About a year or two ago I started seeing television commercials and hearing radio ads for Lifelock. You know, the ones where the CEO of the company openly gives out his social security number, because he's so sure that no one will be able to steal his identity? I remember being skeptical; there was no way that was his real social security number. How could any identity protection service be able to prevent every possible thing that a person can do with those nine digits? Every time one of those ads was on, and he would say, "That's my real social security number," I would argue out loud, "No, it's not!"
Well, I still don't believe it's his real social security number. But Lifelock has become exponentially more popular in the short time since I first heard of them. So I decided to find out what it's all about. What do they actually do for you, that makes them so sure your identity won't be stolen that they offer a $1,000,000 guarantee? It turns out, for $10 per month, they do provide some useful services. Most of the things they do for you, you can do yourself for free. But, they do it all automatically. They request fraud monitoring from the three credit bureaus every ninety days. They put you on the do-not-mail lists for those annoying unsolicited credit offers you get in the mail, and automatically renew the requests when they expire. They automatically request your free annual credit reports every time you become eligible. You could do all of these things yourself, but that would require 1) remembering to do them as often as necessary, and 2) having the time to do it all. Unfortunately, for some of us, even $10 a month is more than we can spare right now. But when my situation improves, I am seriously considering signing up for this.
Now, it may be semantics, but none of this actually prevents someone from stealing your identity. It only ensures that you will be alerted to it as quickly as possible, so that the steps can be taken to ensure that you won't be held financially responsible. I still would have my social security number changed, and certainly would not go around advertising it on billboards. Still, the Lifelock service does actually sound pretty valuable, and several reputable companies, including AAA in the Carolinas and New Jersey, and US Airways, think so too.
Lifelock is looking for more people to join their team, too. They have a web site just for people interested in Lifelock jobs. Could that be you?
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