![]() ![]() PrivacyGuard is rated 2 out of 5 stars from the Consumer Affairs website. The companies, however, have a spotty record for service, and in 2013, Affinion paid $30 million to 47 states in cases related to unauthorized charges, and deceptive billing and collection practices. There's no Better Business Bureau rating for PrivacyGuard or its corporate parent, Trilegiant/Affinion Group. PrivacyGuard can be set up to monitor the Social Security numbers of up to 10 children for indications of fraud or misuse, but that's a far cry from the family plans that some other identity-protection services offer. The PrivacyGuard website felt sluggish, with pages taking 10 to 15 seconds to load.Īt the moment, there's no stand-alone family plan to protect family members, nor any way to add family members to an existing individual account. We'll have more details about these apps in our next PrivacyGuard review. When we first published this review, PrivacyGuard's mobile apps consisted of a Digital Protection app for both iOS and Android, and a "mobile secure keyboard" for iOS only. PrivacyGuard now has full iOS and Android apps that are meant to replicate all the functions of the desktop browser interface. Only the ID Protection and Total Protection plans get the $1 million insurance, however. As with LifeLock Ultimate Plus, you get Norton Security Online antivirus protection, but it can be used on only one Windows system, rather than LifeLock's five-system license for all major platforms.Īll three plans include secure browser extensions for Windows and fraud resolution support in case of identity theft. PrivacyGuard's flagship Total Protection plan costs $24.99 per month and combines the ID Protection and Credit Protection plans. There are also excellent credit simulators and financial calculators to make every dollar count. VantageScore scores are used by some lenders to assess creditworthiness, but they're not as widely used as the rival FICO credit-scoring model. You'll also get VantageScore 3.0 credit scores based on each bureau's files every month. That's not quite the same as getting the official credit reports from each bureau, but it will tip you off to anything new. There's no credit monitoring with this plan at all, but that might be fine if you own your own home and don't plan to get new credit cards or a new car.īy contrast, the Credit Protection plan ($19.99 per month) focuses on credit monitoring and provides access to a "merged" credit report, updated monthly, that combines information from your files at the Big Three credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. The company provides up to $1 million in restitution to help get your lost money and digital identity back. It aims to prevent identity theft by scanning the open and dark web for signs of your personal data. PrivacyGuard's ID Protection plan starts at $9.99 a month, matching LifeLock's basic Standard plan. There's a two-week trial period for any of the three plans that costs all of $1, but there's no discount for paying for a year up front. PrivacyGuard offers a basic plan that focuses on identity protection, a more expensive plan that focuses on credit monitoring, and a premium plan that combines the two. I used them all for nearly three months with daily monitoring of alerts and reports. In early 2019, I registered and paid for PrivacyGuard's Total Protection package, along with four competing services. PrivacyGuard has some of the best utilities and extras in the business. ![]()
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