LifeLock Review

At first glance, LifeLock has an incredibly robust service for protecting identity. But when we dug around more, we found some information that made us a bit uneasy about giving the company our business. Would we still recommend LifeLock overall? Keep reading to find out!

Video Review

Norton is a leader in digital security, but is Lifelock one of its better products? Security.org’s Chief Editor Gabe Turner investigates on our Youtube channel.

Would you prefer a quick overview? Here are the main things we liked and didn’t like about LifeLock.

LifeLock Features

Monitoring and Alerts

With LifeLock’s highest subscription option, the company meticulously monitored our identities, our credit with all three bureaus, and our financial accounts, including banking and investments.

Identity Monitoring

LifeLock watched out for identities by monitoring all of the following for the use of our names or Social Security numbers:

• USPS address changes
• Crimes registries
• Court records
• Sex offender registries
• Dark web content
• Data breach notifications

If any changes occurred, they notified us.

If we became suspicious of possible identity theft, LifeLock’s Identity Lock allowed us to lock our TransUnion credit file with a single click. As a proactive measure, LifeLock’s Privacy Monitor Tool helped us reduce public exposure to our personal information.

Credit Monitoring

With our Ultimate Plus subscription, LifeLock provided us with credit monitoring and annual reports from all three bureaus. Additionally, we received monthly credit score updates from one credit bureau.

Financial Monitoring

Most importantly, if someone stole our identities, LifeLock would have reimbursed us for up to $1 million in losses, which is standard across the identity monitoring industry. Of course, while some other identity monitoring applications, such as ID Watchdog, covered all subscribers for up to $1 million in stolen funds, LifeLock’s lowest-tier plans only reimburse subscribers for up to $25,000.

LifeLock gave us confidence that our money was safe with monitoring for all our banking accounts: credit, checking, and savings. It also kept an eye out for bank account takeovers, application alerts, and 401(K) or investment activity alerts. Even when we lost our wallet, LifeLock was there to help us cancel and replace our cards.

User Experience

To set up LifeLock, we created a password and entered our basic information. Then, we entered our billing information and paid for the year. Once we made the purchase, the LifeLock dashboard appeared on our screen.

Online Dashboard

Once at the dashboard, we were asked if we wanted to add more personal information like our:

• Insurance information
• Bank account numbers
• Driver’s license number
• Credit card numbers.

LifeLock Privacy Monitoring Tool

Next, we reviewed the Privacy MonitorIng section. Then, with a click of a button, LifeLock showed us eight places where our personal, identifiable information was listed and gave us a chance to opt-out.

Once we clicked the blue button, we were sent to a third-party website’s opt-out page. So really, it was something we could have done for free, but LifeLock certainly made the process easier. All in all, we found LifeLock easy to use on our computer.

The LifeLock App

Things got a little confusing when it came to LifeLock’s apps. LifeLock Norton360 users are supposed to use the LifeLock for Norton360 app. People like us, who selected LifeLock on its own, use an app called LifeLock ID Theft Protection. We weren’t able to log onto either app initially.

It turned out, we later learned, that we had to click on “Norton Sign In” below, where we entered our username and password for LifeLock. This was all super confusing, but once we got into the app, it was easy to navigate.

The app was where we received notifications, accessed our credit scores and reports on the go, tracked our financial activities, and more.

LifeLock Subscription Options

LifeLock gave us many annual subscription options. We could either buy LifeLock on its own or pair it with Norton 360, which mainly offered additional device security benefits like VPNs and secure cloud storage.

Depending on our plan, we could have paid anywhere from $8.99 to $34.99 a month. We were disappointed, however, that all of the fees went up after the first year. With any plan, you’ll get up to $1 million in coverage for lawyers and experts if your identity is stolen. However, only the most expensive plans cover up to $1 million for the reimbursement of lost funds.

No matter which plan we chose, we were alerted of any changes to our credit, dark web mentions, or if our data was involved in a breach.

Device Security Benefits

To try out this service, sign up for LifeLock’s 30-day trial on the Advantage or Ultimate Plus plan. Every membership also came with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

Identity Theft Protection Benefits

If we chose to buy Norton360 along with LifeLock, we got a variety of device security benefits like secure cloud storage.

LifeLock Customer Support

LifeLock was the only identity monitoring company we’d seen that offered 24/7 support over the phone and live chat.

LifeLock Privacy

LifeLock offered the whole enchilada when it came to identity monitoring. However, our third-party website research about the company brought worrisome results.

In 2010, LifeLock ran into some issues with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regarding their lack of customer data protection and had to pay $11 million. To make matters worse, in 2015, LifeLock had to pay $100 million to its customers for violating their 2010 order to stop false advertising and establish a “comprehensive security program” to protect customer data.

Obviously, LifeLock isn’t the most trustworthy company in the world. Naturally, we wanted to find out what personal data LifeLock stored, so we looked at their privacy policy.

LifeLock stores:

• Membership and subscription information like our names, email addresses, etc
• Data from cookies, including administrative, provisioning, security, usage, and preference data
• Third-party data, mainly for threat intelligence
• Diagnostic information about their website and app

Believe it or not, this was one of the stricter policies we’d seen from an identity monitoring service. Since LifeLock is U.S-based, the U.S government, which is part of several international surveillance alliances, could legally force them to hand over customer data, so we liked that the company doesn’t keep much around.

Plus, LifeLock offers two and multi-factor authentication for its accounts, meaning we had to either enter a passcode or biometric data like our fingerprints to sign in. While the company ostensibly protected customer data and kept a minimal amount, we still had privacy concerns due its previous brushes with the law.

Recap

Given LifeLock’s past issues with false advertising and customer data, they aren’t our first choice for identity monitoring software. On the other hand, we value its robust feature set and thought LifeLock could be good for anyone who has confidence that the company has changed since its last FTC settlement in 2015.

All in all, LifeLock is an affordable and user-friendly option for protecting your identity, credit, and finances. To learn about other options, check out our review of the best identity theft protection services.