ID Theft Protection Not Worth It

Back in April I wrote a blog post where I stated that in my opinion nothing in the world of digital data is unbreakable or impenetrable and that LifeLock, an identity theft protection company that guarantees they will protect your personal information, can not possibly live up to their claim. As it turns out, their $1 million guarantee is not really a $1 million guarantee. If your identity is in fact stolen they won't be sending you a check for $1 million. The fine print on the $1 million guarantee apparently reads such that they won't actually pay the customer any money directly and are not responsible for any direct financial losses the customer might incur as a result of being victimized. You might think based on the grandiose claims and $1 million 'guarantee' that they must have some sort of serious technology or proprietary algorithm they have developed to secure and protect your information. As it turns out, the service does little, if anything, more than you could do yourself for free. They simply institute a fraud alert on your social security number with the credit bureau and then renew it every 90 days when the fraud alert expires. You can do that yourself for free four times a year, or pay LifeLock $10 a month to do it for you. For an in-depth look at what LifeLock does and does not do, read Identity Protection: Worth Paying For? from MSN.com.