Not so long a go we saw several Lifelock problems arise but truth be known Lifelock never broke stride and continued their growth, easily surpassing 1 million customers. Lifelock is still the leading light in identity theft protection despite several new pretenders hovering in the shadows to step in should the Lifelock problems have proved to be critical.

Back in May we had the story breaking of several customers taking legal action against Lifelock over claims their advertising campaign was misleading.

The claim hinged on the fact that Todd Davis gives out his social security number in Life Lock advertisements to show how confident he is in the protection provided by Lifelock. It appears they felt, or at least their lawyer felt that this is misleading because actually someone took out a payday loan for $500 using the social security number of Todd Davis.

Obviously this made the national news, it’s a great story but then as the story ran it came to light that actually Lifelock had worked for Davis. The person who took out the loan was caught and more just as importantly, the CEO’s credit report remained perfect.

We also discovered that none of the customers who were attempting the lawsuit had actually suffered a case of identity theft and hadn’t even cancelled their Lifelock membership. The story died as quickly as it appeared.

The next Lifelock problems appeared to be a little more serious. Experian, one of the big 3 credit bureaus were telling anyone who would listen that the service provided by Lifelock could be done by anyone without the need of a monthly charge.

Lifelock, acting on a on behalf of their clients, place a fraud alert on their credit file which means extra care should be taken when agreeing credit, loans etc. Basically it means the person has concern their identity could have been compromised so please double check before opening a line of credit. Incidentally, the person who took out the $500 payday loan in Davis name was able to because the loan company admitted to ignoring the fraud alert.

Experian tell anyone who will listen that you can add a fraud alert yourself so Lifelock are taking monthly subscriptions under false pretences. This appeared like serious Lifelock problems and once more the press jumped in to what seemed a good story.

A little bit of digging by a few journalists who prefer to report news rather than just a good story again showed that what appeared to be Lifelock problems, more than likely had an ulterior motive.

It seems Experian do not like fraud alerts on a person’s credit file. They slow down the the business of issuing credit and causes extra work for the credit bureaus. It’s because of this that a fraud alert only lasts for a period of 3 months. 4 times a year you have to go through the whole process of applying for the fraud alert again.

Lifelock manage this for their clients each quarter and should they forget and an identity gets misused, they guarantee to make good up to the tune of a cool $1 million and it’s this their customers are more than happy to pay a $10 fee for.

Another reason Experian have been trying to cause Lifelock problems is because Lifelock remove their clients names from mailing lists. The theory being if you aren’t receiving credit card offers through the post, they can’t be stolen and accepted in your name without your knowledge.

Sounds reasonable right? Well guess who sells the credit card companies the names of affluent middle class Americans who the credit card companies want to target? This is huge business for the credit bureaus as these lists are extremely targeted and therefore worth a lot of money. Imagine sending out your credit card or loan offer to homes you already know have several cards and an income of $90K a year instead of merely posting to the masses and hoping for the best?

As with most new highly successful companies, ulterior motives can usually be found when stories start appearing in the papers and the Lifelock problems are no different.

If you were thinking about joining Lifelock, make your decision based purely on the service they offer, not on the Lifelock problems that you may have heard about a few months back.

Yes you can do what Lifelock does yourself. You could probably also service your car yourself if you so wanted and some people do. Others though prefer the security that comes with the knowledge that a professional has done it for them and should they mess up, there is a full guarantee on offer as a back up.