Lifelock or TrustedID:Which Service Is Right For You?

Updated July 19, 2010

• Read our detailed Lifelock review
• Read our detailed TrustedID review

We live in a world of uncertainty, and more and more people are becoming concerned about the safety of their identities. We also have more choices than ever before and it can be confusing trying to determine what you need to protect yourself and which product will offer you the greatest security.

If you’ve done any research at all then you’ve come across some experts recommending Lifelock and others TrustedID. Both identity theft services have recently introduced upgraded and improved versions of their flagship protection plans. Lifelock launched Command Center™ last December and TrustedID introduced IDEssentials™ in July of this year.

As the identity fraud protection industry has evolved, many popular services have moved toward a monitoring detection type service. This is an admission in the industry that complete identity protection is virtually impossible. Tech savvy identity thieves can hack into databases and steal millions of records without anybody realizing it.

Both Lifelock and TrustedID understand this and have taken a very similar approach to identity theft protection. We’ll expose some of the similarities as well as differences between these two popular services.

	Command Center	IDEssentials
Price	$13.50/month	$10.42/month
Promotion	30 Days Free & 10% Off	15 Days Free Trial
Coverage	$1 Million Total Service Guarantee	$1,000,000 Service Warranty
Protection Type	Fraud Alerts/Scanning	Fraud Alerts/Credit Monitoring
Credit Monitoring	No	Instant 3 Bureau Report
Credit Reports	Annually Major Bureaus
Credit Score	No
Family Plan	No
Credit Freezes	No
Anit-Virus/ Spyware	No
Sex offender Reports		No
PayDay Loans	No

How are Lifelock and Trusted ID Similar?

• Opt-out of pre-approved credit offers
• Have a $1,000,000 warranty
• Fraud Alerts (Called ‘Lender DoubleCheck’ by TrustedID)
• Order yearly credit reports
• Wallet protection
• Scan internet black markets looking for misuse of your information
• 24/7 on call helpline

Both LifeLock and Trusted ID will remove you from junk mail lists and place fraud alerts on your behalf. They will also scan the internet for your information on the web. They look for your date of birth, address and social security number and notify you immediately if any activity is found with your information attached to it. With Trusted ID you can even ask them to watch for your bank account and credit card number.

Both services also offer wallet protection which can give you some small sense of security when your wallet is gone. Having someone to call and help you take the necessary steps to replace your license, insurance cards, and other forms of ID as well as helping you with canceling and replacing your credit and debit cards can be a great comfort.As you can see, both LifeLock and Trusted ID offer very similar coverage and have very similar basic features.

How Do Lifelock and Trusted ID Differ?

• Read our detailed Lifelock review
• Read our detailed Trusted ID review

Credit Report Monitoring

With the introduction of IDEssentials, TrustedID added credit monitoring of your report and score with all three major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. TrustedID will scan your reports daily and alert you if they detect any fraudulent or suspicious activity. Lifelock does not offer credit monitoring.

Credit Freezes

Like Lifelock, Trusted ID sets and renews fraud alerts every ninety days. What sets TrustedID apart is the option to place credit freezes on your credit file, a far more secure measure of protection. (Read our article on Fraud Alerts vs Credit Freezes for more information) While you can do this yourself, having a service perform this for you can come in handy when you can’t remember your PIN number.

Personal Information Scanning

Lifelock recently launched their Command Center which actively monitors unregulated internet and file sharing networks for your personal information. In addition they scan payday loans, sex offender registries, and other public records to find your information. If they find it, they’ll alert you by email and help protect you against accidental information disclosures.

Anti Virus Protection

Trusted ID also keeps an eye on your computer, giving you an anti-spyware program that can be installed on as many as three computers. An unsecured computer is at high risk for hackers, spyware and viruses, and a good protection program can cost you as much as $100 a year. With trusted ID, not only does this software automatically update every day, it is given to you at no charge so long as you have an account with Trusted ID. This benefit almost pays for the cost of protection itself.

