IDShield Reviews

Where Did ID Shield Come From? A Brief History

The service known today as IDShield emerged from a company called LegalShield, a provider that connects people to an affordable and accessible network of law firms for legal representation. As such, IDShield is exceptional when it comes to providing legal help to fraud and identity theft victims.

That said, when it has come to the point that you need legal help, it’s already too late. That’s why LegalShield created IDShield to provide identity protection through identity monitoring, credit monitoring, insurance, and resolution services.

Eventually, IDShield added device and online protection to combat online identity theft. Since 2014, IDShield has added a VPN, anti-malware software, parental control software, and password protection to its list of features. The result is a well-rounded service that proactively protects users from identity theft while keeping legal and financial safety nets in case the protection slips up.

In this review, we’ll give you a complete look at IDShield based on our hands-on test of the service while also comparing it to other similar services we’ve tested.

Choosing a Plan

First things first… we needed to purchase a plan. Note that IDShield offers four different service levels:

• Single bureau monitoring for individuals
• Triple bureau monitoring for individuals
• Single bureau monitoring for families
• Triple bureau monitoring for families

We went with the three-bureau individual plan for $19.95 per month, but it’s nice to know that if we ever wanted to add a kiddo to our plan, we could switch over to a family rate and have everyone covered.

Just to give you an idea of what these price points mean, IDShield is actually at the lower end of the spectrum. A premium service from LifeLock will run you about $30 per month, while a more budget-friendly basic service from Identity Guard will only set you back $9 monthly.

Then you’ve got middle-of-the-road plans from IdentityForce for about $24 monthly. These are some of our top-rated identity theft brands, but all of these services have pros and cons, so it’s best to shop around to make sure you’re getting the best protection for your money.

With this in mind, have a look at our latest roundup of IDShield’s plans and pricing.

IDShield Plans and Pricing

Purchasing Our Plan

We found the initial sign up process to be relatively pain-free and pretty intuitive, but there were a couple of friction points to note.

We started by visiting IDShield’s website. We were greeted with a clean, well-designed site that clearly articulated all of their services, highlighting their continuous monitoring and availability of support staff. So far, so good! There’s also an informative 90-second video that previews everything our plan offered — we really recommend watching this.

IDShield – Product Overview

Once we were comfortable with our understanding of the service, we selected our plan and we were off to the races. At checkout, IDShield gave us what amounted to an itemized receipt, summarizing all of the services we were purchasing. This was a relief, as it’s pretty easy to get lost in the weeds with all of the features these packages tend to offer.

IDShield Monthly Cost

We were also glad to see that IDShield offers a free 30-day trial (we’re always looking out for free trials). Free trials take the edge off the purchase and allow you to try out the service without being married to it. It’s a big deal, especially since IDShield’s trial is 30 days. While many similar services offer free trials, like Aura, for instance, it’s usually just a seven- or 14-day trial. With IDShield, you have more time to decide if the service is right for you.

Once we locked in our plan, the first thing IDShield asked us to do was create our account by giving them some pretty standard information like our email address, our physical location, and our social security number.

Once we finished there, we ended up on a purchase confirmation page, and the next steps weren’t super clear. About halfway down the page, there was a button that said “activate protection” that we needed to click to fully activate the service we purchased. So keep an eye out for this button.

IDShield – Activate Protection

After clicking that, we were asked to verify our email address by clicking through on a message sent to us. The email ended up in our spam folder, so make sure you check there before you get too frustrated thinking the email didn’t send.

IDShield – Activate Protection

We were then prompted to further secure our account using three security questions. This is pretty standard for these services, although we have to say some of the provided questions were pretty entertaining. First kiss? Oh, sigh. We haven’t thought about that in years.

IDShield – List of Security Questions

Once our questions and answers were set, we were prompted to log into our account. But first, we were asked to enter our member ID number, which we didn’t realize had been provided a few screens back. If you end up in this predicament, it’s no big deal. Just click on “already have an account” and you can log in using your email address and the password you created.

And there you have it! Within 5 minutes our IDShield set up was complete, at which point we navigated to our dashboard where we could fiddle with the knobs and dials of our new protection plan. Let’s get into all those features in-depth now. We think you’ll like what we found.

