can respond quickly to any fraudulent activity and increase your chances of getting it resolved.

Social Media Monitoring

You can also link and monitor your social media accounts to get alerts of any posts that are likely to be considered inappropriate in one form or another—things like violence, profanity, and bullying.

That said, I have to wonder how well this monitoring would work on Twitter these days. Is there even still a “W” in Twitter? I can’t keep up.

Maybe the social media monitoring would an indication that you want to tone it down a bit, but the more likely benefit is if someone gets control of your accounts and uses them for malicious purposes, you’ll get an alert.

Password Manager, Secure Storage, and VPN

And beyond that, IdentityForce plans include a password manager, secure storage for sensitive files, and they do offer a VPN through their mobile app – not a huge deal because I think there are better options out there, but nice to have nonetheless.

So IdentityForce’s monitoring is fairly extensive with perhaps a few areas for improvement, but let’s see how the most interesting component actually performs in a real-life situation.

Dark Web Monitoring

Of all the things bundled up into an Identity Theft Protection plan, many of you seem to be most interested in dark web monitoring. So I want to show you what IdentityForce turns up for my personal information on the dark web.

When I use the various Identity Theft Protection solutions I always input the same personal information for monitoring so that I can compare their performance on an apples-to-apples basis.

This makes it really easy to see which companies offer good dark web monitoring and which companies are simply out for a Sunday cruise.

Lucky for me, I don’t have anything too serious leaked on the dark web—at least not yet, or not that I know of. Maybe I have some trust issues.

IdentityForce turns up a total of 20 dark web alerts for my personal information, and 10 of those dark web alerts are unique. 

They include login credentials from popular websites like Dropbox, Canva, Adobe, and Myspace. There’s also a combo hit of one of my gmails and my phone number—that kinda pegs me down—and even the username and password for one of my gmail accounts is in there. I changed it years ago, I was seeing all sorts of weird stuff—but at least now I know why!

The remaining non-unique dark web alerts come from login compilations posted on the dark web so that identity thieves don’t have to work too hard to find what they’re looking for—wouldn’t want to inconvenience them.

I want to note that dark web monitoring isn’t an exact science, and there’s no perfect overlap in my experience—one company is always finding something that another doesn’t.

How does IdentityForce compare to other Identity Theft Protection Solutions?

Dark Web Monitoring

IdentityForce finds the most hits of any company I’ve used. The closest runners-up are Aura and IdentityGuard. Each of them find 18 total dark web hits, 9 of which are unique.

As for the #1 most recognized brand in Identity Theft Protection—LifeLock finds a whopping total of 8 dark web alerts, although they are all unique. And unlike IdentityForce, Aura, and IdentityGuard, LifeLock doesn’t even find my leaked gmail credentials!

So in short, IdentityForce’s dark web monitoring is indeed impressive. But keep in mind, that’s just one facet of the monitoring story.

And of course, we have a bit more to cover in terms of fraud resolution.

Fraud Resolution

As I mentioned at the top, I’m really quite happy with IdentityForce’s customer service. And all of their plans come with $1M in Identity Theft Insurance with no deductible. That includes out-of-pocket expenses, lost wages, and stolen funds replacement.

But more importantly, IdentityForce includes white-glove restoration services from US-based Certified Protection Experts. Not only do the specialists help you with the restoration, they do all the heavy lifting to help you get back on track as painlessly as possible.

And if a deceased family member is a victim of identity theft, IdentityForce’s fraud remediation team will still be there to help as long as they were enrolled at the time of their death.

Pricing and Insurance Coverage

When you look at the pricing, however, I think Aura is a better deal.

With Aura you’re also getting white glove fraud restoration and up to $1M in identity theft insurance per adult—which is up to $5M on their family plan.

And when you consider that you really need the UltraSecure + Credit plan to unlock the full benefits of IdentityForce, the price really makes Aura’s plans more compelling.