Lost Wage Coverage

Probably the greatest difference between LifeLock and Trusted ID is in the fine print of their identity theft insurance guarantees. While both claim to have $1,000,000 policies, they cover very different things. According to the non profit Identity Theft Resource Center, the primary financial loss of identity theft victims are the lost wages involved when they need to spend 30-60 hours contacting their financial institutions and clearing up their credit.

Unfortunately, Lifelock’s policy does not cover lost wages while Trusted ID offers an industry best $5,000 /4weeks. Most of Lifelock’s coverage is for hiring attorneys and investigators to “clear your good name”, something most cases of identity theft probably don’t require. Most victims of identity theft do need to spend countless hours calling their credit card companies and filling out fraud affidavits. Trusted ID will reimburse you for this time while Lifelock will not. You can read more about Identity Theft Insurance here.

Family Coverage

Another large difference is family coverage. Lifelock doesn’t offer any discounts to cover your spouse, elderly grand parents and charges $25/year to cover minor children. Trusted ID covers the entire household living under one roof for less than the cost another policy.

To illustrate the wide disparity in cost; for a family of 2 adults and two minor children, the cost of protection for Lifelock would be $347/year ($148.50 for each adult and $25 for each child). Trusted ID’s coverage would only be $240.00 These are advertised prices and if you use any of our links, you’ll receive significant discounts.

Large families need family pricing

For a larger family, the price differences are more dramatic. For the same family living with two grandparents, the Lifelock plan would cost $643/year and TrustedID would be unchanged at $240.00/year (provided all the adults are part of the same household). Anyway you look at it, these are significant savings.

If you’re known to the public as “octomom” or your last name is “Duggar”, then it’s really a no-brainer. If the Octomom were covered by Lifelock, she would need to pay $348.50 while the near identical coverage from TrustedID would be $240.00.

The Duggar family from Discover Channel fame would pay $747 for their 18 children with Lifelock and with TrustedID, you guessed it, $240.00. I sense a sponsorship deal here somewhere.

These may be extreme examples but a large majority of victims come from families and it certainly makes sense to protect the identities of those you care about.

Our Opinion

LifeLock and Trusted ID both have reputations of stability and trustworthiness, and in the end both of them are good choices to help protect you from identity theft. We feel that TrustedID edges out Lifelock as a service that offers more for less.

In addition to almost everything Lifelock offers, with Trusted ID, you have the option to place credit freezes, free virus /spyware protection for your computers, credit monitoring, your credit score, medical benefits review, and when looking to add a child, spouse, or grandparent to your coverage, TrustedID has the best pricing available.

Lifelock did pioneer the entire identity protection industry and was the first to offer a million dollar warranty but the value in TrustedID’s offerings is just to strong to ignore. It’s almost like TrustedID was designed to imitate Lifelock, offer more, and then charge less.

Before making a final decision take the time to ask what services are important to you. How much coverage do you need, and how many people in your house do you need to protect? Both LifeLock and Trusted ID are companies with good reputations who will help protect you from identity theft and, should the worst happen, help you regain your identity and your credit.

• Visit Lifelock 10% Discount and 30 Days Free
• Visit Trusted ID 15 Days Free Trial

Will The Best Identity Theft Service Please Stand Up?

This is a comparison between the flagship services of Lifelock and Identity Guard: Lifelock’s Command Center and Identity Guard’s Total Protection.

One reason we won the cold war was we simply outspent the Soviet Union. There was no way centralized planning could keep up with a capitalist economy. Things like tanks, ships, and fighter jets are notoriously expensive to buy and maintain and the Soviet Union literally bankrupt themselves trying to keep up.

Identity Guard and especially Lifelock have taken the United States playbook and must be outspending their competition at some obscene ratio. Their advertisements are everywhere: on the web, television, print media, and on the radio. One of the likely reasons you’ve found this page is you’re considering an identity theft service and have heard about Lifelock or Identity Guard. That’s the power of branding.

