5 Better Alternatives For LifeLock (See My #1 Choice)

If you’re looking for LifeLock alternatives to protect you and your loved ones from identity theft, then you’re in luck. Of the seven identity theft protection solutions I’ve used I would recommend 5 of them before I would recommend Norton’s LifeLock. Keep reading to know why.

If you’ve ever been a victim of identity theft, then you know identity theft protection is money well spent. If you’re just being proactive you may find that it’s more affordable than you would have expected, and it actually does more than you would have expected. I certainly did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBFch-Ulhzg

For example, Aura offers comprehensive monitoring and fraud resolution packages at super approachable price—especially if you want to protect your spouse, your kids, and even your parents and in-laws.

So, what’s wrong with LifeLock? I’m guessing if you are reading this review, then you already have a hunch. I’ll get to the bottom of it in just a bit. I’ll highlight where each of the 5 identity theft protection solutions I’d recommend instead outperform LifeLock, and I’ll also rank my alternative recommendations from highest to lowest.

Fasten those seatbelts everybody. It’s going down!

What makes for a great identity theft protection solution?

So let’s think about this for a second. What makes for a great identity theft protection solution?

I’ll tell you what I think, it’s great monitoring and excellent threat resolution—but don’t forget, you want that at a price that makes sense.

All of these Identity Theft Protection companies work on a subscription basis. You pay by the month or by the year, so if you want something that’s going to keep you protected for the long haul, it ought to be affordable. In fact, it should be a no-brainer.

That should hold true not only in that the price  you’re paying is something that you don’t really even have to think about, or at least not too much; but also that what you’re getting is actually useful—not just something that drains your bank account day by day, betting on the statistically probable fact that they’re going to get more money out of you than you’re going to get out of them.

This brings me to my first gripe about LifeLock—their support is just terrible. It’s like they optimized for lowest cost, at the expense of their customers. All the other companies I’ve worked with have fantastic support teams. It’s as if they know that good customer support is the first line of defense in excellent fraud resolution.

Why is that important?

Imagine the situations that would lead you to call support. Maybe its something small, but sooner or later it’s going to be something that spikes your blood pressure through the roof.

If the person on the other end of the line is reading off scripts, you’ll probably wish you could reach through the phone and smack them silly. I’m not saying you’re a violent person. It’s a joke. Kinda like LifeLock’s customer support.

Setting Up Your Identity Theft Protection

Monitoring your personal information with these identity theft protection companies all starts with entering the personal information you want to monitor.

The types of personal information they allow you to monitor ranges from company to company, and LifeLock’s actually not too bad in this regard. What does bother me a little bit is that they only allow you to monitor 5 email addresses. Most of the other companies allow you to monitor more. The only one that doesn’t is CompleteID—they only allow you to monitor 4. In spite of that, I still prefer CompleteID to LifeLock.

Once you’re up and running, Aura and Identity Guard will proactively submit opt-out requests with data brokers which should help to cut down on robocalls, junk mail, and spam emails. They do this on an ongoing basis, as they find your information with more data brokers, they’ll submit more opt out requests for you.

LifeLock will scan the public web and when they find your information they’ll let you know where they found it, what they found, and how you can opt out. If you want them to opt out for you, then you’ll have to fork over some extra cash.

Beyond that, there are tons of different types of scans these identity theft protection solutions perform. A lot of the companies, LifeLock included, tend to spread the different scans and other benefits across a tiered pricing structure, which tends to push you towards the top-tier plan.

This marketing tactic kinda gives me heartburn. I much prefer the straightforward and comprehensive packages that you get with Aura and CompleteID.

Of course the most interesting and in many ways the most important aspect of personal information monitoring is the dark web monitoring. I’ll go over how LifeLock compares to the alternatives when monitoring the dark web for my personal information later in this review.

Financial Monitoring

Before that, I want to talk a bit about financial monitoring, and what you should really look for ideally among LifeLock alternatives.

Credit Monitoring

The biggest one is credit monitoring, and to get the most thorough and responsive protection you want a plan that includes three bureau credit monitoring with Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. This makes sure you get alerts if there are any inquiries into your credit file, like if someone opens a credit card in your name or takes out a loan.

Furthermore, you should be getting monthly vantage scores from all three bureaus and annual credit reports from all three bureaus right in your dashboard.

In the best case you get a convenient credit lock that prevents unwanted inquiries into your credit file with the click of a button.

Once again, Aura and CompleteID include this on all of their plans. With LifeLock you can get most of the way there on their top-tier Ultimate Plus plan, and you can even get updates to credit reports and scores daily from one bureau.

While you can get annual reports from all three bureaus on LifeLock’s Ultimate Plus plan, you never get monthly scores from all three bureaus. The most you get is annual scores. That’s only if you get LifeLock’s top tier plan. If you get even their mid-tier plan you’re stuck with 1-bureau credit monitoring with monthly reports and scores from only one bureau. Although you do get a credit lock, and even a payday loan lock. On LifeLock’s Standard plan there are no reports and scores at all.