At the time I’m writing, an UltraSecure + Credit individual package from IdentityForce costs $29.95/mo paid monthly, whereas Aura’s individual plan costs $15/mo paid monthly. I’d like to compare the family plans on price, but IdentityForce’s family plan covers only 2 adults, so it’s not a direct comparison.

Conclusion

IdentityForce is undeniably impressive when it comes to performance and support. All in all I think that IdentityForce is a quality Identity Theft Protection solution, and I don’t think you’ll regret signing up with them. Even when you compare it to other known brands, it really is a standout. 

Price-wise however, you might get a better deal from other companies—that’s if this factor weighs heavier for you. Of course these prices are before you apply my discounts. Remember to check out my links for the latest deals and recommendations, I’ll make sure to keep those updated.

The post IdentityForce Review appeared first on Cyber Sleuth.

I’ve used seven different digital security platforms to lock down my identity and I’ve really grilled them to find out where each of them excels and where they start to fumble—see my Best Identity Theft Protection Service Review for more details.

It feels weird saying it, but I geek out on this stuff. I have my ear to the ground in the world of Identity Theft Protection, so make sure to check out the link to my most current deals and recommendations for you guys.

Identity Guard is a great choice if you just want a stripped down plan at an affordable price. Their dark web monitoring is one of the best out there, and I’ll discuss just how well it performs in just a bit.

But if you want the added benefits of a more comprehensive Identity Theft Protection plan, then rather than climbing up their service tiers you’re probably better off checking out Aura, especially if you want to protect your spouse, your kids, and even your parents.

Fun fact—Aura actually owns Identity Guard, so no matter what you’re looking for, you’re already barking up the right tree. 

Now let’s get down to it and see what Identity Guard has to offer for monitoring and fraud resolution, and also if the cost of their plans makes sense for you.

One often overlooked but super important aspect of any Identity Theft Protection company is the quality of their customer support team.

Don’t laugh, and stick with me. There’s a point to be made here.

Most of the companies I’ve worked with are pretty darn good, and Identity Guard is no exception.

Their customer support team is based in the US and in my experience they’re quite knowledgeable—not only of the Identity Guard product and the needs of their customers, but also just general identity safety practices as a whole.

But why do I even care about this?

Because my experiences with the #1 most recognized brand in Identity Theft Protection have been remarkably headache-inducing. When you call in need of their help, you’re greeted with agents in call centers who seem to be reading replies off of scripts.

Rather than feeling like they have your back, I get the impression that they’re simply documenting your calls and assuring you that your plans include insurance.

Maybe it’s not always quite that bad, but I’d prefer to be working with a support team I can count on when the day comes that some identity thieves intercept my mortgage check.

And luckily with Identity Guard, I’m confident that they’ll be there for me in times of extreme stress. In fact, it seems like they have the same support team as Aura. Since I use both companies, when I call up Identity Guard they can actually see my Aura account. It’s led to some confusion. But in a good way.

Setting Up Identity Guard

So how Identity Guard works is that you input the information you want monitored—things like your name, email addresses, gamer tags – there are quite a few options. Identity Guard will then perform scans on an ongoing basis and notify you if they find anything of interest.

Immediately upon signing up they submit opt-out request with data brokers on your behalf—for me it was 30 of them right off the bat. This helps cut down on junk mail, email spam, robocalls, those kinds of things.

And they actually do this on an ongoing basis, every now and then I get an email from them letting me know that they submitted opt out requests with, you know, 5 data brokers—however many it may be.

And this is a nice touch, the only other company I’ve seen do this is Aura.

They also monitor your credit records so that you’ll get an alert of any inquiries from lenders—which may just be normal, but they could also be indicative of someone trying to open a line of credit in your name like a credit card or a car loan.

We’ll talk a bit more about their full credit monitoring offerings in a minute.

And similarly with Utility Accounts you’ll get an alert if any new accounts are opened in your name—things like electric service or things like that.

Of course the thing that everyone is most interested in is their dark web monitoring, and Identity Guard will scan the dark web and send you an alert if they come across your personal information.