Our Full Experience Using IDShield

First off, we loved the functionality and intuitive nature of IDShield’s dashboard. All of our features and services were at our fingertips, and nothing felt overwhelming or out of place. There’s a logical flow that tells us IDShield really put some consideration into designing their user experience. We’ve used plenty of ID theft protection services, and we must say, this was a breath of fresh air.

IDShield Homepage

Note that the dashboard is split up into two categories: credit monitoring and identity monitoring. Each category has elements that we needed to set up, so let’s quickly walk through that now.

First off, we wanted to address everything in our notifications window. That meant setting up our financial account monitoring, our social media monitoring, and our sex offender monitoring.

The first was easy enough. We entered our banking credentials and selected the accounts we wanted to monitor. We really liked how easy the service was to customize — by clicking “edit thresholds” we were able to set exactly how and when IDShield would alert us. For instance, we were able to set up alerts to be notified when a transaction occurred for $250 or more on our credit card. This is a great feature that many services simply don’t offer.

IDShield Financial Account Thresholds

These alerts work really well. After setting them up, we started to get notifications when large purchases were made on our credit cards or when one of our account balances got a little low. Granted, we weren’t notified of anything we weren’t aware of, but it was reassuring to know that if someone was using our accounts without our permission, we’d know about it immediately.

Next, we set up our social media monitoring. Again, we were pleased to find this service was highly customizable as well. After linking our Facebook account with their third-party vendor ZeroFOX, we were able to select exactly what IDShield would monitor for under the “custom social media settings” tab.

After looking at the options, we went with the recommended settings for an adult individual, excluding things like profanity and explicit content. However, if we were monitoring a minor’s account, we could see how turning these options on would be beneficial.

IDShield Social Media Settings

Finally, we set up our sex offender monitoring. This service gave us a list of registered sex offenders near our home address, and the monitoring tool gave us the location of the offender, what they were charged with, and their image. Luckily, we only had three living in a one-mile radius. Although it didn’t happen while we were using the service, IDShield said we would receive an alert if a new registered offender relocated nearby.

IDShield Sex Offender Registries

Once we were done with that, we noticed in the notifications area that IDShield found some exposure of our personal data on the Internet. Uh oh — better look into that.

Luckily, all of our exposures were pretty common; mostly they were issues having to do with our user name on various websites. By looking through the information on the types of monitoring IDShield is performing, we understood that these exposures weren’t necessarily a problem, but it’s reassuring to know they’re keeping an eye on it for us.

IDShield Dark Web Alerts

After reviewing these exposures, we were done with all the items in our notifications window. Now we could drill down into setting the rest of the service to our linking.

The first place we started was entering more of our sensitive information into the Internet and Dark Web monitoring section. Note that the Dark Web is vast, so we want to be extra safe in this regard.3 Here are the Internet and Dark Web monitoring options that ID Shield presented to us.

IDShield Monitoring

After that, we were ready to set up one of the marquee services of IDShield, their three-bureau credit monitoring. While their basic plan monitors Transunion, for 4 bucks more per month IDShield will watch all three — Transunion, Equifax and Experian. In our opinion, it’s more than worth it to kick in the extra cash for the added assurance that if anything is amiss with any reporting agency, we were going to know about it before it became too big of a problem.

Keep in mind that three-bureau credit monitoring includes monthly credit score reports from all three bureaus. For $19.99 per month, that’s a generous offer. Just for comparison, LifeLock provides annual three-bureau credit reports and scores for $34.99 per month, while Aura offerst the same for $20 per month. Both are two of our favorite services, but the fact remains that in terms of credit monitoring, IDShield is more affordable and is able to provide credit score reports more frequently.

To set up the credit monitoring service, we were first asked to answer three security questions. IDShield notes that some of these questions are purposefully deceptive, and to select the answer that is most appropriate, even if it’s “I don’t know.” For example, we never owned a 1993 Dodge pickup (sneaky, right?), so we selected “I have never been associated with this vehicle.”

IDShield Credit Monitoring

Once we answered the questions, our credit monitoring was activated. On the dashboard we were able to see our credit score, and clicking on the monthly score tracker, we could see how our credit score changes over time. As you probably know, changes in your credit score is a key indicator of identity theft, and unanticipated changes need to be investigated. So we think you’ll like this feature.

Remember, with IDShield you’ll have access to 24/7 professional support as well as unlimited restoration services. While other services offer similar protections, we must say that’s significant peace of mind for less than $20 per month.