Just to reiterate, the big winners in the credit department are Aura and CompleteID.

Transaction Monitoring

Then there’s transaction monitoring. This you allows you to link bank accounts and credit cards to keep an eye out for fraudulent charges all in one place, and set alert thresholds to get notification of any charges over a limit you specify.

You need LifeLock’s mid-tier Advantage plan to unlock this, but it comes standard with all plans from Aura, as well as ID Shield and IdentityForce.

So as you can see, it’s a little bit tit-for-tat as to who offers more monitoring services—although you might be starting to see a bit of a pattern here. Even more important is how well these monitoring services actually work.

Dark Web Monitoring

The most significant way to visualize which LifeLock alternatives offer better monitoring in my mind is to take a look at what they find on the dark web.

I monitor the same personal information across all of the identity theft protection solutions I use. Although in the case of LifeLock and CompleteID which don’t allow me to monitor all of my email addresses, I leave out addresses that don’t turn up any dark web hits on the other platforms.

Lucky for me, my dark web alerts only turn up leaked login credentials to various websites. Not ideal, but could be worse.

LifeLock finds a total of 8 dark web hits for my personal information and they are all unique—meaning they’re not hits of the same login credentials posted in different places on the dark web.

How does that compare?

It could be worse—IdentityIQ turns up absolutely nothing for my personal information on the dark web.

However, it also could be better. IdentityForce turns up a total of 20 dark web hits, 10 of which are unique, and both Aura and Identity Guard turn up a total of 18 dark web hits, 9 of which are unique.

ID Shield turns up more than 17 dark web hits, but there’s a bit of an asterisk here because ID Shield’s interface doesn’t allow you to view your cleared alerts so I can’t get a total, I can’t say how many are unique, and I couldn’t even tell you what the hits were. I’m lucky I wrote down that total when I signed up.

Last but not least we have CompleteID which turns up 14 dark web alerts, 9 of which are unique.

So LifeLock comes in 6th place of the 7 companies I use.

Now as I always caution there’s usually not perfect overlap in what these companies find on the dark web, so it’s not like there’s one company that definitively offers the best dark web monitoring.

Clearly, though, there’s quite a bit that LifeLock is missing. Plus, they don’t even find my leaked gmail credentials that all 5 of these alternatives find.

In my mind, that’s enough to ditch LifeLock in and of itself. Unless you’re so in love with Norton that you’re willing to let your relationship with LifeLock go down the path of Pam and Tommy, you’re probably right to be looking elsewhere.

Fraud Resolution

So I’ve already talked about how LifeLock’s support is terrible, but in the event you’re a victim of identity theft, their plans include US-Based Identity Restoration Specialists.

However, there’s no mention of white-glove fraud resolution to do all of the heavy lifting like you get standard with Aura and IdentityForce, or with Identity Guard’s top-tier Ultra plan.

Now in terms of financial backing, $1M in identity theft protection is pretty standard as a minimum across all of these companies.

With LifeLock’s top-tier Ultimate Plus plan you do get up to $3M in coverage, although that’s broken down into up to $1M for lawyers and experts, up to $1M in stolen funds reimbursement, and up to $1M in personal expense reimbursement.

That’s pretty good, and if you’re on their family plan that’s up to $3M per adult and up to $1M per child—although there are some asterisks that indicate that the $1M in coverage for lawyers and experts is collective, among other things. So it’s not necessarily quite as good as it looks.

Aura’s family plan is competitive here, they offer up to $1M per adult which is up to $5M on their family plan as it covers 5 adults and unlimited children. LifeLock’s family plans cover a maximum of 2 adults and 5 children.

While more insurance is good, with LifeLock you’re still going to be stuck with poor customer support and nearly bottom-rung dark web monitoring.

5 Better Alternatives For LifeLock

We’ve covered all the major things to consider when choosing a LifeLock alternative, so here are my recommendations. All of these are better options than LifeLock in my experience.

ID Shield

At the bottom I’d say is ID Shield. My biggest complaint with ID Shield is that their interface is terrible, so much so that it even impacts how well you can use their dark web monitoring.

CompleteID

One better than ID Shield is CompleteID. They offer affordable and comprehensive plans with no tiered structure, but they are a little bit light in what they allow you to monitor. You also need a Costco membership to use CompleteID.

Identity Guard and IdentityForce

Even better than CompleteID would be Identity Guard and IdentityForce. Both of these are great solutions, and with Identity Guard you’re getting the same technology as you get with Aura. I’d say they’re probably a bit more robust than IdentityForce if you upgrade all the way on both.

Of course my biggest complaint with Identity Guard and IdentityForce is that tiered pricing structure—once you upgrade to the top to unlock all the benefits, Aura is a better deal.

Aura

If you haven’t figured it out by now I’d say the best LifeLock alternative is Aura. Their plans are comprehensive, they’re priced to be approachable, and they’ve really raised the bar for what you can expect from an identity theft protection company.

Remember to check out my latest recommendations and links to any deals I have.