Lifelock introduced Command Center in December 2009 amid much fanfare and it’s a much needed upgrade from their original service. Lifelock will now scan public databases, court records, and even sex offender registry reports for your information. With this new service Lifelock is essentially admitting that’s it’s near impossible to prevent identity theft and instead focuses on an early warning system to prevent the theft from getting beyond your control to resolve it.

Identity Guard of course has been singing this tune all along. While Lifelock probably has more brand recognition, Identity Guard from Intersections Inc. has been successfully fighting identity theft for more than 14 years for some of the biggest names in financial services. So how do these two detection services compare?

	Command Center	Total Protection
Price	$15/month	$17.99month
Promotion	30 Days Free & 15% Off	30 Days Free
3 Bureau Credit Score	No
Monitors Equifax Report	No
Monitors Experian Report	No
Monitors TransUnion Report	No
Anit-Virus Spyware	No
Protects Address
Scans For SSN
Scans For Credit Cards
Scans For Bank Account Information
Scans For Payday Loan Activity
Sex Offender Registry Reports
Public Records
Court Records
Guarantee	$1 Million Total Service Guarantee	$1 Million Loss Reimbursement

So Why Doesn’t Lifelock Offer Credit Monitoring?

While it’s true that identity theft occurs beyond your credit report, experts agree the best way to detect identity theft is through monitoring your credit report. So why does Lifelock leave this important feature out? Only Lifelock knows but I’d hazard a guess it has something to with the costs involved. Identity Guard pays the three major credit reporting agencies (TransUnion, Equifax, Experian) for access to the credit reports. Somebody in Lifelock’s management decided to pursue detection technology outside your credit report.

It’s not hard to understand the strategic thinking behind this decision. This way Lifelock isn’t beholden to the credit reporting agencies it has a somewhat fractious relationship with and can offer consumers services unique to Lifelock.

But by not offering credit monitoring services is Lifelock shortchanging their customers? I think so. Do you think an identity thief will be better detected by monitoring court records and sex offender registry reports or by the daily monitoring of all three credit reports? Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Lifelock

• Read our detailed Lifelock review

Lifelock initiates fraud alerts on your behalf with all 3 major credit bureaus. Fraud alerts require creditors to confirm your identity by phoning to verify the request for credit. The weakness in this type of plan is threefold.

• First, even if fraud alerts were a surefire way to protect against identity fraud, it only protects you against the opening of new accounts. What about your existing accounts? If you lose your wallet, the identity thief will have access to your identification card, home address, and other information.
• Second, fraud alerts are not fool proof. Creditors have and will continue to extend credit without checking your credit file. According to the advocacy group Consumer Action, fraud alerts are only effective in about 75 percent of the cases. The only way to restrict access to your credit file is with a credit freeze, something LifeLock does not do.
• Third and most importantly, your information is already out there. You can take every precaution in the book but what happens to your auto loan application after you fill it out? How about your mortgage application or that new credit card? The truth is, you actually have very little control over the access to your own private identifying information. Fraud alerts won’t protect you.

Identity Guard

• Read our detailed Identity Guard review

Identity Guard doesn’t offer fraud alerts. Maybe it’s because they believe they’re not effective or its incredible easy to set up yourself – for whatever reason Identity Guard focuses entirely on monitoring your credit report in near real time. You have UNLIMITED access to not only your credit report but your credit score as well. In addition to all this, Identity Guard offers a host of products that depending on your tech level, may offer incredible value. To somebody like myself who’s always online, I find the additional features like ID Vault®, Mobile Lockbox®, and ZoneAlarm® incredibly useful but to someone who’s not technically inclined – these features would be of limited value.

Opinion

Lifelock built its entire protection service around placing and renewing fraud alerts. Lifelock was doing this when nobody else was and if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Lifelock should be flattered. There are numerous companies that imitate what Lifelock does. They were also the first to offer a million dollar guarantee which everybody also copied. Throw in a CEO who publicly announces his social security number in the press and dares identity thieves to steal it, and it’s no wonder Lifelock is the market leader. Lifelock has brilliant marketing and it resonates with consumers. But while all this may sound lovely at a shareholder meeting, is it truly effective? Is it better than credit monitoring?