Typically this would be available as the result of a security breach at a website you’ve made an account with, but there can be other sources too.

Identity Guard will let you know what information they found on the dark web, where they found it, and they’ll typically provide you with some suggested actions to take in response. Of course, you can call their support team if it is anything of particular concern.

And so that you can get an idea of how well their dark web monitoring performs, I’ll show you what Identity Guard finds for my personal information on the dark web later.

But first there are a few more aspects of personal information monitoring that I want to go over with you guys.

And to kick that off I’ll come back to credit monitoring so I’m not leaving you hanging there.

Features of Identity Guard

Credit Monitoring and Reports

While Identity Guard’s Value plan offers nothing more than 1-bureau credit monitoring, you can unlock 3-bureau credit monitoring—that is, from Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax—as well as monthly credit scores on their upgraded plans.

And with their top-tier Ultra plan, you can also get annual credit reports from all three bureaus and even an Experian Credit Lock which prevents unwanted inquiries into your credit file with the click of a button.

For comparison, you get all of this standard on Aura’s plans—no need to upgrade. Plus, with Aura you’re getting monthly credit scores from all three bureaus, whereas you’re only getting the Equifax credit score with Identity Guard.

Public Record Alerts

And similarly, you’ll need to upgrade to Identity Guard’s Ultra plan if you want public record alerts like Home Title Monitoring in case someone tries to add their name to your home deed, Criminal and Sex Offense monitoring in case someone puts your name down during an arrest, and USPS address change monitoring in case someone tries to reroute your mail.

That said, these modules appear to be active in my Identity Guard account even though I’m on the value plan. I don’t have any hits though, so I can’t confirm that they’re working. My guess is they probably aren’t.

Transaction Monitoring

Then there’s transaction monitoring, which is spread across Identity Guard’s upgraded plans. You can link bank accounts, credit and debit cards, and investment accounts so you can monitor your financial activity all in one place.

You can even set alert thresholds so if it turns out Melissa McCarthy is going on shopping sprees and downing champagne in a bubble bath on your dime, you’ll get a notification so that you can take action immediately.

Social Media Monitoring

And of course there are a few other perks you can enjoy with Identity Guard. On their top-tier Ultra plan you can also enjoy social media monitoring so if someone takes over your accounts and starts posting inappropriate content, you’ll get an alert for that.

Safe Browsing and Password Manager

And while Identity Guard says that all plans include safe browsing and a password manager, only the password manager shows up on my account with the Value plan—the Antivirus and VPN say they’re not included. So that’s something to look into further if your particularly interested, although I think you can find better solutions elsewhere.

I use different platforms for these, so I haven’t looked into it further.

And before we bring it all home with fraud resolution, let’s check out the most fun part of monitoring—the dark web alerts.

Dark Web Monitoring

Whenever I set up personal information monitoring with the seven Identity Theft Protection companies I use, I always input the same personal information as long as it’s allowed.

And Identity Guard allows me to monitor all of my email addresses, and more, so they’re looking at everything.

Some companies have somewhat limiting restrictions on the number of email addresses you can monitor, like LifeLock and CompleteID only allow you to monitor 5 and 4 email addresses, respectively. That’s not quite enough for me

So when that happens, I make sure to leave out email addresses that turn up no dark web alerts from companies—like Identity Guard—that allow me to monitor all of my accounts.

I do my best to keep everything fair despite the limitations from some of the other companies.

Identity Guard’s dark web monitoring turns up a total of 18 dark web alerts for my personal information, and of those 18, 9 of them are unique.

The unique hits include one of my gmail logins, which is no good. But at least now I know how people were getting into all my different accounts a few years back—they were all tied to that gmail in one way or another.

I obviously changed the password for that reason, but it’s good to know where it all started.

Other unique hits come from breaches at websites you probably know like Adobe, Dropbox, and MySpace. Yes, I did have a MySpace account—and even one for my first band. I think the second band I was in had one too, but I didn’t make that account.

More hits come from Ticketfly, Canva, Twitter, and a couple of smaller websites called Indaba Music and Chegg that most people probably haven’t heard of.

