FTC Accuses LifeLock of False Advertising Again

An anonymous reader writes: You may remember LifeLock — it's the identity protection company whose CEO published his social security number and dared people to steal his identity. Predictably, 13 different people succeeded. LifeLock was later sued for deceptive marketing practices, and eventually settled with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to the tune of $12 million. Part of that settlement, of course, required that they refrain from misrepresenting their services in the future. Now, the FTC is taking action against them again, saying they failed to live up to that promise. The FTC claims (PDF) LifeLock falsely advertised that it "protected consumers' sensitive data with the same high-level safeguards as financial institutions" and also failed build systems to protect the data they held.

Comments

Re:Who needs Lifelock?

[Jason Levine]

My personal data was stolen (from where, I never found out). Someone got my name, address, DOB, and SSN and opened a credit card in my name. Through sheer luck, they paid for rush delivery of the card BEFORE changing the address and the card wound up at my house. Otherwise, I would have found out about it when the collections agency beat down my door to get the $5,000+ that "I" owed them.

If you think your personal information has been compromised (or if you want to play it safe), Lifelock is not the tool to use. Freezing your credit file is. When your credit file is frozen, nobody can open a new line of credit. Not you and certainly not Mr. Identity Thief. If you want to open a new line of credit, you need to first thaw your credit file for a set period of time (e.g. 2 weeks). Then you open the credit line and your credit file refreezes with that new line in place.

The downsides are that you can't easily open a store card at the register to get X% off your purchase, though we find this to be a positive. ("Would you like to open a..." "Can't. Credit locked. Identity theft victim.") You also need to pay to initially freeze your credit file (though victims of ID theft might be able to do it for free) and pay to thaw it. Costs vary per state. My costs are $5 per credit agency per file. So if my wife and I were buying a new car, we'd need to pay $30. (3 credit agencies and 2 credit files.) The peace of mind of knowing that nobody can open cards/loans/etc on my credit file despite my information being out there is well worth this cost, though.