Identity Defense Review 2022

Overview

Identity Defense provides credit monitoring and comprehensive privacy and Identity protection services. They have 21 years of experience in the industry, during which they’ve helped over 47 million consumers secure themselves against identity theft.

Identify Defense provides identity protection services for individuals, families, and employers. Their offerings help customers secure their personal, financial, and social identity from identity thieves for a membership fee. They also help customers recover stolen funds from incidences of identity theft.

What Does Identity Defense Protect Against?

Identity Defense Membership plans use Artificial Intelligence powered by IBM ® with Watson™ to monitor your information. They also protect your identity from thieves, alert you of identity theft attempts, and help you recover funds stolen due to identity theft.

Their membership plans will protect you against the following:

• Account fraud
• Account takeover
• Billing fraud
• Credit card theft or fraud
• Data breaches
• Data harvesting
• Impersonation or identity theft
• Insurance fraud
• Mail theft
• Tax fraud

Identity Defense review: Features and Services

Features offered by the Identity Defense program can be classified into four categories: monitor, defend, alert, and recover.

Monitor

The primary function of the cloud-based platform is to monitor unauthorized use or circulation of customers’ identity details. These details must be provided to the system by the customer for monitoring purposes.

Their information monitoring service monitors billions of pieces of information with the help of AI monitors powered by IBM ® with Watson™. Data monitored through the program includes addresses of homes or businesses on the internet, bank account data, credit bureau monitoring, and more. More details on these later.
It typically takes several days for credit monitoring to begin upon subscription. So you need to sign up for a membership as early as possible to get monitoring benefits sooner.

Credit Monitoring

The credit monitoring process helps you track changes made to your credit reports. Since credit reports affect your borrowing power, it is a valuable service in the long run. You are always updated about changes so you can alert the authorities or report errors as soon as they occur.

If you want to get complete information of your credit rating changes from the three bureaus, then you’ll have to buy the Plus or Complete plans. Customers can also monitor their credit scores over time with regular updates.

You are notified of:

• Credit applications
• Refinancing or authorized user addition with a company listed in your alert
• Changes to an existing account
• Application for store rewards cards
• Inquiring about new services
• Airline rewards
• Sweepstakes or drawings with the companies listed on your alerts

Dark Web Monitoring

Under dark web monitoring, the details you provide are monitored online and on the dark web. The AI monitors will track your data and alert you when it finds your details used anywhere online.

Here is a list of the details you can monitor through this service.

• Credit card
• Date of birth
• Driver’s license
• Email address
• Mailing address
• Phone number
• Financial account numbers
• Health Insurance ID
• Passport
• SSN or SIN
• Loyalty Cards
• National Provider ID

Social Media Monitoring

This service provides monitoring for social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. You can choose which platforms to connect to your Identity Defense account, and you will be notified of malicious links and other suspicious activity.

Financial Transaction Monitoring

Having your transactions monitored surely helps, but you’re also required to provide the necessary credentials to avail of this service.

Home Title Monitoring

If you’ve wanted to monitor changes to the title of your home, then this is the service you want to add to your membership. With this, users will be notified of any changes to the title on their home as recorded by your county’s assessor or recorder’s office. You can then contact the local county assessor or county clerk and rectify any aberrations in the records.

Family Plans

Family memberships are accessible to users who want to add one or more household members living at the same address. The unique feature of this service is that it allows you to monitor and manage the online activities of other members under 18 years of age.

Alert

The AI monitors detect when your details are used, credit checks on your name are performed, and if any details about your bank account are changed.
Of course, this is not where the systems’ work ends. The next step involves alerting the customer about instances of attempted identity theft or fraud.

Mobile Messaging Alerts

Consistent monitoring leads to timely notifications and warnings to customers who are victims of identity theft. When you sign up for your plan, you can choose how you would like to receive these notifications.

The mobile messaging alert is an optional feature that you may choose to add to your plan. The service includes message alerts on subscription plans, credit scores, monitoring alerts, dark web activity, and more. This is an add-on service that will cost you messaging and data charges.
Defend

This service aims to defend your identity and personal information against thieves. To do this, Identity Defense needs the authorization to access your devices.
Anti-Virus/Anti-Malware Removal

The benefit of this service is that Identity Defense can access your device and take the necessary action to remove existing malware or viruses. This will secure your device against malware-related identity theft.

