A few months a go we had several Lifelock problems make the news but in truth the company didn’t seem to be effected and continued their growth, now having over a million customers. Lifelock is still the leader in identity theft protection despite several new companies hovering in the shadows to take over should the Lifelock problems have been critical.

Back in May we had the news of several clients taking legal action against the company because they claimed the Lifelock 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 prove how confident he is in the protection provided by Lifelock. It appears they felt, or at least their lawyer felt that this was misleading because actually a criminal managed to take out a small loan for $500 using the social security number of Todd Davis.

This obviously made the news, it’s a good story but then as the story ran it was shown that actually Lifelock had worked for Davis. The person who took out the loan was caught and more just as importantly, the Todd Davis credit file remained clean.

We also learned 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 died as quickly as it appeared.

The next Lifelock problems seemed to be a little more serious. Experian, one of the big 3 credit bureaus were telling anyone who would listen that the service provided by Lifelock could be done by a person without the need of a monthly subscription.

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

Experian say you can add a fraud alert yourself so Lifelock are taking monthly fees under false pretences. At first glance this looked like serious Lifelock problems and once more the press jumped in feet first.

A little digging by a few journalists who prefer to report news rather than just a good story again showed that what appeared to be Lifelock problems, more than likely had an ulterior motive.

It seems Experian do not like fraud alerts on credit files. Fraud alerts slow down the loan business and creates 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 customers every 3 months and should something go wrong 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 customers are happy to pay a small monthly fee for.

One other reason Lifelock are not the favorite company of Experian is because Lifelock remove their customers names from all the financial mailing lists. The theory being 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 huge business for the credit bureaus as these lists are extremely targeted and thereforeextremely valuable. Just consider sending out your credit card or loan offer to homes you already know have several cards and an income of $90K a year instead of just posting to the masses and hoping for the best?

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

If you were considering joining Lifelock, make your decision based purely on the service they offer, not on the Lifelock problems that you may have heard about a few months back.

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 people do. Others though prefer the security that comes with knowing a professional has done it for them and should the person doing the job make a mess of it, there is a full guarantee as back up.