LifeLock Agrees To Pay $100 Million Fine In Settlement With FTC (nytimes.com)

New submitter dasgoober writes: Lifelock has agreed to pay $100 million to settle charges that it failed to properly protect user data, the F.T.C. announced on Thursday. This is the second settlement between the company and federal authorities. In 2010, the F.T.C. charged the company with failing to provide strong security measures for personal data. "This settlement demonstrates the Commission's commitment to enforcing the orders it has in place against companies, including orders requiring reasonable security for consumer data," F.T.C .Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said in a statement. "The fact that consumers paid Lifelock for help in protecting their sensitive personal information makes the charges in this case particularly troubling."

Comments

Guess they learned their lesson

[EzInKy]

"The settlement does not require us to change any of our current products or practices.

Or maybe not.

We're left with "particularly troubling"

[geekmux]

"F.T.C .Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said in a statement. "The fact that consumers paid Lifelock for help in protecting their sensitive personal information makes the charges in this case particularly troubling."

Repeated slap on the wrist punishments and no jail time is what is particularly troubling here and continues to be.

And I don't know why we accept this bullshit at our own expense when this is the repeated outcome. What is it going to take to get corporations to act properly and ethically these days?

Guess that will never happen. Instead, we watch our corrupt government to turn a blind eye to anti-monopoly laws and allowed corporations to invent Too Big to Fail instead, which is the legal cousin of "affluenza", in case you were left wondering just how fucked that corporate concept really is.

Re: We're left with "particularly troubling"

[KGIII]

Not long after selling my business and retiring, I did a few simply stupid things like mention how much I'd sold for, who I had donated to, what I planned on doing, etc... Well, someone knew me well enough to scoop my data and dox me. It was kind of invasive because they used that information to post my tax information. I guess, you know, that's kind of legal and all that. My tax information can be found easily enough.

The good thing is, the doxxing party did not want to be a complete prick. (I guess they figured out they were wrong and were apologizing in some way?) They had taken the time to redact my SSN (or someone had) but there was my address, there was my DOB, etc... Fortunately, I was moving soon and so I just didn't forward my mail. I was getting hate mail from certain groups, I'll avoid mentioning them by name here today, for not donating to their pet cause. I know, it sounds odd but some people hate you if you don't support their favorite cause.

I got phone calls, I got pizza, I got gay mailings, I got put on every single charity list on the planet (I think). See, well, I kind of figured I didn't actually *need* all that much money so I thought it'd be nice to give some away to good causes. But no... It's tempting to name and shame but I got slammed by people who didn't like who I donated to and thought I should have given money to their cause instead. I mean slammed. Like come down to the post office and pick up a box of mail every day slammed.

Anyhow, to get to my point... I had to put all my credit on hold. It still is. I don't have a credit line except for three credit cards that I keep for emergencies and benefits (like curb-side service at hotels, list bumps, etc) and I have to actually go through a hell of a lot of work to get a credit line if I want one through the normal channels. Contrary to popular opinion, sometimes a credit line is nice - like a normal one. I can go through my credit union and they don't even check, they just give me what I want but it's not quite the same. I'm always sending my kids some extra money - it'd be awesome to get some air-miles for that and give those to them too. (I can't imagine why I'd carry a balance.)

So, it took quite a bit of work to get all of the various services to lock me down and put a "do not issue credit" type of flag on my account. Obviously, this should be monitored. I do not do so myself, I'm kind of lazy these days. A company that does something like this and lets me do it nice and easily would be nice. It'd be cool to just be able to go to one site and enter a creditor name in and say that they can access my score.

Also, that credit score is kind of bunk. I have a +800 score and it's lower than I used to have as my business was in my name and hardware is damned expensive. I am far more able to repay a credit line now than I've ever been. It was like 850 or so the last time I looked which, I admit, has been a while.

Re:But... but... but...

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

The commercial, it said they would protect me and help me? They are expert, the radio ad said they could stop the bad guys!

What they meant is that it would stop the bad guys from having to go after your info bit by bit- Lifelock helpfully aggregated it all in one place so it could be stolen all at once.

How To Really Avoid Identity Theft

[Jason Levine]

As a victim of Identity Theft, I know first hand that you can't avoid the "stolen personal data" portion of Identity Theft. Somewhere, someone is going to store your SSN, DOB, and other information in an insecure database or some disgruntled employee will grab your information (along with a thousand other people's) and sell it to someone for some extra cash. It's sad, but it's getting to be nearly a certainty. (13.1 million victims in 2015, 12.7 million in 2014.)

LifeLock isn't real protection once someone gets your data. To really protect yourself, you need to freeze your credit files. This prevents anyone (you or the identity thieves) from opening new lines of credit on your account. Of course, that also means that you can't open that credit card or refinance that loan without first thawing your credit file (and paying each of the three major credit agencies). Still, it's better than having a collections agency knock down your door because "you" ran up $10,000 in charges and then didn't pay the bill.