LifeLock drops credit fraud alerts in lieu of new prevention services

September 2, 2009 – 3:10 pm

lifelock2 A recent court ruling in a case the case between LifeLock and Experian (one of the three credit bureaus and provider of a service that competes with LifeLock) has labeled LifeLock’s ability to place credit fraud alerts on behalf of customer’s accounts as an “unfair business practice.” The Fair Credit Reporting Act allows consumers to place credit fraud alerts on their accounts with the three major credit bureaus is they have a reasonable suspicion that they could become a victim of id theft. Of course, in today’s day and age, who doesn’t have a reasonable suspicion they could become a victim of identity theft? Even Ben Bernanke and his wife were victims. LifeLock’s credit fraud alerts were much like allowing someone to mow your lawn or change your oil — it’s something that you could do, but you’re willing to pay someone else a small fee for convenience. However the judge in the ruling disagreed that LifeLock should be able to perform that service for consumers.

Naturally Experian is calling this a “win for consumers” because it gets rid of a competing service that provided more and cost less than their service. It’s hard to see this as a win for consumers, as it now appears to limit consumer’s ability to subscribe to services that benefit them. One might expect Experian to call the hypothetical banning of lawn services as a “win for homeowners.”

But now LifeLock is implementing a new series of services to not only take the place of the credit fraud monitoring, but helps protect their customers like never before. Among the additional services:

* More sophisticated and scientific algorithms to spot identity fraud and help predict members’ future ID theft risks and vulnerabilities;
* LifeLock Identity Alerts™ also enables them to detect some of the most common fraudulent uses of personal information, like utilities, cell phone services, check orders and reorders and payday loans;
* Mines more data sources than the credit bureaus. For instance, LifeLock Identity Alerts™ accesses information from retailers, banks, mortgage lenders, utilities and auto lenders.

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