LifeLock Identity Theft Protection Review

LifeLock Features

What exactly do you get from a LifeLock subscription? From monitoring to insurance, here’s a detailed review of all the key features LifeLock offers.

Monitoring and Alerts

Like any good identity theft protection service, NortonLifeLock uses monitoring and alerts to warn you of possible identity theft. It monitors dozens of different areas where your personal or credit information might appear without your consent. For example, if your Social Security Number is used in a loan application you didn’t initiate, NortonLifeLock will be there to catch it.

The extent of monitoring will depend on your LifeLock subscription package. More affordable plans monitor just a few key areas, whereas the top-tier plans cover a wider range. With any subscription, though, you’ll receive some level of identity monitoring, credit monitoring, and financial accounts monitoring. In our case, we signed up for the Ultimate Plus subscription, which gave us full access to all of LifeLock’s monitoring benefits.

Identity Monitoring

LifeLock’s identity monitoring keeps a close watch of key areas where signs of identity theft might pop up. That includes:

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

If any changes occur, or if your personal information appears in areas where it shouldn’t, like in home address change requests, dark web forums, or data breach lists, LifeLock will let you know. That is vital, because if any of those identity theft signs start to appear, it’s likely that someone already got ahold of your personal information. And if you don’t do something about it, it could lead to costly consequences. With LifeLock on the watch, you stand a fighting chance to prevent identity theft.

>> Related: What To Do If Your Identity Is Stolen

Beyond monitoring, LifeLock takes a proactive approach in protecting identities. One feature we love is the Privacy Monitor.

There exists on the internet websites that contain databases of people’s personal information. They are known as people-search sites or data brokers, because their databases can be used to search information about a person. Marketers and advertisers also purchase databases from these sites to use for their campaigns.

Being on a data broker site is a huge privacy risk, which could lead to identity theft. That’s why LifeLock’s Privacy Monitor searches the web for those databases and alerts users in case their information is on those. In our case, LifeLock found three websites that contain our data including email addresses, home addresses, and even birthdays. That’s just step one, though. After finding those websites, we contacted them to request our information be removed. That’s the thing about the Privacy Monitor: It will help you identify the websites to contact, but you’ll do the contacting yourself.

» Learn more: Best Identity Theft Protection

Credit Monitoring

With our Ultimate Plus subscription, LifeLock provided us with comprehensive three-bureau credit monitoring complete with credit reports and score updates from all three bureaus. Credit reports arrived monthly, while the credit score on the app updated daily.

By identity theft protection standards, three-bureau credit monitoring is the industry best. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why LifeLock is one of the best identity protection services with credit monitoring and reporting.

Bear in mind, though, that not all LifeLock plans include three-bureau credit monitoring. Only the Ultimate Plus plan (the most expensive one and the one we signed up for) offers it. The lower-tier plans will only monitor one credit bureau, and with the most basic subscriptions, free credit reports are not included.

Just as with identity monitoring where you have the Privacy Check feature to proactively protect your personal information, LifeLock offers easy access to locking your Transunion credit file to protect your credit. Locking your credit prevents anyone, including yourself, from using your credit file for opening new credit lines or taking out loans. Since LifeLock makes it easy to lock and unlock your TransUnion file, however, you’ll be able to unlock it only when needed, preventing others from using it.

Of course, for complete protection, you’ll also need to freeze or lock your accounts with the other two major credit reporting bureaus: Experian and Equifax. You can’t do that with the help of LifeLock, unlike with TransUnion, but you can contact Experian and Equifax directly to freeze your credit for free.

Financial Monitoring

Here’s a two-part feature: First, using their Ultimate Plus subscription, LifeLock monitored our financial accounts, such as credit, checking, and savings accounts. It alerted us when our money moved in those accounts, as well as if someone requested information changes that might indicate that an account takeover was taking place. It also monitored for new account openings under our names and gave us activity alerts on our 401(K) investment accounts.

