I saw this article the other day in Wired magazine and it reminded me of how important security is while shopping online even if you have additional measures in place to help protect your identity from being stolen.  The article basically details how LifeLock’s CEO, Todd Davis, may get the worst marketing move of the decade award for publishing his Social Security Number in the ads for their product and on highway billboards in order to prove that their product will keep online shopper’s identities secure.

Sure enough, 2 years later and his identity has been “stolen” an unbelievable 13 times!  To be fair, it sounds like his identity may not have been “stolen” necessarily but his Social Security Number was used to fraudulently open a bunch of cell phone accounts and then they went into collection when they were never paid on.  I think some additional research needs to be done here on these cell phone company’s account creation policies because if someone can just write a social security number and name down on a form that isn’t theirs and walk out of the store with a cell phone and active account that may be another issue.

So back to the CEO of LifeLock…I guess the two lessons here are obvious but big ones: 1) Never under any circumstances allow your Social Security Number to get in the wrong hands online or in a store as the consequences are dire.  2) Don’t use LifeLock.  Sorry, this may be a great product but I can’t put my faith in a company that has a CEO that is this dumb/cocky.

By the way, LifeLock also has a few pending legal matters in the courts since they also claimed that if anyone used their product and still had their identities stolen that they would give them $1 million.  Apparently a few people used Lifelock’s product and still had their identities stolen, but Lifelock doesn’t want to cough up the cash.  I guess all these consumers would have had to do in order to get the $1 million without any complaints from LifeLock would have been to publish their Social Security Numbers on a billboard!

Tweet This Post

Tags: Identity Fraud, Identity Theft, Lifelock, Online Shopping Tips

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010 at 6:05 am and is filed under Online & Small Business Resources, Small Business, Small Business Tips, shopping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.