And then all of those non-unique hits are from breach compilations, which is when someone puts loads of people’s login credentials in a nice, convenient package on the dark web to help out their fellow internet pirates—Identity Thieves included.

How does Identity Guard compare to other Identity Theft Protection Solutions?

Dark Web Monitoring

Well, before I tell you I just want to mention that there’s no perfect crossover from company to company. One platform is always finding some hits that another isn’t.

But what’s really clear is that some companies have poor dark web monitoring, while others are pretty freakin’ thorough.

For example, IdentityIQ turns up no dark web alerts whatsoever. None. 

Norton’s LifeLock turns up a total of 8 dark web alerts, and although they’re all unique, LifeLock’s not even finding my leaked gmail credentials. Like, seriously?

Aura turns up the exact same dark web alerts as Identity Guard, so 18 total and 9 unique hits.

So I guess I wasn’t super precise with my comment earlier about no perfect crossover, but that’s because Aura and Identity Guard are using the exact same technology to scan the dark web.

And the only one that does better than Identity Guard and Aura is IdentityForce, but much like Identity Guard, IdentityForce has a lot of it’s benefits locked up in a tiered structure, and they don’t offer they great stripped-down value plan like Identity Guard.

Regardless, Identity Guard’s dark web monitoring is really top notch, which is why I think their Value plan is such a great deal.

Threat Resolution

But then of course we have to talk about fraud resolution. And while I’ve already told you Identity Guard’s customer support team is fantastic, there are a few shortcomings here.

Most importantly, you don’t get white-glove fraud resolution with Identity Guard unless you upgrade to their top-tier Ultra plan. So in the event that you’re a victim of Identity Theft I’m sure their customer support will point you in the right direction, but it’s gonna be up to you to do the legwork.

And that can take hours and hours of your time, and you’re not going to be in the best mindset as you’re working through it.

Identity Theft Insurance

And while you can cover up to 5 adults and unlimited children on IdentityGuard’s family plans, the Identity Theft Insurance is capped at $1M. That’s totally standard, and nothing against them specifically for that, but with Aura you get up to $1M in identity theft insurance per adult, which is up to $5M on their family plan.

Aura also includes that white glove fraud resolution, and all the other benefits they have to offer, on all their plans

Conclusion

So I think if you just want great dark web monitoring at an affordable price, then Identity Guard is a good way to go. As of writing it’s only $7.50/month for an individual billed annually, or $8.99 billed mon thly.

But if you upgrade to the mid tier Total plan it’s $16.67/mo for an individual billed annually, or $19.99/mo billed monthly at the time of writing. That’s already more expensive than Aura, and you haven’t even unlocked all the benefits yet.

And that’s before you’ve applied my discounts. Remember to check out my links for the latest deals and recommendations

If you want to learn more you can check out my comparison of Aura and Identity Guard.

The post Identity Guard Identity Theft Protection Review appeared first on Cyber Sleuth.

Most of us have come to know and trust Norton and their suite of cybersecurity products. But when it comes to Identity Theft Protection, I’m here to say…

Slow down there cowboy, let’s not get trigger happy.

Whether or not you’ve been burned before, if you’re looking to protect you and and your family from Identity Theft there are better options out there than LifeLock.

In fact, of the seven Identity Theft Protection solutions I’ve used, they’re one of two that I have no interest in using again.

But hey, if you do sign up with LifeLock or anyone else for that matter, check out my links for the latest deals and recommendations. I always keep those up to date.

So why am I so disgruntled with LifeLock?

Let’s get our toes wet with a quick story about a boy and his phishing attempt.

That’s phishing with a PH. Like the jam band, only completely different.

One day this boy gets a phone call from someone claiming to be from his credit card company. One thing leads to another and the boy realizes he’s divulging his social security number and starts asking questions.

The alleged representative starts acting fishy, the boy gets nervous and hangs up.

Luckily, the boy remembers has an Identity Theft Protection plan from LifeLock as a smile lifts his rosy cheeks.

