IdentityForce vs LifeLock Comparison Review

When I look at IdentityForce vs LifeLock, it is pretty clear that one of them is the better choice for most of us trying to protect ourselves and our families from identity theft.

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.

Left is a screenshot of LifeLock's homepage and right is a screenshot of IdentityForce homepage.

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.

Identity theft solutions reviewer Zach Lovatt explains the LifeLock vs Identity Force in terms of information needed to set up and account.

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.

A screenshot of LifeLock site showing the Identity Lock feature.

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.

A screenshot from LifeLock's website explaining its plans.

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!


Posted

in

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *