Best identity theft protection and monitoring services in 2020

LifeLock has come a long way since it underwent multiple Federal Trade Commission investigations (settled in 2015) and various lawsuits from customers and credit bureaus. In 2017, it became a Symantec subsidiary that was purchased for $ 2.3 billion. The Symantec name and related corporate security business were subsequently sold to Broadcom and then transferred to Accenture. Now the consumer security company lives on as NortonLifeLock, where its antivirus, ID theft, and even VPN services are available as all-in-one packages.

You can remember the ads in which the founder of LifeLock posted his social security number everywhere to strengthen his confidence in LifeLock’s protection services. While he saw numerous cases of identity theft based on these social security numbers, LifeLock’s identity theft surveillance services helped him recover.

The company offers a wide range of identity theft protection services, including LifeLock Junior (to monitor your children) and LifeLock Senior (to monitor your parents, ages 65+). This protection service is unique to LifeLock and important.

When my eighty-year-old parents became seriously ill, I was suddenly responsible for all of their financial matters. This kind of situation can be a mess. Because elderly people sometimes suffer from dementia, they and their social security information are at much greater risk of being identified as victims of identity theft by financial fraudsters and identity thieves. The ability to monitor and be notified when an older parent’s finances change significantly can make the difference between the person who keeps or loses their savings or even home and medical care.

LifeLock identity protection services range from $ 9.99 a month to $ 29.99 a month and offer a refund of $ 25,000 to $ 1 million, depending on the surveillance plan. The cheaper LifeLock standard protection services only monitor loans from an office. The monthly plan of $ 29.99 monitors all three major credit bureaus. You can get credit reports once a year, but the service gives you a monthly credit score based on Experian data.

SSN and credit warnings, dark web monitoring, warnings of suspicious activities such as crimes committed on your behalf and credit card activities, as well as fraud warning services are signs of LifeLock despite the previous stumbling blocks.

Base price: $ 107.88 per year or $ 8.99 per month after a 25% discount.

The base UltraSecure program for IdentityForce costs $ 149.90 a year. The UltraSecure Plus credit program, which provides you with your credit report and score, costs $ 199.50. We liked that credit monitoring not only monitors all three reporting agencies, but also provides a visual tracker that you can use to check your creditworthiness over time.

IdentityForce monitors well beyond credit information. Not only is it a credit monitoring service, it also checks for changes in public information, address changes, court and arrest records, payday loan applications, and identity information on a variety of illegal identity exchange websites from which you can act as a guard dog identity thieves. The company also monitors sex offenders registers to determine if your name is related to such things. We also find it good that SSNs are tracked for new uses or associations with new names.

The mobile app has been updated with a feature called Mobile Attack Control. This monitors your smartphone for spyware, unsecured Wi-Fi locations, and “fake” networks (networks that pretend to be legitimate connections, but not). In addition, the phone app displays warnings if security problems monitored by IdentityForce need to be resolved immediately.

The company has not disclosed the frequency of service monitoring (beyond credit bureaus). Still, we liked how the company has an interesting credit score simulator that helps you understand how different balances, payments, and balance transfers can affect your credit score. IdentityForce offers a 14-day free trial.

Base price: $ 149.90 per year or $ 14.99 per month.

The big problem for Identity Guard is that it uses IBM’s Watson. Earlier versions of Watson did everything from winning Jeopardy to helping doctors diagnose cancer. The version of Watson that supports Identity Guard is expected to focus on identity theft.

Identity Guard’s use of Watson involves building a body of knowledge and further feeding information from many different sources, including social networks. There is no doubt that the Watson-enabled service can advise you on identity management. His service monitors the customer’s personal data, including his credit files, DOB and SSN.

Identity Guard provides a clear summary of its insurance terms. The company offers a base plan for $ 80 a year, but does not offer credit monitoring. If you want monthly credit reports updates, it jumps to $ 159.96 a year and includes credit monitoring from three credit bureaus and a monthly credit rating. The most comprehensive plan is the Identity Guard Premier plan, which costs $ 200.04 a year and includes annual credit reports.

Base price: $ 80 per year or $ 6.67 per month.

Complete ID is a service from Experian, one of the three major credit bureaus. The service has a special offer with Costco: Costco Executive members pay $ 8.99 a month plus and optionally $ 2.99 a month for child protection. Gold Star Costco members pay $ 13.99 a month and optionally $ 3.99 a month for child protection. Non-Costco members pay $ 19.99 a month.

Complete ID provides an annual credit report from the three agencies. It also offers monthly credit scores and nice graphs over time so you can see how your score has improved.

The service provides surveillance for unauthorized use of your social security number and other surveillance of identity without credit. A valuable feature is the neighborhood watch, which is updated monthly and provides details on nearby sexual predators and crimes.

As with all the services that we focus on, Complete ID offers limited identity theft insurance of $ 1 million. And unlike some of the competitors listed here, it offers a clear summary of the benefits. Base price (non-Costco members): $ 239.88 per year.

Base price (for Costco members): $ 107.88 per year.

ID Watchdog describes its service as “True Identity Protection”. The company’s big differentiator helps you recover after falling victim to identity theft. It offers a guarantee of “100% identity theft resolution”, but the fine print introduces some notable limits.

First, the company will only help you if it detects a new fraud case as an active customer. It does not guarantee that you will get lost money back, but it does provide access to its team of Certified Identity Theft Risk Management Specialists.