After getting sent around in circles on LifeLock’s website for a few minutes, the boy is finally able to find the phone number for customer support. He dials it up.

Three minutes later he’s connected with a human in a loud call center. The agent is nice enough, but English is clearly not their strong suit.

As the boy recounts his story there are lots of pauses on the other end as the agent types away. He’s asked to repeat parts of his story several times as the smile begins to fade from his face.

The agent advises the boy to block the number and that no further action is required. “Shouldn’t I be concerned?” The boy wonders as the agent types away.

A dull ache starts to form in the boy’s frontal lobe.

After several more confirmations of his story, the agent provides the boy with a case number. She then stumbles through a scripted reply ending with an assurance that the boy’s LifeLock plan includes $1M in identity theft insurance.

As the call comes to a close the boy feels uneasy, unsure of how to proceed, and alone.

It’s a sad story. I know because the little boy wasn’t a little boy at all, but rather a full-grown introverted man who is now writing this blog. Life is funny sometimes.

And every single time I’ve called LifeLock this is how it has been. Trust me, when something really bad happens you’re going to wish you were working with someone you could count on.

Now, every other Identity Theft Protection company I’ve worked with is way better in this regard, LifeLock is the standout. And with LifeLock, this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Setting Up LifeLock

The way LifeLock works is that you input the personal information that you want to monitor and  it will scan the dark web and send you an alert if it finds your information sitting there like a duck, waiting to be exploited.

Or at least, it should.

You can monitor all sorts of things like your phone numbers, addresses, mother’s maiden name, those types of things. Although it only allows you to monitor 5 email addresses, which isn’t quite enough for me.

LifeLock also monitors the public web for instances of your personal information, although unlike Aura and Identity Guard, they don’t proactively submit opt-out requests with data brokers on your help.

If you want them to do that you need to request it, and believe it or you need to pay them extra. This is the beginning of a theme we’ll come back to again and again.

I’m going to show you what LifeLock turns up for my personal information on the dark web in just a bit, but before I do that let’s talk a bit about the other types of monitoring LifeLock has to offer.

Features of LifeLock

Utility Account Monitoring

All of LifeLock’s plans monitor utility accounts, so if someone tries to open an electric account in your name, you’ll get an alert.

Credit Monitoring

They also offer credit monitoring, so if there are changes to your credit records like if someone opens up a card in your name, you’ll get an alert. 

But this is where things start to get a little hazy with LifeLock’s tiered payment structure.

Extra Features That Need Plan Upgrade

Identity Alerts

If you want alerts on crimes committed in your name, like if someone uses your name when the get arrested, you’ll need the mid-tier Advantage plan.

If you want home title monitoring so that you get an alert if someone tries to add their name to your home deed—which sounds crazy, but it happens—you’ll need upgrade to their top-tier Ultimate Plus plan

Both of these are standard with Aura.

3-Bureau Credit Monitoring

Similarly, if you want 3-bureau credit monitoring, you’ll have to upgrade to their Ultimate Plus plan. 3-bureau credit monitoring is standard with companies life Aura and CompleteID.

Credit Scores and Reports

And if you want monthly credit scores and annual credit reports from all three bureaus, well you actually can’t get that with LifeLock. The most you can get from all three bureaus is annual scores and reports on their Ultimate Plus plan.

And if you want even 1-bureau scores and reports, you’ll need to upgrade to their advantage plan.

Credit Lock

LifeLock does offer the convenience of a credit lock to prevent unwanted inquiries into your credit file with the click of a button, but yes, you’ll need an upgraded plan.

Transaction Monitoring

And while transaction monitoring doesn’t come standard on LifeLock plans like it does with almost every other Identity Theft Protection company I’ve used, you can get if you upgrade to their Advantage Plan.

This allows you to link bank accounts and credit cards to monitor activity, and to set transaction thresholds so you can get alerts of any charges over the limits you set.

