LifeLock Identity Theft Protection Review

If a robust identity protection service is what you’re looking for, then LifeLock should be high on your priority list. One of its greatest strengths comes from its partnership with Norton, an antivirus brand. Beyond just the usual identity and credit monitoring, most LifeLock plans can include device protections to ward off malware that can be used to steal digital information.

We’ve known and tested LifeLock for so long, and over the years, the brand evolved. Some of the changes were good, but there were also not-so-good ones. In this review, we’ll unpack LifeLock for you. We’ll identify its strengths and weaknesses, highlight how it can protect your identity, and help you decide if it is the right service for you.

First, have a look at an overview of what LifeLock’s identity protection service entails.

LifeLock Monitoring Services

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’s identity monitoring closely watched key areas where signs of identity theft might initially pop up, such as:

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

If any changes occurred, or if our identities were found in those areas, they notified us.

Beyond monitoring, LifeLock helps users proactively protect their identities if they become suspicious of possible identity theft. Right from our dashboard, LifeLock gave us the option to lock our TransUnion credit file with a single click. Of course, you would also need to freeze your credit with Equifax and Experian to truly secure your credit. You won’t be able to do that with LifeLock, unfortunately, but Equifax and Experian both make it easy to freeze your credit from their website.

Another proactive measure from LifeLock 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, that’s as comprehensive as you can get. That being said, keep in mind that we went with the highest plan. As you go with a lower plan, you’ll get fewer and fewer credit monitoring features. The lowest plan only monitors your credit from one bureau and doesn’t include monthly reports and score updates.

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. These are three separate coverages. There’s one downside, though. Other companies, such as our Aura, cover reimbursements of up to $1 million for all subscribers. Regardless of which Aura plan you choose, you’ll get the same reimbursement limit. With LifeLock, the lowest-tier plan only reimburses subscribers up to $25,000, and the mid-tier plans up to $100,000.

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 $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

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

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.

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.