Lifelock Guarantee Full Of Holes
So what’s wrong with the Lifelock guarantee? The promise to replace up to $1 million should you be a victim of identity theft whilst under their protection is cited by many as the main reason for signing up and agreeing to pay Lifelock $10 a month for the rest their lives.
Here’s the wording of the Lifelock guarantee:
“If you are our member when someone accesses your personal identifying information and subsequently uses it without your authorization to commit a fraud, due to a failure or defect in our Service, and you have complied with this Agreement, subject to the terms herein, we will pay professionals to assist in restoring any such loss or recover such expenses, as required, provided however that the maximum limit of our Service Guarantee is $1 (one) million per lifetime for all incidents in the aggregate.”
The bit you need to pay attention to is the ‘FAILURE OR DEFECT IN OUR SERVICE’ part.
As the only meaningful service they actually provide is to request a fraud alert to be placed on your file, what they are actually saying is you are only covered by their guarantee IF they forget to place the fraud alert and as a direct result of that you have your identity stolen.
If the lender ignores the fraud alert (as happened to Lifelock CEO Todd Davis when someone used his social security number to take out a payday loan) or tries to ring the contact number left on file but gets no answer so chooses to proceed and gives out a line of credit to someone using your name fraudulently, that is not the fault of Lifelock so you are not covered by the terms of their guarantee.
There are currently several class action lawsuits against the Lifelock guarantee such as the case of 25 year old Nathaniel Faulhaber of Parsonsburg, Md., who signed up to LifeLock in May 2007 only to later find out that an identity thief had applied and obtained a total of five credit cards in his name — all while he was supposedly under LifeLock identity theft protection.
His Lawyer said: “Not only did the primary service not work, but he also found the LifeLock guarantee to rectify any defect in that service to be useless. LifeLock and the third party entities it employs have provided so little meaningful assistance to Faulhaber that, ironically, he now finds himself in the same situation he would have been in had he never paid LifeLock a dime.”
The guarantee is just another part of the Lifelock scam designed to get you to join the other 1 million plus users who now hand over a cool $10 million a month in the belief that their identity is under protection and should a criminal still manage to steal their identity, the guarantee will ride to the rescue and make everything right.
Wrong! For a start, good luck trying to prove any criminal act against you was as a direct result of a Lifelock defect. The fraud alert they place on your behalf simply recommends any loan or credit company should use “reasonable policies and procedures” when someone requests a new line of credit.
It doesn’t stop the waiter you didn’t tip last night taking the details of your existing credit card that you used and going on a spending spree.
It doesn’t stop anyone emptying your existing bank accounts.
It doesn’t stop someone using your name to get a job and then stealing from the company.
It doesn’t stop someone giving your name to Police when stopped and questioned.
It doesn’t stop someone giving your name at the hospital after getting treatment and committing medical identity theft.
It doesn’t stop the lender ignoring the fraud alert because they want to make the sale.
It doesn’t do much really, a bit like the Lifelock guarantee.
