topic Re: myFICO vs. LIfeLock? in General Credit Topics

myFICO vs. LIfeLock?

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 21:52:22 GMT

I had my own little brush with identity theft a few months back, so in the mean time I've been setting all my accounts up on special alerts so I can monitor any/all activity via email. I feel a lot more comfortable now that I'll immediately know if someone happens to get their greedy mitts on my credit card number again.

But since then, I've been researching and it seems there are a lot more avenues identity thieves can take in order to steal your info. So I figured I'd look into some type of monthly service I could use to stay on top of this for me and protect me in case the worst happens. I had settled on LifeLock as a possible option, but when I signed up for myFICO today I see they offer a lot of the same protections (like black market monitoring and such).

Since I'm already a member, can anyone tell me if myFICO is a good replacement for LIfeLock and do they offer the same level protection (or does the other service outperform it in regards to what protections it provides)?

Thanks

Re: myFICO vs. LIfeLock?

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 02:53:20 GMT

Not sure why no one has replied to this question? Is it that hard for myFICO users to say myFICO is much better? Since no one has replied, does it mean that it is not better?

Re: myFICO vs. LIfeLock?

9CLINE — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 03:07:47 GMT

I like the Fico Premier3B I have,,can't make a comparison b/c never had Life Lock....
Maybe that's why there isn't any replies, some don't have anything to compare......

Re: myFICO vs. LIfeLock?

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 03:34:01 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Not sure why no one has replied to this question? Is it that hard for myFICO users to say myFICO is much better? Since no one has replied, does it mean that it is not better?

Little salty for some reason? Like the other poster said, perhaps nobody who read the question has experience with both services. I've never used used Lifelock, but I will say that MyFICO is quite slow to report things like inquiries and balance changes. I don't know how quickly they report black market stuff; I have gotten a couple of alerts from them about my email being listed, but I don't know how long it was there before they sent an alert.

Buy, overall, MyFico is considerably slower in reporting changes than every other monitoring service (all the free ones) I use. It's pathetically slow for $30 a month.

Re: myFICO vs. LIfeLock?

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 03:44:48 GMT

Didn't mean to sound salty. I am a member but do not subscribe to anything from myFICO yet. Just trying to get a feel of the community. For the past 7-8 years, we have frozen our credit and open it only when we need someone to check our credit scores, for loans. And we haven't had many occasions like that. I just had two new loans, one for my car and another for equity line of credit. When I unfroze my credit and checked the credit scores, I was pleasantly surprised to see a perfect 850 on two of the three agencies. Off course after the two loans it has gone down to 760, but still excellent.

Anyways, so in all these years, we never had to do anything other than freezing the credit from all three agencies. As far as alerts, we automatically got alerts when soneone tried to access our credit. I think that's all we need. But still interested in knowing what is the difference in these two leading brands.

Re: myFICO vs. LIfeLock?

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 04:32:21 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
Didn't mean to sound salty. I am a member but do not subscribe to anything from myFICO yet. Just trying to get a feel of the community. For the past 7-8 years, we have frozen our credit and open it only when we need someone to check our credit scores, for loans. And we haven't had many occasions like that. I just had two new loans, one for my car and another for equity line of credit. When I unfroze my credit and checked the credit scores, I was pleasantly surprised to see a perfect 850 on two of the three agencies. Off course after the two loans it has gone down to 760, but still excellent.

Anyways, so in all these years, we never had to do anything other than freezing the credit from all three agencies. As far as alerts, we automatically got alerts when soneone tried to access our credit. I think that's all we need. But still interested in knowing what is the difference in these two leading brands.

Nice work on those scores! Lifelock has always seemed kind of gimmicky to me, but who knows. Hopefully someone who's used it will roger up.

Re: myFICO vs. LIfeLock?

TC1223 — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 20:25:12 GMT

I recently got hit with ID fraud, but wasn't immediately alerted by Lifelock. I was alerted by myFICO, and I didn't even have the identity theft protection added to my account yet. By the time Lifelock alerted me, two days had passed and by then I already took the necessary steps to stop the thief.

They did however catch on inquiry that myFICO didn't, a few days after, but I'm wondering if it was because there was a fraud alert added to the CRAs. But, even with that alert, no on called me. I gave them 24-hours to contact me but, no phone call. When I did call, the CSR, who happened to be he same one from the previous alert, was useless. So, needless to say, I'm cancelling Lifelock at the end of this month.

Re: myFICO vs. LIfeLock?

UncleB — Thu, 20 Jul 2017 23:00:43 GMT

The lack of feedback is likely due to where the thread was started... I'll move it to 'General Credit' for better exposure.

Re: myFICO vs. LIfeLock?

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 04:13:26 GMT

Ive been hit with ID fraud as well, which in a strange way can be as disturbing as attempts on one's life(of course being sober for the former could help make it less tolerable).

I have the myfico "ultimate 3b"(not related to it's roman numeral cousin the "ultimate IIB"), and dont seem to remember it doing much when an alert Synchrony rep thwarted the would be villain, and then contacted me and resolved issues.