And you won’t find other bells and whistles like a VPN or antivirus included in any of LifeLock’s plans like you would with most of the other companies, probably because they’d prefer you buy Norton’s other standalone products.

Like Norton Antivirus, for example, which you way have been using back when Napster made a splash.

Norton does offer a free password manager though, and while it was targeted by hackers in early 2023, it seems to have held its own for the most part.

Dark Web Monitoring

So LifeLock has a couple of strikes against them with sub-par customer support and a pay-to-play pricing structure that pushes you towards the higher tiers, but their dark web monitoring must make up for it, right? This is Norton after all

Let’s see what Norton turns up for my personal information on the dark web.

I monitor the same personal information across all of the Identity Theft Protection solutions that I use. In the case of LifeLock, which only allows me to monitor 5 email addresses, I make sure to leave out one that returns no dark web alerts from any of the other companies.

Lucky for me my dark web alerts are limited to leaked login credentials—typically usernames and passwords at various websites. While that’s obviously not desirable, it could be a lot worse, and having some passwords leaked in a breach is nearly inevitable.

In total, LifeLock returns a total of 8 dark web alerts for my personal information, and all 8 of these are unique. They include my username and password from sites like Adobe, MySpace, and Dropbox.

Only 8 hits, that doesn’t seem to bad. But let’s compare it to others.

How does LifeLock compare to other Identity Theft Protection Solutions?

Dark Web Monitoring

Well, examples of good monitoring would include Aura and Identity Guard, which both turn up a total of 18 dark web alerts, 9 of which are unique. And IdentityForce turns up 20 dark web alerts, 10 of which are unique.

While dark web monitoring isn’t a perfect science and you usually won’t find complete crossover from company to company, LifeLock is missing a ton of data breech compilations on the dark web, which make up those non-unique alerts.

But even worse than that is that LifeLock doesn’t find the hits associated with one of my gmail addresses, and that includes my gmail login itself.

Now I’m good, I’ve long since changed that gmail password, but almost all of the other Identity Theft Protection solutions I’ve used find it on the dark web. It’s a bit concerning to me that LifeLock doesn’t find it, especially when it is something so sensitive and high profile.

When compared to the performance of the other Identity Theft Protection solutions I’ve used, I’d say that LifeLock’s monitoring is insufficient. But in addition to dark web monitoring, it is important to consider what an Identity Theft Protection solution offers for threat resolution.

Threat Resolution

We already know that LifeLock’s customer support leaves a lot to be desired, and that’s the last thing you want to be dealing with when you’re already having a rough day. 

LifeLock’s plans do include US-based Identity Restoration Specialists, but remember, you have to get to them first.

Financial Backing

In terms of financial backing, LifeLock’s Standard plan was recently reworked to include up to $1,050,000 in coverage. Up to $1M of that is for lawyers and experts, up to $25,000 is for stolen funds reimbursement, and up to $25,000 in personal expense compensation.

$1M in identity theft insurance is standard at a minimum across all the other companies I’ve used, and I’m guessing LifeLock reworked the wording to stand out from the competition. Aura’s plans for example provide up to $1M per adult, which is up to $5M on their family plan.

And the others don’t break the coverage down into buckets, so I’d be curious if that extra $50,000 from LifeLock is really helping you at the end of the day.

Although with LifeLock’s upgraded plans comes upgraded insurance coverage, and on the advantage plan you get up to $1,200,000 in coverage, and up to $3M in coverage on their Ultimate Plus plan.

And if you do choose their family plans, the coverage is for each adult and you also get $1,050,000 for each child, which is definitely nice. Although if you read those footnotes it is not quite as good as it looks.

Conclusion

And at the end of the day you’re still dealing with LifeLock’s poor customer support and sub-par monitoring. Furthermore, the prices aren’t really all that great compared to the other companies, and keep in mind that they renew at a higher rate after the first year.

Personally, I’m really turned off by this convoluted pricing structure, and when you consider the whole picture the whole thing feels like one big up sell with not much of a foundation.