Once we had the credit monitoring set up, we wanted to explore some of IDShield’s bells and whistles. We started with Court Records Monitoring, which is a nice feature, but it’s not necessarily something we have to have.

IDShield Court Record Monitoring

This feature monitors our identity for new criminal activity, including citations, arrest records, traffic offenses, and felonies at the city, county, and state level. Luckily, nothing suspicious showed up in our name (phew!), but even if it did, IDShield says don’t fret. You see, the court records they recover can contain errors, especially if they’re older. What you really need to watch out for is an alert that is totally unrecognizable. If you see that, IDShield says you should call them immediately so they can start an investigation.

The same was true for IDShield’s public records monitoring service. The system scans public records for new addresses or phone numbers associated with our identity. While nothing showed up in this category for us, IDShield said we should only be concerned if there are multiple names or addresses that we didn’t recognize. We can vouch that this is pretty standard in the industry. Not every little finding is worth stressing over.

IDShield Public Records Monitoring

There are also a few perks to choosing IDShield, one of which is their new reputation management service. Think of this as a more robust version of their social media monitoring functionality. Do we think it’s important to have? Well, how important is your reputation to you?

IDShield Privacy Dashboard

We were able to connect to our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts which were then analyzed for various descriptors — mostly looking for negative or offensive content. We mostly behave like perfect angels on social media, but we weren’t surprised that IDShield found a few posts we needed to review. Guess we need to tread lightly in comments sections from now on.

IDShield Facebook account Connection

As a subset of this service, IDShield offers help with managing your privacy on various social media channels. By clicking “view guide” we were able to select which platform we wanted to know more about. Since a lot of these are pretty obtuse in their privacy language, it was really helpful to get crystal clear instructions on how to best protect ourselves on these platforms.

IDShield Facebook Account Privacy

Another benefit that comes with IDShield is their Member Perks program. Once we set up our account, we were provided various discounts with a myriad of retailers and services. Pretty nice!

IDShield Discounts

Overall, we’d say that IDShield covered all the basics and necessities when it comes to identity protection, with an extra helping of add-on features on the side. While these extra features do make the service a little harder to use, they give you options and they help you personalize your experience with IDShield.

Is your name just a little bit too common? Use public records monitoring. Are you worried about your kids’ safety? Try sex offender monitoring. Those features may not be necessary for everyone, but they may come in handy for some.

To cap off and summarize the features section of our review – we know we threw a lot of information your way – let’s fire through some quick facts about IDShield’s features.

Finally, now that everything was set up to our liking, we wanted to explore IDShield’s app a little. We’re not always sitting at our computer, so it’s helpful to know we’ll be alerted to specific activity on our smartphone if anything ever goes wrong.

Going Mobile with IDShield

When we first logged in, we were asked if we wanted to set up two-factor authentication. Once we selected our pin and provided our fingerprint, we were taken to a tutorial. We always appreciate a good tutorial. Even if a service is pretty straight-forward, a quick walkthrough always helps us orient ourselves. So we definitely recommend using it.

IDShield Credit Score

After swiping through the tutorial’s slides, we were happy to find the app was simple, clean, and well-designed. Sometimes with these services the app can feel like an afterthought, but it’s clear IDShield put some thought into theirs beyond just porting over their web-based dashboard.

On the home page, right there in the center, was our credit monitoring functionality. And in the menu tab, we could drill down into each individual monitoring function. We were able to set up our notifications there, too, so we were sure that we’d be aware of any suspicious activity. Overall, the app experience was exactly what we were looking for.

It’s also worth noting that IDShield’s apps have received excellent ratings from users. The app has a 4.6 and 4.8 rating on Google Play and App Store, respectively.

The Takeaway on IDShield

Overall, we were more than pleased with IDShield’s service. The website was easy to navigate, the app was intuitive, and the functionality was robust. While using IDShield we were confident in the company’s ability to monitor our identity, credit, and finances. And we were comforted knowing that if something happened, we’d be covered. That feeling of security is what we’re always looking for in these services, and IDShild never gave us a reason to second guess its capacities.

While it might not be our top pick for identity theft protection (that would be Identity Guard), we do think IDShield brings a lot to the table for a reasonable price. For a sub-$20 service, you really can’t go wrong here.

IDShield FAQs