IdentityForce Review

In this IdentityForce review I’m going to give you the full rundown of TransUnion’s trusted Identity Theft Protection service.

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.