Dave Naffziger’s Blog

I’m extremely intrigued by Lifelock, an anti-identity theft company backed by Bessemer and Kleiner. They do three things for you:

1. Place fraud alerts on your credit reports. These alerts suggest that credit issuers contact you before they issue credit in your name. However, they only last for 90 days. LifeLock continually renews them.
2. Request your free annual credit reports from the three agencies. They do this annually.
3. Remove you from the credit agency marketing lists so that you don’t receive unsolicited credit card offers (a common source of identity theft). You can opt-out for 5 years using a web form, or permanently by mailing a letter.

They also offer a $1,000,000 guarantee if your identity gets stolen while a subscriber to their service. The catch is that the $1Million doesn’t cover your losses - just your costs to recover your losses.

However, go to Lifelock’s homepage and you see this spammy sales pitch on the front page:

My name is Todd Davis

This is my social security number 457-55-5462

“I’m Todd Davis, CEO of LifeLock. Yes, that really is my social security number. No I’m not crazy. I’m just sure our system works. Just like we have with mine, LifeLock will make your personal information useless to a criminal. And it’s GUARANTEED.”

I sent Lifelock’s URL to a friend. Here was his response:

I’d sign-up except I’m afraid they’ll steal my identity…

Only partially tongue-in-cheek. I don’t think he really knew the true origins of the company. From Michael Arrington’s writeup of the company:

In 1997 the FTC 1997 the FTC ordered him (Co-founder Robert Maynard, who has since resigned) not to engage in any business related to credit improvement services after accusing him of fraud.

I’ve lamented in the past that credit agencies should allow you to put permanent ‘fraud alerts’ on your reports. I’d love to be able to put a permanent lock on my credit.

I might have been able to get past the spammy homepage, and I might have been able to get past the sketchy guarantee. But KP’s investment doesn’t do enough to get me past the fact that a co-founder was convicted of committing fraud.