As a cybersecurity expert, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with identity protection services for more than a decade, despite having served as an advisor to some of these companies and using more than a dozen services.
I’m often asked the same two-part question at presentations I give on identity theft and fraud: Are these services any good, and can I trust the companies behind them?
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The answer is complicated. The identity protection industry has a checkered past, and has survived some early headwinds. I also believe identity theft protection companies can exaggerate what they do for subscribers.
On the other hand, they offer helpful credit monitoring and online security tools for anyone who doesn’t want to do the grunt work of keeping tabs on their identity or their children’s. ID theft protection can also come in handy if your identity is stolen and you need help restoring it.
Early identity theft industry scandals
Many of the major identity theft protection providers have been sued, sanctioned and fined for making misleading or exaggerated marketing and performance claims. The most exaggerated of all being that they prevent identity theft when they really don’t.
For example, the Federal Trade Commission brought charges against LifeLock in 2010, alleging the company falsely claimed it could prevent all forms of identity theft. The FTC also accused LifeLock of failing to adequately protect customer data and not providing immediate security alerts to subscribers if it believed them to be victims of ID theft. LifeLock was later acquired by Symantec, in 2016, and is currently owned by Gen Digital.
Identity theft protection providers have also been accused by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau of colluding with bank partners in deceptively enrolling customers in “add-on credit card” services they never received, including credit monitoring and identity theft protection.
In 2015, the CFPB fined Affinion Group and Intersections, Inc., the former owners of Privacy Guard and Identity Guard, $10 million for charging people for services unbeknown to them. The CFPB also fined Bank of America $727 million in 2014 and Citibank $700 million in 2015 in similar cases.
Since these massive penalties were issued and increased scrutiny fell over the industry, I’ve noticed services doing a better job in more honestly describing their features and delivering what their customers sign up for.
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