The second part mostly involves reimbursement in the event that we experience losses due to identity theft. Our Ultimate Plus subscription covers up to $1 million in losses, which is standard across the identity monitoring industry. LifeLock additionally covers $1 million in personal expense compensation and another $1 million for legal expenses.

The $1 million legal fee coverage is included in every LifeLock plan, but the same can’t be said about stolen fund reimbursement and personal expense reimbursement. The limit for those depends on your plan, starting at $25,000 for each with the lowest-tier plan. That increases to $100,000 with the mid-tier plans, and $1 million with the Ultimate Plus subscription.

If you want a service that provides the same coverage for every subscriber, check out Aura’s plans, which all provide $1 million coverage for stolen funds and legal reimbursements.

Digital Protections

All those features contribute to the early detection of identity theft, but LifeLock also offers preventative features through digital and device protections. Through the help of Norton antivirus software, a LifeLock subscription can enhance your digital safety and prevent online data theft. That said, not all LifeLock plans include Norton features.

To receive protection from Norton, you’ll need a Norton 360 with LifeLock bundle. The bundle includes the antivirus software itself, a VPN, and a password manager. The antivirus protects you from harmful malware that could compromise data stored on your device. The VPN provides online privacy. The password manager stores passwords securely.

Collectively, those tools will help you lock down your identity and personal data, but the antivirus software is the main highlight. Norton offers one of the best antivirus software, and it can protect you from the simplest to the most devastating malware known to man, some of which can be used to steal your identity.

It’s worth noting that the antivirus and identity protection pairing isn’t unique to NortonLifeLock. Online identity theft has become one of the leading causes of identity fraud, and no surprise, there are now several other identity protection services that offer digital protection as well as cybersecurity brands that offer identity protection.

What makes NortonLifeLock unique, however, is that you can choose whether to bundle the two services together or just go with identity protection. If you already have antivirus software from a different provider, you can still use LifeLock on its own. But if you want to combine Norton and LifeLock features, there are discounted bundles that will save you money and protect both your personal and online data.

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.

We recommend putting in as much personal information as possible, as this gives LifeLock a better chance at catching signs of identity theft. Remember: LifeLock — and other identity theft protection services, for that matter — can only protect the information it has on you. Later on, we’ll discuss LifeLock’s privacy policy so you know if and how much you can trust the company with your personal information.

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. Because Norton and LifeLock are still two different services despite being closely related, there’s a separate app for NortonLifeLock users, called LifeLock for Norton360, and a different app for exclusive LifeLock users, called LifeLock ID Theft Protection. To add to the confusion, we failed to log-in to 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 $29.99 per 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

Every Norton 360 with LifeLock bundle offers the following features:

• Antivirus protection
• Secure cloud backup for Windows
• Parental controls
• Password manager

The number of devices you can protect with the antivirus, however, as well as the amount of secure cloud backup space you’ll get, will depend on your subscription.

The entry-level Select bundle protects five devices and offers 100 GB cloud storage. The mid-tier Advantage bundle offers 250 GB of storage and protection for up to 10 devices. The highest tier, Ultimate Plus, offers 500 GB of storage and protection for an unlimited number of devices. You’ll enjoy device protections that can enhance your identity protection if you sign up for any of the Norton 360 with LifeLock bundles.

Identity Theft Protection Benefits

LifeLock Customer Support

LifeLock was the only identity monitoring company we’d seen that offered 24/7 support over the phone and live chat. Overall, the support lines were easy to reach and the support staff was knowledgeable.

That being said, LifeLock wasn’t safe from the pitfall of companies that offer multiple products: confusion. They can resolve simple issues and answer simple questions in a heartbeat, but when it comes to product-specific topics, it can be a bit hit-or-miss. We’ve noticed that most of the support agents we talked to were more familiar with Norton’s antivirus products than LifeLock’s ID protection services.

Nonetheless, we’re giving LifeLock’s customer support a positive rating, mainly due to the fact that it’s available 24/7.

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.