LifeLock Identity Theft Protection Review

There are identity protection services that detect potential signs of identity theft, and there are services that actively protect you from identity theft. LifeLock does both, thanks to its close ties with Norton, the antivirus brand.

Identity protection and digital safety go hand in hand. In our highly digitalized world, protecting one’s identity means securing online personal data as well. LifeLock provides all the identity and credit monitoring features of traditional identity theft protection services, while its partner brand Norton provides online data protection through its antivirus and digital security software.

On paper, NortonLifeLock looks like the ideal identity protection service, but is that really the case? We investigated by testing the service ourselves to see how it works to protect the identity of users, and we put all our findings in this review.

To start, here’s a quick overview of what NortonLifeLock’s identity protection service entails.

LifeLock Monitoring Services

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

As an early warning service that detects identity theft, monitoring and alerts are part of any LifeLock subscription package. However, the extent of monitoring depends on your subscription tier. Basic and more affordable plans monitor just a few key areas, whereas the top-tier plans can be super comprehensive. With any subscription, though, you’ll receive some level of identity monitoring, credit monitoring, and financial monitoring.

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.

Beyond monitoring, LifeLock takes a proactive approach in protecting identities. One feature we love is the Privacy Monitor. LifeLock searches through common people-search sites (otherwise known as data broker sites) for your information, like your addresses or phone numbers. When it finds a site that has your information, it will let you know so you can request the site to take it down. You’ll do the requesting, though. Privacy Monitor will only help you identify the websites you should contact, but at least it lets you know where to look to prevent potential personal information breaches.

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. That being said, only the highest-tier plan (Ultimate Plus) includes that level of monitoring. Outside the Ultimate Plus plan, LifeLock will only monitor your credit from one bureau. The lowest-tier plans also do not include free credit reports. On the bright side, simply having credit monitoring puts you in a better position to detect identity theft early, which makes LifeLock an ideal choice.

We’d also like to note that LifeLock can help you protect your credit proactively by letting you lock your TransUnion credit file with a single click. Just go to your account dashboard and you’ll see the option to freeze your credit from there. Of course, you’d also need to freeze or lock your Experian and Equifax accounts to truly protect your credit. LifeLock doesn’t let you do that from your dashboard, but you can directly contact both Experian and Equifax to freeze your credit for free.

Financial Monitoring

Here’s a two-part feature: First, LifeLock monitored 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

On their own, LifeLock subscriptions don’t include digital protections, but there are bundles available that pair LifeLock subscriptions with a Norton 360 plan. With Norton 360, you’ll get antivirus software, a VPN, and a password manager, among other useful digital security tools.

Those tools will help you lock down your identity and personal data by keeping your browsing activity private and protecting your passwords, but the main highlight of Norton’s features is malware protection. Norton is 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.

Some of the best identity protection services we’ve tested include digital protections, and while LifeLock doesn’t offer those features by default, it’s good that you have the option to bundle them with your subscription.

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.

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.