Identity Guard Review: Best Identity Protection?

Features

Let’s get one thing straight: There’s no service that can guarantee protection against identity theft. Mischievous actors on the internet use a variety of tactics to steal identities, from slimy and diabolical social engineering scams to downright hacking. Not to mention, there are plenty of other ways criminals steal identities outside the internet. Even with the highest-rated identity protection services, your identity can still be stolen.

What Identity Guard and other identity protection services do is catch early signs of identity theft. That’s why the use of IBM Watson is intriguing. In theory, it can detect identity theft faster than other systems could. That gives users a better chance of avoiding or preventing financial, legal, and reputational damages.

We went ahead and purchased an Identity Guard Ultra plan – the best it can offer – to test out all aspects of the brand’s identity monitoring. The Ultra plan gave us complete access to all Identity Guard features, from credit monitoring to identity monitoring. Here’s our experience with the service.

Credit Monitoring

According to our Identity Theft Consumer Shopping Study, credit monitoring is a core function for many services like Identity Guard. It typically involves closely monitoring credit-related activities like credit inquiries and checks. For instance, when we took out a loan recently, Identity Guard notified us and verified if it was an authorized transaction. That would have allowed us to take immediate action if it had been an unauthorized activity. And for better monitoring of our credit, Identity Guard provided us with credit score updates and credit reports from the three major credit reporting bureaus.

However, not all Identity Guard subscriptions offer credit monitoring. We went with the Ultra plan, the most expensive option, so we got access to all features. The cheapest option (Value plan) offers no credit monitoring features at all. The mid-tier option (Total plan) offers only monitoring and score updates, but no credit reports. In short, the credit monitoring features scale with your subscription.

As for how Identity Guard compares to others, it’s all standard except for the Value plan’s lack of credit monitoring. As you can see in our LifeLock cost assessment, other companies offer basic credit monitoring even in their lowest-tier subscriptions. Identity Guard might not be the best choice if your goal is to save money but still enjoy credit protection.

Financial Monitoring

Aside from credit changes, scores and reports, Identity Guard monitored our finances. Identity Guard kept a close watch on all our assets, from our 401(k) and investment accounts to high-risk transactions, debit and credit cards.

For instance, Identity Guard notified us and showed us a list of the personally identifiable information entered into our bank’s system when we set up a new account. This would have been helpful if it had been a case of identity theft, as we would have known which details were compromised, tracked where the leak came from, and avoided future incidents. That’s the real value of Identity Guard’s monitoring features.

Financial monitoring is one of the more high-end features of Identity Guard. It’s not included in the Value plan – the cheapest subscription – and with the mid-level Total plan, only some areas are monitoring. You’ll still receive alerts in case of a bank account takeover or when someone opens an account with you information, but monitoring 401(k), retirement fund, credit card transactions are exclusive to the Ultra plan.

Identity Protection

Identity protection is at the very core of Identity Guard subscriptions. Unlike with credit and financial monitoring, you’ll get all identity protection features no matter which plan you choose. But what is identity protection?

Basically, Identity Guard will ask you to provide information you want to protect – your name, address, Social Security Number, birthdate, and so on. If it sees any of that information in a data breach, on the dark web, and other places where stolen identities usually turn up, it will let you know immediately. Most types of identity theft start with a stolen piece of information, so the inclusion of identity protection in every Identity Guard plan is valuable.

Here’s exactly what we got from our Identity Guard subscription.

• Dark web scan: The dark web, an area of the internet in which all users remain anonymous, is a hotbed of cybercrime. As part of our membership, Identity Guard sent us alerts if it found our credentials on the dark web. The one time this occurred, Identity Guard explained the situation plainly and prompted us to change our passwords.
• Criminal and sex offense monitoring: If the system found our names on a sex offender registry or police report, it would have notified us right away, but thankfully, this didn’t happen to us.
• USPS address change monitoring:We moved apartments while testing Identity Guard, and of course, we had to change our address registered to the USPS. The same day we did, Identity Guard notified us that an address change was filed. If it were a real thief trying to forward our mail (which contains tons of personal information) to their address, we would have been alerted.
• Home title monitoring: If someone opened a home title in our names, or tried to transfer a home title from our names to theirs if we ever had one, Identity Guard would let us know immediately.
• Risk management report: Identity Guard produced a report that showed us how at risk we were for identity fraud.

• Safe browsing tools: Identity Guard even had a browser extension that helped protect our privacy online, fighting against phishing attacks, blocking ads, flash, trackers, and mining.
• Anti-phishing mobile app: Aside from the Identity Guard Classic app, the company offered us the Anti Phishing by Identity Guard mobile app, which detected and blocked phishing websites on Chrome, Dolphin, and Samsung Internet.
• Social insight report: Using artificial intelligence from IBM® Watson™, the social insight report analyzed our Facebook account to assess our “online image” and even suggested improvements.

One aspect we liked about Identity Guard was that it wasn’t passive. The thing about many identity protection services is that it can feel as though you’re paying for a service without reaping benefits. That’s especially true if the service only contacts you when there’s potential identity theft. Those types of alerts are rare, to be honest. You’re paying for the constant monitoring, not the alerts.

With Identity Guard, we were constantly reminded that there’s a service looking out for us. We received communication via SMS, app alerts, and email. While some of those were alerts, most were useful advice and timely reminders on how we can better protect our personal data.

Moreover, Identity Guard knows that users can still very much fall victim to identity theft even with its protection. That’s why it offers identity theft insurance coverage that would reimburse up to $1 million in stolen funds and other related expenditures in case of identity theft.

Identity Guard Identity Theft Protection Features

Privacy and Security

As everyone could probably tell, privacy plays a big part in identity theft protection. You do your part to protect your privacy, but the company safeguarding your data needs to do their part as well. That’s why aside from testing Identity Guard, we also took a close look at its privacy policy and data security.