If it’s Lifelock or nothing, by all means choose Lifelock. Get some measure of protection for your identity. But if its a choice between fraud alerts and credit monitoring? I choose credit monitoring. There is simply no way to guarantee the security of your personal information. Monitoring your credit file daily for any changes is the best way to protect your identity, your property, and your life.

Visit Lifelock for more information.

Visit IdentityGuard for more information

You’ve decided you need identity theft protection. Congratulations, that’s the easy part…

It seems we’re inundated with commercials and advertisements from Lifelock, Identity Guard, TrustedID and the countless other identity theft services. There’s certainly no shortage of protection services and if you’ll just give them the chance, they’ll all give you plenty of reasons why they’re the best identity theft protection available.

I’m sure these companies hired expensive ad agencies to create marketing campaigns that highlight their strengths, gloss over shortcomings, and explain why they’re better than the competition.

What’s a discerning consumer to do?

It takes a discerning eye to separate the “chaff from the wheat” so to speak. Our staff at IDProtectionGuide takes a certain pride in delivering analysis you just won’t find anywhere. In fact, most of what you’ll read elsewhere sounds like warmed over ad copy. Much of our information comes from trying out the individual services and many hours on the phone. Let’s dig in.

After reporting and reviewing on the identity theft industry the last few years, we’ve noticed that there are a few consumer profiles that will cover just about 99% of the potential market. Don’t worry if you find yourself in one or more profiles. In understanding where different services rank, it may help you better understand the strengths and weaknesses of an identity protection service and help you make a better informed buying decision.

How Identity Theft Protection Works

The Limits Of Identity Theft Prevention

The first concept to understand is no protection is foolproof. That doesn’t mean identity theft prevention is without merit, far from it actually. It’s just that no plan or service exists that can guarantee complete protection. Why? You have no control over your information once it leaves your hands. What’s to prevent the auto loan application you filled out from falling into the wrong hands? How about your mortgage application or your medical records? Ever hear of data breeches? In 2009, one single breech compromised over 130 million records. So much of your information is already in circulation, we simply can’t prevent the countless ways that data can be lost, stolen or innocently given away.

Prevention vs. Detection

In the early days of identity theft protection, there was much fuss made of Lifelock’s use of fraud alerts as a preventive measure. The problem with preventive measures like these are first, it’s completely free to do yourself and second, its akin to locking your front door and leaving the windows and back doors open. As the identity theft industry evolved, companies have moved toward sophisticated detection methods and scanning the internet for your records.

Many people associate identity theft with financial or credit fraud but there is also criminal, employment, and even medical identity theft. Many detection services will scan not just your credit report but public databases, court records and even sex offender registry reports. Even Lifelock, the industry leader in identity theft protection, has moved in this direction with their upgraded service, Command Center™.

How Identity Theft Services “Package” Protection

First and foremost, identity theft protection is a business. For the most part, comparable identity protection features are available to almost any company. However, every additional feature increases the cost of the protection. Services must balance a price sensitive public with features that are most effective.

Things like economies of scale and proprietary technology can give some companies an edge over others in product offerings but only you can decide if these features are something you’ll find value in. Most consumers have a natural aversion to buying features they never use.

Naturally these companies will create protection packages to serve the greatest amount of people. I’ve separated consumers into these three categories and hopefully you’ll fall into one of them. For each category, I’ll explain the concerns, my recommendation for protection and reasoning behind it. If you can’t place yourself into any of these categories, feel free to drop me a note in the comments section and I’ll try my best to give you an answer.

To compare more identity protection plans visit our one of a kind identity service comparison tool.

Best Identity Theft Protection: Family Plans

Best Identity Theft Protection: Credit Monitoring

Best Identity Theft Protection: Value