LifeLock Blog

TopTenReviews.com is a highly respected and revered website that provides reviews on just about everything from electronics to online services like LifeLock. For specific categories of products TopTenReviews.com will do a top ten in the category for that year. In 2010 even with all the bad press LifeLock has been getting they were still ranked number one by TopTenReviews.com. That is really saying something, even though the press wants to make LifeLock out to be the bad guy.  When you look at the facts and services offered by LifeLock, they still blows the other services out of the water.

TopTenReviews wrote “LifeLock is well-equipped with the right tools to help you prevent identity theft before it happens, detect thieves in their attempts and resolve any problems that may occur to defend your good name. Their service is well-rounded, providing all of the essentials in security, recovery and some unique additional features. Their distinctive WalletLock service is one example of innovation aimed to help make protecting your identity easier.”

I have to agree with TopTenReviews and will add that LifeLock has the advantage of coming to market first. They have had time to work out the kinks in the system and provide a very robust service that has features that other services wouldn’t dream of implementing.

It takes time to develop and get good at discovering and remediating identity theft situations, and LifeLock has done that. They provide service like no other and have been doing so for longer than anyone else. I am sure LifeLock will continue topping the identity theft protection charts for years to come. They continue to add and make their features better every year.

Three recent examples of the illegal sale of consumers’ personal and financial information illustrate the need for LifeLock identity theft protection.

Rental Research Services’ failure to screen customers requesting consumer information resulted in the sale of at least 318 credit reports to identity thieves, according to a complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission.

RSS uses information from the credit reporting agencies to provide a screening service for landlords who want to vet prospective tenants. Unfortunately, they failed to maintain “reasonable procedures to prevent such impermissible disclosures and to verify their customers’ identities and how they intended to use the information,” according to the complaint.

The reports allegedly provided by RSS to the identity thieves contained names, Social Security numbers, birthdates, bank and credit card account numbers and credit histories.

A $500,000 judgment was brought against RSS, but suspended because the defendant claims they are unable to pay it.

ChoicePoint, another data aggregator, agreed to a $10 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit in January after admitting they sold more than 160,000 consumer reports to identity thieves, though neither the company nor its officers admit in wrongdoing.

“I think the point we wanted to make is we’re not a company going around willy-nilly selling data to anyone who wants it,” Choice Point’s information security vice president, Aurobindo Sundaram, said in a an interview with SCMagazineUS.com.

In Canada, the federal privacy commission is investigating Landlord Source Centre, a service that provides financial and background information on tenants, for posting a website with extensive tenants’ information, including mental health diagnoses, personal and identifying information about their children and details of previous landlord-tenant disputes.