Undoubtedly you’ve seen the commercials for a company called Lifelock and the CEO (Todd Davis) driving through New York City in a giant semi that has his social security number plastered in big numbers on the side of the truck. He claims that anybody can broadcast their social security number to identity thieves worldwide–and his company will prevent it from being stolen. But hold the red alert phone. Why broadcast the idea of being so carefree with your social security number? The more people try to keep it private as it should be, there wouldn’t be any chances of anybody stealing it anyway. Of course, Lifelock gives the impression that giving out your social security number is inevitable with the idea it’s always in danger of being stolen. That gives a strange dichotomy between what we have to do in order to live and what we should be doing to protect ourselves.
Add to all that the oddball story of above-mentioned Davis successfully having his social security number stolen anyway–it gives a chilling spin on the near impossibility of being fully protected. You won’t hear about this story in those overly assured Lifelock ads.
In my estimation, LifeLock should have a disclaimer in their ads telling people that their system can’t always be 100% fail safe. Even so, they do have an interesting protection system provided for only $10 a month. They also protect the identity of children, which is one of their biggest selling points. I guess you could say that the hubris of their ads are only possible because major celebrities have endorsed this service and supposedly use it themselves. For some reason it’s political people who’ve given it a thumbs up–everybody from Fred Thompson doing radio ads for them, plus similar radio plugs from Rush Limbaugh. Call it the Republican-endorsed product if you want, even though Howard Stern has been known for endorsing it too.
If you have to whittle down all that they do for you–it basically involves them calling the credit bureaus often to renew fraud protection after it expires. Lifelock points out on their site that what they do, you can also do…if you have the time. A lot of busy people don’t always write down on their calendar, though, to call and renew their fraud protection service at all three credit bureaus. So this service is really designed for the person who doesn’t want to take the time to protect themselves or are constantly on the go and don’t want to sit on hold to renew their credit protection. It’s that old standby psychological feeling that having someone else doing something for you makes you feel that you’re in good hands.
What a lot of people don’t know can’t hurt them, though. At least LifeLock has one more strong selling point: Offering a $1 million dollar protection insurance if anybody tries to smear your good name. With legal fees ballooning, however, one mil might only cover a couple of weeks’ worth of litigation with a team of power lawyers.
Suppose they had a co-founder who stole someone’s identity and nobody noticed?
Well, I hate to bring this story up–because it doesn’t necessarily paint LifeLock in a bad light. A story broke last summer that co-founder of LifeLock (Robert J. Maynard, Jr.) resigned from the company when it was found out he once stole his own father’s identity in order to obtain a, yes, American Express card. He also had some questionable tactics in a business he once owned that was investigated by the FTC. What’s even more fascinating (or disturbing) is that he once spent time in jail for not paying a Vegas bet. It’s been reported that Maynard supposedly formed the idea of LifeLock when in jail, which extends the tradition lately of former criminals ultimately creating (or working for) companies who stop other people who commit crimes…who ultimately live out the same process as the person who stopped them.
Yes, crime seems to be stuck in a vicious circle of begetting people who eventually help us stop crime (especially in the world of computer hacking).
Once the news was out to the press about Maynard, he stepped down from his post as the head of LifeLock–leaving CEO Todd Davis to carry the load for a while. That’s just about the time those famous “my social security number on a truck” commercials started on cable news channels. Davis himself said that Maynard’s past problems were overblown and didn’t really affect how the business operated. Other people thought differently and were worried that the co-founder of an identity theft protection service actually stole someone’s (or his own father’s) identity once. Defenders thought it was no big deal, considering it was only his father. And, as I insinuated above: Those who’ve lived in the world of crime understand how it works better than law enforcement do. Maynard obviously knew what’s typical in identity theft and what a typical thief would do.
But does LifeLock really protect you from what a typical I.D. thief would do to steal your identity? They make it perfectly clear that they just focus on identity theft protection from the credit card level at the credit bureaus. It doesn’t include protection against those who use your personal info to open cell phone accounts or (one of the worst) getting a driver’s license using your name…and then getting into accidents that smear your good name. At least they provide a service of preventing junk mail from getting into your mailbox from credit card companies. Other than that, it ultimately isn’t comprehensive in what could potentially compromise your identity.
America still needs a complete identity protection law—and Todd Davis getting his own social security number stolen (almost)…
Apparently a lot of people have attempted to see if they can steal LifeLock CEO Todd Davis’s social security number. In fact, he wants you to try as you’ve likely seen in the LifeLock ads. Those people have failed–except one. And that person who managed to get a $500 loan with Davis’s number was a mentally-challenged man who inadvertently revealed one startling thing LifeLock overlooked: Some (and I do stress some) loan companies don’t do credit checks before giving people loans. I know that sounds almost impossible, though some loan sharks out there apparently don’t bother based on the notion a social security number is sufficient enough to charge the person high interest fees if the company so chooses. Fortunately, Davis’s wife discovered what happened–and Davis demanded a confession from the man–adding up to no criminal trial as the result. Had it not have been noticed, though, LifeLock ads would be considered a laughing stock…and already are for a few out there.
You obviously won’t see any mention of that stolen SS number event in the ads currently running. Those truck ads were probably filmed long before the incident happened anyway. While this isn’t the only service available to help protect your identity (you can find ones that actually protect in other areas other than financial), it shows what clever marketing can do to make a basically simple business look so effective. Somehow it seems ironic, too, that a former U.S. Senator (Fred Thompson) was promoting the service when it was something he reportedly didn’t investigate before taking the money. Our own U.S. Congress should be considering identity theft as about as important as the war on terror and the crashing economy by now. Instead, they’ve conveniently ignored crafting any laws that would protect people from identity theft on the Federal level.
Fortunately, some states have congressmen and congresswomen working on laws at the local level to help people who’ve dealt with identity theft and prosecute the offenders to the fullest extent of the law. Here in Oregon, we’ve had some inroads in developing protection for people–though nothing that’s been made law. I usually contend that, on the national level, if identity theft doesn’t happen to a Senator or Representative–then they won’t bother to do anything. Once it happens to a member (or members) of Congress, you can be sure you’ll never hear the end of it. Then maybe…just maybe…we’ll get a law introduced to help people who have identity theft happen to them every day now if not every hour.
And it should be reminded (if even made a Federal law) that nobody should have to give their social security number out for any reason, even though too many places still require it before they bother to give you service.
At least LifeLock ads are around to keep up the idea that you shouldn’t be nonchalant about identity theft–especially in the age when drug use is everywhere and usually the reasons behind people stealing identities to get drug money. In fact, instead of signing up for LifeLock–the ads annoyingly air enough times now where you can use them as a reminder for yourself to call Experian, Equifax and TransUnion and renew your fraud alerts…
