ID Shield Review (The Good and The Bad)

In this ID Shield review you’re going to see what this identity theft protection solution offers for personal information monitoring and fraud resolution.

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.

Screenshot from ID Shield website showing monthly plans for 1- and 3-credit bureau monitoring.

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.

Screenshot from ID Shield website showing monitoring thresholds.

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.

Screenshot from ID Shield website showing the options for Dark Web Monitoring.

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.

Screenshot from ID Shield website showing descriptions for their offers on Full service identity restoration and Licensed private investigators.

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.


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