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LifeLock Spokesperson's Stolen ID Inspires Lawsuits
OrochimaruVoldemort writes "It seems as though LifeLock isn't as secure as Todd Davis makes it out. According to a LifeLock spokesman, his identity has been stolen. For two years, Davis has been daring hackers to steal his ID. Looks like he got what he wanted. CNN reports: 'Now, LifeLock customers in Maryland, New Jersey and West Virginia are suing Davis, claiming his service didn't work as promised and he knew it wouldn't, because the service had failed even him.'"
And you can go to court and prove you're not responsible, but the monetary damages aren't the real problem. The problem arises because of the centralized credit agencies that score your "risk" for various banks and lenders. It doesn't matter if you never have to pay the money if your credit score is so abysmal you can no longer take out a loan for a new car or house. Not to mention there's the legal fees of proving you didn't do it even if it's fairly trivial to do.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
Ironic to read that Experian is complaining about LifeLock's practices when, in my view, Experian itself engages in deception far worse with their costly FreeCreditReport.com website that many people confuse with the truly free AnnualCreditReport.com.
Ron
His identity was stolen pretty quickly after he started advertising his SSN. I read elsewhere that his credit is sooo screwed up that the major agencies report his DOB as around 1943 or something and that there have been no less than 5 drivers licenses issued under his identity in various states. That doesn't sound like it remotely did what it was supposed to.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Fraud watches aren't 100% security from credit fraud also. A fraud watch is actually voluntary. It means that the credit issuer should be careful and double-check whether a certain application is really from the person it claims to be from. However, some issuers ignore the fraud watches and will issue the credit anyway.
The best protection is freezing your credit. That way, no one can check your credit or add new lines of credit. If you want to do anything involving your credit (open a new credit card, get a loan, get a background check), you would then need to unfreeze your credit and refreeze it when the activity was completed. Unfortunately, this costs $5 per action per agency per person. So if a husband and wife want to freeze their credit, it is $5 * 3 (credit agencies) * 2 (people), or $30. If they then want to unfreeze their credit, get a car load, and then refreeze their credit, it would cost $60.
There was a bill awhile back that would have made this free, but the credit industry lobbyists got it killed. After all, if you freeze your credit then you can't sign up for a new credit card at the checkout line of a store to get 10% off your purchase. And that means that you are less likely to have lots of credit card debt interest to pay off. And that means less profits for them.
As far as ID theft is concerned, they honestly don't care. If your identity gets stolen, it's your problem. You need to spend the time and money to prove to them that something went wrong. Any losses due to cards issued during ID theft are written off (or sent to a collection agency to hassle the ID theft victim and further negatively impact their credit rating).
Todd Davis is just lucky that he wasn't a victim of Criminal Identity Theft.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.