I’d highly recommend you check out Aura, they’re my favorite Identity Theft Protection right now, but really, there are a lot of good alternatives to LifeLock.

But whichever Identity Theft Protection you choose, remember to check out my links in here. I always keep that updated with my latest deals and recommendations.

You can check out my head-to-head comparison of LifeLock vs Aura too.

The post LifeLock Identity Theft Protection Review appeared first on Cyber Sleuth.

If I’ve done my job, this review will bring it to a close.

Costco members know they’re getting quality products at a great price. And when it comes to Identity Theft Protection, you don’t even have to buy in bulk. But hey, what’s stopping you?

While CompleteID is not quite as good as Aura, it’s definitely one of the acceptable options of the seven Identity Theft Protection solutions I’ve used. It checks all the boxes in many of the major areas, and where it comes up short I think it is a compromise you could live with.

But before you sign up, check out my links for the latest deals and recommendations, whenever I find something new I’ll make sure to update that for you.

Quick Overview on Customer Support

My first gut-check with any Identity Theft Protection solution is their customer support, and CompleteID passes in flying colors.

I’m talking about knowledgeable agents who understand their customers and go out of their way to get to the root of your issues.

Why do I even care?

My experiences with the most recognized brand in Identity Theft Protection have been awful, and when you’re flippin’ your ish because your savings got drained, you don’t wanna be dealing with that. CompleteID has you covered.

Setting Up CompleteID

To get up and running with CompleteID you input the personal information that you want to monitor, and it’ll send you an alert if it comes across your information on the dark web.

Now I gotta say, CompleteID was a bit slow to the punch on pulling up my existing dark web alerts when I signed up. Most of the other Identity Theft Protection solutions sent me dark web alerts within a day or two of signing up, but with CompleteID it took a little bit. That’s something to keep in mind if you decide to enroll with them.

The other thing worth noting is that the extent of information they allow you to monitor is a bit limiting. The biggest thing is that you can only monitor 4 email addresses, which is just not enough for me.

Beyond that you can monitor your social security number, phone numbers, your driver’s license and passport numbers, medical ID numbers, bank and credit card numbers, and membership card numbers.

If that sounds like a lot to you, well, it’s not. Many of the other companies like Aura for example allow you to monitor more types of information, and often more of each type than you can with CompleteID.

It’s not the end of the world, but again something to keep in mind.

And just how good is CompleteIDs dark web monitoring?

I’ll show you what it turns up for dark web alerts for me in just a bit here. But real quick, I want to go over the rest of CompleteIDs monitoring capabilities.

Features of CompleteID

CompleteID doesn’t offer any public web monitoring or opt-out requests, but this isn’t a standard offering. Most companies I’ve used don’t do this, and the only companies that do it right are Aura and Identity Guard.

So if you want to cut down on robocalls and junk mail, you’ll have to take it upon yourself to contact data brokers directly to submit opt-out requests.

Mail Change Alerts and Criminal Record Monitoring

And while CompleteID doesn’t monitor utility accounts, they do offer mail change alerts and criminal record monitoring, so if someone uses your name when they get arrested, you’ll get an alert.

Credit Monitoring

CompleteID includes 3-bureau credit monitoring on all their plans, so you’ll get an alert if anyone tries to open a new account in your name.

All plans also include monthly VantageScores and annual credit reports from all three bureaus, as well as a credit lock to prevent unwanted inquiries with the click of a button. This puts them at the head of the pack in terms of credit monitoring alongside Aura.

Transaction Monitoring

Like most Identity Theft Protection companies out there, CompeteID’s plans include transaction monitoring. If you link your bank accounts and credit cards you can set transaction thresholds and receive notifications of any charges that are over the limit.

And if it seems like a fraudulent charge, you can get to the bottom of it right away.

Extra Protection Features

Some other nice perks of CompleteID include safe browsing features, like a VPN, a password manager, and safe browser. While I think dedicated solutions for these will serve you better, if you don’t have them already CompleteID will help get you up and running.

