ID THEFT REVIEW

How we rate ID theft products

We use a common-sense approach to rating identity theft products, asking “how likely is this ID theft product to help me?”  There is large gap between the usefulness of an ID theft product and the marketing claims made by the identity theft company. Surprisingly, even some “independent” review sites are sorely misinformed.

There are hundreds of identity theft products in the marketplace.  We’ve picked and rated the top ones.  Many of the other products, some of which you might get for free or low cost from your bank or credit union, are substantially inferior to all of the products we’ve reviewed.

Our ID theft ratings rely on four sources:

  • The official FTC (Federal Trade Commission) identity theft reports.
  • The Javelin yearly Identity Theft surveys
  • Industry and press reports of identity theft causes
  • Identity theft companies’ marketing

The benefits of Identity theft products fall into three buckets:  (1) Valuable features that you can’t easily do yourself.  (2) Valuable features that you could do yourself if you took a few minutes extra.  (3) Marketing features that add little value.  Here are some examples of each:

Valuable Identity Theft Features

  1. Million dollar protection, or the identity theft guarantee.  This is extremely important.  No one can truly prevent all ID theft.  If you ARE breached, what will the ID theft company do to restore your good name?  Although all ID theft companies claim a “million dollar guarantee”, the value of that to you varies quite a bit.  At the high end, MySafeCredit has the best restitution, and even reimburses funds withdrawn from your ATM.  At the low end, several companies including LifeLock only guarantee that they will spend money on themselves.
  2. Fraud Monitors: This is a source of great confusion.  We dig through the BS and simplify it.  Three companies (LifeLock, MySafeCredit, and Identity Guard) use the strongest proactive identity theft fraud monitors.  The other two top-rated companies, and virtually all of the unrated companies, use inferior proactive fraud monitors.
  3. Credit alerts, reports, and scores: Credit products can be useful in identity theft detection, and are very useful to the credit portion of your life.  Monthly credit reports and daily credit alerts and scores cost money, so expect to pay more for this premium feature.  The Cadillac program, MySafeCredit, offers this in a fantastic bundled value.  If you don’t need it, go for one of the less expensive products

Valuable ID Theft Features That You Could Do Yourself

Every identity theft product includes things you could do yourself if you wanted to:

  • MySafeCredit will scan the internet for your personal information and delete it.
  • LifeLock will keep copies of your wallet for you in case you lose it.
  • Several identity theft products will submit your name to the Do Not Call list, or reduce junk mail.

Marketing Features That Add Little Value

These sound impressive, but really add very little identity theft protection or additional value for you:

  • Postal change monitoring.  This sounds nice, but let’s face it:  If an identity thief files a Change of Address form at the post office, you will notice it within a day.  Identity theft products should help you by monitoring things you can’t do yourself.  This is a virtually worthless feature.
  • Public records.  This is a grab bag term which has absolutely no meaning.  Even if millions of public records are scanned, they are unlikely to prevent or detect much identity theft.  This is used simply to bolster marketing claims.
  • Drivers license monitoring.  States have the strictest controls possible on drivers’ licenses, and this is one of the least likely forms of identity theft.  Worse, all “drivers license monitoring” monitors only infractions, while a truly useful program would need to monitor every state’s DMV, and that simply is not included.  This is pure fluff.
  • “Thousands of databases” and “millions of databases” is pure marketing fluff.  Unless they are rates in our table as “Hundreds of billions” of fraud monitors, you are looking at identity theft marketing fluff.
  • The list goes on, but these are the top fluffs.

Here’s our summary, and a list of resources is at the bottom of this summary and also in the links at the bottom of every page.

Rank Product Million Dollar
Protection		Credit Alerts,
Reports & Scores		Fraud
Monitors		Price Per Year Rating Info
Go Mobile ProtectionReal insurance with industry's
best coverage.		--Hundreds
of
Billions

$36

Review

Visit Site
My Safe Credit "We do the work for you."
Covers your expenses & identity restoration by specialists with 2+ years experience. 		All: Triple Bureau Credit Reports, Scores, & AlertsHundreds
of
Billions		$200Review

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LifeLockGuarantee covers their expenses,
not your losses.		--Hundreds
of
Billions		$99Review

Visit Site
Identity GuardGuarantee covers their expenses and some of your losses.Some credit products includedHundreds
of
Billions		$180Review

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Trusted IDGuarantee covers their expenses and some of your losses.--Many Millions$79Review

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ID WatchdogGuarantee covers their expenses, not your losses.--Many Millions$180Review

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Links:

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/javelin-study-finds-identity-fraud-reached-new-high-in-2009-but-consumers-are-fighting-back-83987287.html

http://www.ftc.gov/sentinel/reports.shtml

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