Like all other commercial identity surveillance services we’ve featured in this directory, ID Watchdog offers $ 1 million in identity theft insurance. However, the exact terms, limits, and benefits of this policy will not be determined until you complete the sign-up process.

The basic program does not provide information on credit reports or credit scores. However, if you sign up for the $ 219 premium service per year, you will receive a copy of your credit report and credit score. The catch? You will receive this report once a year. You can already do this yourself for free by going to annualcreditreport.com.

While the company claims to provide surveillance services, there is nowhere in its terms and conditions how often it does reviews for each type of service it monitors.

Base price: $ 164 per year or $ 14.95 per month.

One of the outstanding features of Identity Fraud is the price. It has the second lowest entry price of any of the services we investigated. The company also offers a business cybercrime protection service called BizLock.

Identity Fraud’s personal service is $ 99.95 a year, with credit reporting and monitoring $ 159.95 a year. Like all of our other competitors, Identity Fraud offers $ 1 million fraud insurance (except for those in New York State, where the limit is $ 25,000) with a $ 0 deductible. And we think it’s good that Identity Fraud’s insurance benefits are clear and easy to find.

The company does offer a credit rating, but this is limited to data from TransUnion, one of the three credit reporting agencies. The company will send you an email every month with the title “No news is good news” if your identity has been through a quiet month. It also provides lost wallet services, identity resolution and prevention support.

Base price: $ 99.95 per year or $ 9.95 per month.

Intelius earned points because members can access a new credit report every 31 days. Most services only provide credit reports once a year. While the monthly reports represent only one of the three credit bureaus, reports from all three bureaus can be purchased.

The company also offers its own Intelius Identity Protect Score, which is not a FICO score, but is similar and can be used to measure the performance of your loan for loans, financial institutions and transactions. As with many of our other services, Intelius offers record monitoring services.

The company allows you to monitor two addresses, two phone numbers, three credit or debit cards, and two bank account numbers, providing broader coverage than some of its competitors. It also provides clear details (PDF link) of its $ 1 million identity theft insurance coverage.

We also like how the company offers a junk post opt-out service, which it calls “junk mail reduction” to reduce the number of credit card offers and therefore the number of pings for your credit records.

Intelius Identity Protect offers a trial version.

Base price: $ 239.40 per year.

PrivacyGuard offers a 14-day trial program, but instead of being free, you have to pay a dollar. So while you can still see if you like the program, the company loses all of the friction-reducing benefits of test-to-live conversions by having users jump through that dollar tire at the start of the relationship. Imagine that.

PrivacyGuard offers not only the easy-to-follow test program, but also many of the common credit and identity protection services offered by competitors of identity theft protection companies. It provides daily credit monitoring, a key value in protecting a person’s identity from identity thieves, and a frequency level that many of the company’s competitors are painfully lacking.

Privacy Guard’s basic $ 9.99 per month program scans. A monthly program for $ 19.99 runs credit scans. A $ 24.99 a month program does both. Like most other providers, Privacy Guard offers a $ 1 million policy. Before signing up, the company provides some information about the benefits and limitations of the policy, but that’s not enough to make a purchase decision.

PrivacyGuard updates the credit scores monthly and monitors public records and social security numbers. It also offers an annual report on public records, which contains all information about public records in a clear document.

PrivacyGuard offers a trial version.

Base price: $ 119.88 per year.

McAfee identity theft protection is the most cost-effective we’ve seen in a year. There’s a trial for $ 0.99 for the first month, but you can get a full year for $ 69.99, which is a lot cheaper than the other players we’ve discussed here, though there are five Dollars are more than the $ 64.99 price the company last offered last year.

It offers a smart “cyber monitoring” service that is constantly looking for credit activity and notifying you when something unusual happens. The company monitors your Experian credit card, but does not connect to TransUnion or Equifax.

As with most other providers, it offers up to $ 1 million in reimbursement for identity restoration, and (if you’re not in New York State) stolen funds of up to $ 10,000 are also returned . As an added benefit, the company will do its best to reissue “a variety of content, from ID cards and credit cards to concert tickets” when you lose your wallet.

McAfee is probably best known as an antivirus company founded by his company very Eccentric founder of the same name, John McAfee. In 2011, Intel bought the company and renamed it the Intel Security Group. By 2017, McAfee (now known as McAfee, LLC) was on its own again after being spun off from TPG Capital (though Intel still has a minority stake).

We tell you all of this because the company’s DNA is clearly antivirus. A pre-sale call to the company asking about the identity theft program initially caused complete confusion as to how many devices Antivirus should be installed on, and then, after being transferred to the identity theft department, led to the fact that our editor tried to explain to the employee what credit bureaus did and why you would be interested in them.

That doesn’t mean that the product itself is bad. Fortunately, almost all of the service is automated, and there have never been any questions about McAfee’s software chops. If the automated systems detect strange behavior for any of your tracked accounts, these warnings may be your first and best protection when you need to secure your balance.

The company actually offers three levels of identity protection services. Your STANDARD plan provides the above $ 69.99 for the first year.

When you’re ready to pay $ 139.99 a year for the PLUS plan, you’ll also receive annual credit reports, a single office credit score, court and criminal record surveillance, and credit-free credit surveillance. This is not quite as good as it seems, as the US Federal Trade Commission provides free annual credit reports to every American citizen.

Finally, McAfee offers a PREMIUM plan that includes everything in the STANDARD and PLUS plans, as well as monitoring bank account takeovers, monitoring credit card applications, and monitoring sex offenders (which notify you when new convicted sex offenders are near you to register).

Base price: $ 69.99.