Social Media Account Monitoring

CompleteID also allows you to monitor your social media accounts so that you can get notifications if your activity starts to violate community guidelines. Usually this would be indicative of someone getting access to your accounts and using them for malicious purposes.

This is another nice touch that’s definitely not a standard offering with other Identity Theft Protection solutions.

Dark Web Monitoring

So now for the fun part—drum roll, please!

Let’s see what CompleteID turned up for me on the dark web.

Typically I monitor all of the same personal information across all of the Identity Theft Protection solutions I use.

However, since CompleteID only allows me to monitor four email addresses, I made sure the ones I left out didn’t return any dark web hits across all the other platforms.

Luckily for me, I don’t have anything too serious leaked out there on the dark web—at least not yet. For the most part we’re looking at login credentials from various websites that have been affected by breaches.

In total, CompleteID returns 14 dark web alerts for my personal information, and of those 14, 8 of them are unique.

The dark web alerts are for login credentials from websites you probably know like Adobe, MySpace, and Canva. There’s even a leaked password from one of my gmail accounts which explains all that weird stuff I was seeing a few years back.

I’ve long since changed my password, but take it from me if you haven’t already—don’t use the same password across multiple websites. You’ll save yourself a minor or major headache down the road.

The remaining dark web alerts are from compilations, which is when someone graciously collects all the login credentials they can find in one central location on the dark web to make life even easier for identity thieves.

Dark Web Monitoring: How does CompleteID compare with other Identity Theft Protection solutions?

Well, it could be worse. IdentityIQ turns up absolutely nothing for my personal information on the dark web, and Norton’s renowned LifeLock turns up a total of only 8 dark web alerts. While all these hits are unique, LifeLock doesn’t even find my leaked gmail credentials. Tsk tsk.

But it could also be better. Aura turns up a total of 18 dark web alerts, 9 of which are unique. And IdentityForce turns up 20 dark web alerts, 10 of which are unique.

Note that dark web monitoring isn’t a perfect science, and usually each of the different Identity Theft Solutions are finding some hits that the others aren’t. While CompleteID could perform better in this department, they’re finding enough that it’s OK by me.

Now while the quality of a company’s monitoring is important, dark web monitoring in particular, you also need to consider what they offer for threat resolution.

Threat Resolution

We’ve already discussed that CompleteID has an excellent customer support team, so you know you’re starting off on the right foot on the day that you truly need their help.

And in the event that you’re a victim of identity theft, CompleteIDs plans include a designated restoration specialist to help you get back on track as painlessly as possible.

In terms of financial backing, CompleteIDs plans come with up to $1M in identity theft insurance, which is pretty much the standard and baseline offering across all of the companies I’ve used.

There are a couple of companies that offer more, and the only one that I think is worth it is Aura—they offer $1M in identity theft insurance per adult, which is up to $5M on their family plan.

Plans

Worth noting is that at most you can protect two adults and five children with CompleteID, whereas with Aura you can protect up to 5 adults and unlimited children.

And when it comes to price, it is a bit difficult to compare across companies because most use a convoluted tiered plan structure, and each tier unlocks a different set of features.

Like Aura, this is not the case with CompleteID. Their plans are straightforward and comprehensive. All the features are included on every plan, and the price you pay only varies based on how many people you’re covering.

What I can say is that for a comprehensive plan like CompleteID offers, it’s one of the best deals out there. That said, you do need to have a Costco membership to use CompleteID so if you don’t, that’s going to impact the price.

The most comparable Identity Theft Protection plans are going to come from Aura, and I do think that they have a slight edge over CompleteID both in terms of monitoring and threat resolution.

Conclusion

And while you get a slightly better price with CompleteID if you pay monthly as a Business or Gold member, Aura is a bit cheaper if you pay annually. Of course, that’s not including the cost of your Costco membership.

That’s also before you apply my discounts, so remember to check out my links for the latest deals—that might be the tie breaker.

All in all I think CompleteID will treat you well, but I do recommend you check out Aura before making your decision. If nothing else, you’ll know how green the grass was on the other side.

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