When we signed up for an Identity Guard protection plan, we filled in sensitive information about ourselves with the expectation that Identity Guard would protect it from identity thieves. But how about data breaches? Well, Identity Guard uses more than adequate security measures to protect customer data stored on their servers.

For starters, it encrypts all data using “military-grade” encryption, according to its privacy policy. Now, that is a vague description, but in the tech industry, military-grade encryption often means 256-bit AES (because that’s what the U.S. military uses to encrypt sensitive communications). And if that’s the case, nothing is getting past that encryption.

Additionally, Identity Guard makes it clear that it doesn’t share the details you fill in when setting up your protection with third-parties unless absolutely necessary. For example, if you provide Identity Guard complaint information about scam calls you received, they may share it with relevant government agencies such as the FCC and CFPB. However, Identity Guard guarantees that it won’t share your information with advertisers.

Identity Guard, however, does share some types of information with its corporate partners and service providers, but these types of information come from when you visit its website or sign up for a plan. That includes your email address, device information, and IP location — things that other websites you visit already likely collect and share.

User Experience

Identity theft protection services are pretty much a set-and-forget type of service. Once you’re done setting it up with all the information you want to protect, you can just let it be. It will monitor data points and key areas to make sure the information you provided doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

As such, the user experience hinges heavily on the set up process. Identity Guard wasn’t the simplest to set up, but the process was streamlined enough that we could call it user-friendly.

Here’s how it went: First, we filled in our information and bought a subscription. After that, we gained access to our Identity Guard Dashboard, but to fully unlock all features, we had to fill in some more information. This part took the most time as we had to enter our personal details one by one. Identity Guard also had us answer a few multiple-choice questions and a couple of threat-related questions to fine-tune our service.

The more information we gave Identity Guard, the more data they could spit back at us, especially for the AI-powered features like the social insight and risk management reports.

Once we’d input all our information, we navigated between the Dashboard, the alerts, and Watchlist, plus, our credit reports and scores*.

How Much Does Identity Guard Cost?

Identity Guard’s prices are some of the lowest and most flexible we’ve ever seen. Monthly, an individual plan with basic protection costs $8.99, but the individual plans can actually range up to $29.99 as they get more comprehensive. That said, you can sign up for a whole year and save as much as $5 per month. The annual individual plans cost $7.50 to $25 per month, paid once every year.

Besides individual plans, Identity Guard offers family plans, which covers up to five adult individuals and an unlimited number of children. Prices for family plans range from $14.99 to $39.99 if paid monthly, but again, discounts are available for annual plans. Family plans can cost as low as $12.50 to $33.33 per month if paid yearly.

Here’s a breakdown of Identity Guard’s regular prices and features for the three plans available: Value, Total, and Ultra.

Identity Guard offers plans for business and personal use, and within those two categories, individuals and groups. Regardless of which subscription plan we selected, we chose between annual or monthly contracts. We had no trouble finding an Identity Guard plan that worked for us. Identity Guard has a plan for spouses as well, a rarity in the identity monitoring industry.

Identity Guard has three personal plan options for identity theft protection services: Value, Total, and Ultra.

The Ultra plan provided the most coverage whether through the individual plan or the Identity Guard family plan, although it was a reasonable price at either $29.99 per month or $300 per year for an individual. We signed up for a year because we knew we wanted to test out the service, and it includes a 17 percent discount. All plans include a $1 million reimbursement maximum for identity theft, but only the Total and Ultra plans monitor credit scores and reports from all three credit-reporting bureaus.

Unfortunately, Identity Guard doesn’t offer a free trial. However, they do provide a 30-day money-back guarantee, which can work as a trial. Try the software out, and if you aren’t satisfied within those 30 days get your money back. It’s a sort of free trial for Identity Guard, only, it’s not free because you have to pay first.

We appreciated Identity Guard’s 30-day guarantee as a substitute for a free trial. If you’d rather go the try-before-you-buy route, our IdentityIQ review and our LifeLock review are good places to start.

Customer Support

Identity Guard’s customer support was fine, but it didn’t impress us. Although there is a section on frequently asked questions, as well as useful articles, on Identity Guard’s website, we didn’t find much online customer support. We had to call its phone line, which is only available on certain schedules. On weekdays, the phone line is open from 8 a.m. until 11 p.m., and on Saturdays, it’s open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., EST. The line is closed on Sundays.

On top of that, there’s no live chat support option. The majority of identity theft services we tested have this option, so it’s a bit disappointing to find out that if we needed help, we would have to talk on the phone. That being said, Identity Guard’s phone support did prove useful those times that we called.

The Identity Guard Classic App

We used the Identity Guard Classic app to receive user alerts, access our credit information, and check out the latest news on identity theft incidents.

Unfortunately, the app had a low rating from iOS users, only a 2.2 out of five stars.

One user wrote in a recent one-star review,

“App is overly simplistic with little to no details. I have three credit tracking services and Identity Guard missed everything that affected my credit score. I opened new accounts, no alerts.”

Android users felt a little differently, giving the app a 2.7 rating on the Google Play store.

Identity Guard IBM® Watson™ users should do their own research about the iOS and Android apps that work with that version. We only tested out the Classic version.

For what it’s worth, the Identity Guard Classic app is still more intuitive than the app experience we noted in our IdentityForce review.

While still an excellent choice for identity theft protection, IdentityForce’s app didn’t impress us, either. If you’d prefer desktop access over mobile, check out ID Watchdog. In our review of ID Watchdog, we noted the absence of a companion app for mobile access, but the company’s impressive identity restoration assistance pretty much made up for it, if we had ever been the victim of identity theft.