A Little Cheap Legal Help

Last Summer we had several Lifelock problems make the news but the truth is Lifelock didn’t seem to be effected and continued to grow, now having over a million customers. Lifelock is still the the number 1 choice in identity theft prevention in spite of several new companies waiting in the shadows to step in should the Lifelock problems have proved to be lethal.

Back in May we had the story of one or two customers taking class action lawsuits against the company because they claimed their advertising campaign was misleading.

The claim was based on the fact that Todd Davis gives out his social security number in Life Lock advertisements to show how confident he is in the protection provided by Lifelock. It seems they felt, or at least their lawyer felt that this is misleading because actually some guy managed to take out a payday loan for $500 using the social security number of Todd Davis.

This made the news and why wouldn’t it, it’s a great story but then as it unravelled it came to light that actually Lifelock had worked for Davis. The thief who took out the fraudulant loan was caught and more just as importantly, his credit file remained unblemished.

We also discovered that none of the clients who were attempting the lawsuit had actually suffered a case of identity theft and hadn’t even cancelled their Lifelock membership. The story quickly got buried once it became clear the person behind it was a opportunist lawyer who’d found a new fat cow to chase.

The next Lifelock problems appeared to be a little more serious. Experian, one of the big 3 credit bureaus were claiming that the service provided by Lifelock could be done by a person without the need of a monthly charge.

Lifelock, acting on a acting for their customers, place a fraud alert on their credit file which means extra care should be taken when agreeing loans, credit agreements etc. Basically it means the person has concern their identity may have been compromised so please double check before opening offering credit. Incidentally, the person who took out the $500 payday loan in Davis name was able to because the loan company admitted to ignoring the fraud alert.

Experian claim you can place a fraud alert yourself so Lifelock are taking monthly subscriptions under false pretences. At first glance this looked like serious Lifelock problems and once more the press jumped in to what seemed a good story.

A little bit of digging by a few journalists who prefer to report news rather than simply a good story again showed that what appeared to be Lifelock problems, actually had ulterior motives.

It seems Experian do not like fraud alerts on credit files. It slows down the loan business and causes extra work for them. It’s for this reason that a fraud alert only lasts for a period of 3 months. You then have to go through the whole process of applying for the fraud alert again.

Lifelock manage this for their clients automatically and should they forget and an identity gets misused, they have a guarantee that kicks in to the tune of a nice $1 million and it’s this their clients are happy to pay the small monthly fee for.

Another reason Experian have been trying to cause Lifelock problems is because Lifelock remove their customers names from all the mailing lists. The Lifelock logic is that if you aren’t receiving credit card offers through the mail, they can’t be stolen and accepted in your name.

It sounds a good idea right? Well guess who sells the credit card companies the names of affluent middle class Americans who the credit card companies want to target? This is a huge business for the Experian and the other 2 credit bureaus as these lists are extremely targeted and therefore extremely valuable. Imagine sending out your credit card or loan offer to homes you already know have several cards and an income of $60K a year instead of just posting to the masses and then having to go through all the applications to sieve out the good from the bad?

As with many new highly successful companies, deeper motives can usually be found when stories start appearing in the papers and the Lifelock problems are no different.

If you were considering joining Lifelock, make your decision based purely on the service offered, not on the Lifelock problems that you may have read about back in the Summer.

It’s worth remembering that yes you can do what Lifelock does for you yourself. You may also be capable of servicing your car yourself if you wanted to and some folk do. Others though prefer the peace of mind that comes with knowing a professional has done it for them and should they mess up, there is a full guarantee on offer as a back up.