Myfico has on multiple given me the alerts that it has detected activty, which I found to be almost COMPLETELY useless. They wouldnt say where they detected it, nor what to do about it, after I went out of my way to contact them about it. It's like those internet doomsdayers(think Alex Jones) who sometimes hit the nail with some disturbing truth, but purposefully don't give your any solution for it. The whole thing had a disingenuous feel to me.

It's not like I'm bitter being that I didnt factor the value of this service into the cost of my purchase, but if I had? Yes, I could see folks getting bitter over MyFico's alert thing.

TC, you said MyFico helped you. Would you be willing to tell us how? They barely even acknowledged my question. I'm not necessarily knocking them, as I am a score addict and a long time paying member, I just haven't seen value from that particular service.

In my case it seems like maybe my stuff is part of some database. I do know that an owner of a message board was able to find out my name and phone number somehow(he does this on occasion to various users, but he wasnt the Synchrony bandit). If my stuff is our there, Im kind of surprised nothing has been attempted in over a year or so, being Ive had multiple alerts of my info being on deep/dark websites, supposedly.

That brings me to a final ID theft question: How did whatever recent credit card(that I was new with) CSR know that I had my phone # a long time after they hung up, did whatever, and then called me back on it? Is that a LexisNexis thing? I want to start understanding things(I already avoid phishing) better so that I can take care of matters rather than relying on these shoddy services.

Re: myFICO vs. LIfeLock?

mitchblue — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 04:19:57 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Anonymous wrote:
Didn't mean to sound salty. I am a member but do not subscribe to anything from myFICO yet. Just trying to get a feel of the community. For the past 7-8 years, we have frozen our credit and open it only when we need someone to check our credit scores, for loans. And we haven't had many occasions like that. I just had two new loans, one for my car and another for equity line of credit. When I unfroze my credit and checked the credit scores, I was pleasantly surprised to see a perfect 850 on two of the three agencies. Off course after the two loans it has gone down to 760, but still excellent.

Anyways, so in all these years, we never had to do anything other than freezing the credit from all three agencies. As far as alerts, we automatically got alerts when soneone tried to access our credit. I think that's all we need. But still interested in knowing what is the difference in these two leading brands.
Nice work on those scores! Lifelock has always seemed kind of gimmicky to me, but who knows. Hopefully someone who's used it will roger up.

I Always thought the same after the CEO of lifelock had his identity stolen 13 times, maybe more, when it challenged it couldn't. I believe he put his SS# on a side of a bus or something. Want a cheaper way just Freeze your reports.. And add the alerts you'd been doing.

Re: myFICO vs. LIfeLock?

TC1223 — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 07:46:36 GMT

CaptainJ, myFICO sent me the detected inquiries through my email. At that time, I was only subscribed to 3-B credit monitoring because I had LifeLock too. In my case, myFICO was pretty instantaneous with the update, because when I called the creditors, they mentioned that it had been less than 8 hours since the thief had apped using my info.

But, I agree with you saying that the "monitoring" services are useless. They need to be taken with a grain of salt. I was pretty pissed at LifeLock, first, because it took them a whole 2 days to detect an inquiry that I already called about, closed, and had a follow-up letter sent to each of the creditors' fraud departments. So, essentially, these "monitoring" services are just there to dial the phone number for us.

So, for the time being, I'm trying myFICO's version, but if that ends up being like LifeLock, it'll get cancelled too and I'll just go back to my credit monitoring subscription.

Re: myFICO vs. LIfeLock?

Anonymous — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 09:50:31 GMT

@TC1223 wrote:
CaptainJ, myFICO sent me the detected inquiries through my email. At that time, I was only subscribed to 3-B credit monitoring because I had LifeLock too. In my case, myFICO was pretty instantaneous with the update, because when I called the creditors, they mentioned that it had been less than 8 hours since the thief had apped using my info.

But, I agree with you saying that the "monitoring" services are useless. They need to be taken with a grain of salt. I was pretty pissed at LifeLock, first, because it took them a whole 2 days to detect an inquiry that I already called about, closed, and had a follow-up letter sent to each of the creditors' fraud departments. So, essentially, these "monitoring" services are just there to dial the phone number for us.

So, for the time being, I'm trying myFICO's version, but if that ends up being like LifeLock, it'll get cancelled too and I'll just go back to my credit monitoring subscription.

Thank you for the reply and the information, I appreciate it. I'm glad that the service you had at the time worked well for you.

I try to keep my mind off of worrying, because it isn't healthy. I suppose I just got ticked off at how Myfico alerted me of online activity and then left me with absolutely nothing to do other than worry. I might have been better off without seeing those alerts, in my case, as opposed to yours. Maybe we can hear some more good stories and I will feel a bit better about things.

Re: myFICO vs. LIfeLock?

driftless — Fri, 21 Jul 2017 12:59:10 GMT

I appreciate this thread. I have the myFico Ultimate 3B service and I have wondered if others have found it effective. I started the service mainly to receive my credit reports but for the same price as LifeLock it made sense to use the ID protections as well. Because of my earlier credit woes I compuslively check my account every morning.