We took another close look at the pros and cons of how Debix and LifeLock products work to protect you.
There were federal laws enacted in 2003 to protect against others ordering credit in your name. The secret to making this work is to place alerts on all the major credit bureaus. Once this flag is set, any creditors reviewing your file for a new account must, in theory, call you for permission.
As we understand the legislation, should a new account be opened successfully by a credit thief in your name, you would not be liable, because you had not been contacted.
All this makes sense, as far as it goes. No law that is designed to fit everyone is going to be perfect. Credit protection, is a rapidly shifting area of expertise and the enacted law is a very good start. One thing that will never change, in our opinion, is that employees, especially in large administrative environments, make mistakes.
Both Companies place the alerts on your credit files with the major bureaus, so far, so good. Where Debix pulls ahead, is that they add a “call us†to the notice. The result is a more pro-active process whereby the credit bureau must make contact with Debix at the time of the credit request. The result is that Debix chases you down (very efficiently) to ask if you initiated the request.
The reason we feel this is so important is as follows.
With Lifelock a bogus request is designed to be enforced essentially at the credit bureau level. If someone makes a mistake and the credit gets issued you will be in the right and be able to clean it up but at what cost?
With Debix, the verification process puts you in control to say yes or no at the time of application.
In our book, the Debix system is more mistake proof in an identity theft attempt.