CEO gives out SS# to make a point
And it’s a good one. I have to give kudos to the CEO of LifeLock, a company that offers to protect your identity for 10 bucks a month. I don’t know how good the service is, but I’m impressed by the marketing.
On the home page is a photo of the CEO and the text:
My name is Todd Davis
My social security number is 457-55-5462I’m Todd Davis, CEO of LifeLock, and yes, that’s my real social security number. Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in America, victimizing over 10 million people a year and costing billions of dollars. So why publish my social security number? Because I’m absolutely confident LifeLock is protecting my good name and personal information, just like it will yours. And we guarantee our service up to $1 million dollars.”
gnomic says:
This is a lot less impressive than you might think. What it does is put a fruad lock on your credit report and renews it every 90 days. So it only catches problems after companies report activity to the credit reporting agencies - something that takes 60 to 90 days. At $120/yr, this guy is basically providing a limited insurance policy and will assist you in sending out all the correspondance should your identidy be stolen. You can buy an rider to your insurance policy cheaper (about 1/2 the cost) and get the instructions for recovering from id theft from the network for free.
Also, the credit reporting companies are suing the guy because the fraud reporting process was never designed to be used this way, nor were thier systems. Legally, its a questionabl practice. More importantly, the credit reporting companies don’t want competition and would like to offer the service themselves.
But its a very compelling ad.