TV Station Puts Identity Theft Protection Companies to the Test

February 26, 2008

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A TV station in Denver, CBS4, did a test of three popular Identity Theft Protection companies: LifeLock, TrustedID, and Loudsiren/Debix.

The Test

• Three of the station’s employees signed for the services, one for each one
• Each employee called up their respective providers and asked what would happen if someone tried to apply for a credit card in their name. In all cases, the company replied that the card company would have to call the employee first before any credit was issued
• The reporter then applied for a credit card in all three of the employee’s names using their SSN and date of birth, but with the wrong address. This basically simulates an identity theft

The Results

A week went by and there were no phone calls from creditors, even though all three had set up fraud alerts.

After that week, the reporter received two letters from the credit card company asking to verify the application and provide additional information like a copy of the Social Security card (which he did not have). These were for the employees that had signed up with LoudSiren and TrustedID. Since he did not have a copy of the actual card, the fraud alert worked and he couldn’t get a credit card.

A few days later a brand new credit card arrived at the reporter’s house in the employee who had signed up for LifeLock’s service. Uh-oh!

My Take

In this case, it appears that 2/3 of the time the fraud alert worked. Even though all three vendors said that the creditor would phone to confirm identity, no calls actually happened and instead letters were sent (at least for LoudSiren and TrustedID’s clients).

It also shows that a fraud alert is definitely not bulletproof.

I do wonder why there was no mention of credit freezes. As my post that outlines the differences between fraud alerts and credit freezes shows, if a credit freeze (which can be set up by the consumer or as part of the TrustedID service, which the reporter did not do) was in place, none of these could have even gotten to first base because the credit reports would have been locked down.

Would you let someone run a test like this using your personal information? What do you think of the test?

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Posted in Credit Freeze, Fraud Alert, Identity Theft, LifeLock, Loudsiren, TrustedID