Few of us realize how dangerous the internet can be. Knowingly or unknowingly, we disclose a lot of our personal information to platforms, including our names, location, contact information, Social Security, and even credit card information. This makes us highly vulnerable to identity theft and other cybercrimes. That’s why identity monitoring is important.

In this review, we’ll examine one of the most popular identity monitoring solutions known as IDShield.

Overview

IDShield offers privacy and security monitoring, along with restoration and consultation services. It’s a leading division of LegalShield, which offers identity theft protection as well as legal services.

With more than 1 million subscribers, IDShield relies on licensed, full-time private investigators that can be contacted via a mobile app, any time. The experts investigate potential fraud and provide people with insurance for identity theft. Not only do you get a free 30-day trial, but every plan comes with $1-million in identity theft protection coverage.

Like any other identity monitoring service, IDShield doesn’t prevent identity theft. Yet, it can alert you when your sensitive information, such as email login credentials, are exposed and help you recover any damages you may suffer as a result. In fact, the program goes the extra mile to even alert you if one of your social media posts can diminish your chances of landing your dream job.

How IDShield Protects Your Identity

IDShield monitors your identity and credit by closely following:

Your Credit Reports

If you invest in a premium plan, you’ll get updates from all three credit bureaus. This includes an updated credit report every year, and your credit scores each month.

Dark Web Monitoring

The dark web is the criminal side of the internet where stolen usernames and passwords are bought and sold. IDShield scans the field and makes sure that you aren’t a victim.

Social Security Numbers

IDShield leverages SSN Skip Trace to find out whether someone other than you is using your Social Security number.

Loans

IDShield monitors online, payday, and rent-to-own loans to detect anyone who attempts to use your information to acquire a loan.

Social Media

If you have a social media presence, IDShield will scan your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram profiles for risks, including information that can hurt your image or reputation. Take a look at this guide to learn more about ID Shield social media monitoring.

Telecom

This is one of the unique features of IDShield, which monitors all phone records to ensure that no one is attempting to redirect your phone number to another number or tries to open another account with your contact information. This feature is super useful if you have a landline number.

In addition to the items stated above, IDShield also monitors public records, court records, medical data reports, and more as part of their identity monitoring service.

IDShield Plans

All plans offered by IDShield include credit monitoring, including dark web surveillance and the use of your Social Security number. They’ll monitor your financial account such as your 401(k), alert you when a sex offender moves in or out of your neighborhood, and provide unlimited identity theft consultations. Take a look at this breakdown of the plans offered by IDShield:

Individual Plans

As an individual, you can either choose one major credit bureau, that is, TransUnion, or all three that include TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax. The two plans cost $13.95 and $17.95 per month, respectively. The latter option happens to be most useful.

Family Plans

Again, you get to choose from one or three-bureau credit monitoring options that cost $26.95 and $32.95 per month, respectively. Regardless of the option you choose, the same coverage will extend to a partner and to a maximum of 10 dependent children.

What’s Missing In IDShield?

Removal of Sensitive Information from the Internet

Even though IDShield offers the ‘data broker deletion’ feature, it doesn’t guarantee permanent removal of your personal information from the broker. It’s true that the investigators track and manually remove the information, but data brokers go on to republish your data sometime after the deletion.

OneRep is thus a much better alternative, which doesn’t just remove sensitive data for people’s search sites, but it also runs continual scans to keep removing personally identifiable information in case it reappears.

Easy Cancellation

While you can update your plan with a single click, cancellation isn’t as simple. You need to connect with a customer service agent to get that done. This reminds us of another missing feature (mentioned below).

24/7 Support

12-hour support sounds okay unless you recall that it’s an identity monitoring service that you’ve signed up for. Given the sensitive nature of the service, you expect 24/7 support, so you can immediately notify the service provider when an issue arises.

IDShield Pros and Cons

Pros

• Affordable plans for both individuals and families
• It comes with a free 30-day trial
• Outstanding coverage for credit and identity monitoring ($1 million)
• Ten different kinds of alerts
• Incredible social media monitoring
• Family plan coverage extent to 10 dependable children

Cons

• No 24/7 support
• It doesn’t guarantee permanent, automatic removal of personal information from the internet
• It doesn’t offer insights into how your financial choices can impact your credit scores
• Difficult to cancel
• Pricing is higher than some other identity theft monitoring companies

Final Verdict

In summary, IDShield offers fairly comprehensive identity and credit monitoring services for families and individuals. It’s certainly more expensive than several other identity theft companies, but the value you derive is superior to most.

However, if you strongly suspect that your personal information is there on people’s search sites and your identity is being misused, consider a more robust solution that continually deletes your data from time to time. If a data broker republishes your data that was previously deleted by IDShield, the program may not detect this activity. Because OneRep fills that gap, it’s a much better fit for the job.