Secure VPN/WiFi Security

You’re also secured with a VPN that keeps your sensitive data from traveling across the internet.

Identity Theft Protection

This service is only available to users with a U.S. SSN or a U.S. mailing address. It includes all monitor and alert features.

Identity Theft Remediation

With identity theft remediation, customers give Identity Defense limited permission to work with creditors and banks on their behalf. It also gives the company authorization to restore customer identity on their behalf. To avail of this service, customers must provide Identity Defense a signed Limited Power of Attorney (LPOA).

Recovery

This element of Identity Defense’s services gives customers the chance to receive reimbursement of misplaced funds due to identity theft. Customers are also secured with a $1 million identity theft insurance guarantee.

Additional Protection Tools

• Multi-level encryption and access controls for enrollment process security
• Monitoring of the dark web for the use of email, SSN, and other details of the client
• Social media insight reports showing vulnerabilities in your social media accounts
• Risk assessment of information accessibility through management reports

Identity Defense review: Ease of Use

Identity Defense is entirely cloud-based, so it is also quite easy to use. New users will find accessing the site simple. All you need to do is follow these steps to sign up for membership.

• Visit the official website
• Look for the plan you want and select the Get Protected Now button
• Enter your personal details in the fields, set a password, verify your identity, and hit the Continue button
• It only takes five minutes to enroll in a membership plan.

Here is the information you will need to provide to enroll for a membership:

• Name
• Address
• Phone number
• Date of birth
• Email
• SSN
• Credit card information (for billing purposes)

Updating your information is also an easy process and can be done by logging into your account. Now, you might be worried about entering your sensitive data like SSN on their website. But don’t worry! The entire enrollment process is secured with multiple levels of encryption and access controls. These safeguard the information entered when subscribing to membership plans.

You can’t opt out of providing your SSN, as it is mandatory for identity verification purposes and to access the account monitoring services.

Note: Placing a security freeze on your credit reports does not impact your Identity Defense membership.

Identity Defense – Price review

With Identity Defense, clients can choose between monthly or annual package options with three plans each. You can get an individual plan (starting at $6.99 per month) or save money by getting a family plan. Family members don’t need to pay an extra fee and can simply enroll using their email addresses. Members won’t be able to access each other’s accounts or personal information.

Identity Defense review: Customer Service

You can reach the U.S.-based customer services team via email at customercare@identitydefense.com or phone at 1-888-217-0379. They are available Monday through Friday from 8 am to 11 pm (EST) and on Saturdays from 9 am to 6 pm (EST).

The lack of a knowledge or resource base was evident from their website and might be a dealbreaker for those who are clueless about how the service works. Since it’s a cloud-only platform, that’s an even bigger crutch and must be fixed soon.

Since their customer service handles queries efficiently, the gap isn’t immediately visible.

Identity Defense review: Bottom Line

The wide range of offered services makes Identity Defense’s plans quite attractive. The provided tech support does not disappoint, either, especially considering this is a strictly cloud-based service.

Even though three-bureau credit monitoring is only available in the Complete and Plus plans, it is not a loss. The Essential plan is affordable and stands up well compared to similar programs.

As a safety net, we prefer the reimbursement amount and insurance guarantee on Identity Defense better than the rest. The best part, the security is available on all their plans!

After considering all the benefits and drawbacks of their services, we think Identity Defense is an excellent identity protection program. Their plans are suited for beginners who would like basic monitoring service plans that give them all the necessary tools.

Disclosures

The platform does not remove your data, and neither does it guarantee to locate every instance of data fraud. Note that the platform only monitors the data customers provide them and cannot notify you of misuse of undeclared details.

A $1 million identity theft insurance guarantee is underwritten by “insurance company subsidiaries or affiliates of American International Group Inc.” All reimbursements are subject to the providers’ policy, terms, and conditions.

Identity theft protection services are accessible to only those users who have a U.S. SSN or U.S. mailing address.

4

Very good

Our reviews are the opinion of our editorial team and are not impacted by the advertising fees that our advertisers may pay us.

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