Identity IQ Review: Great Features, Solid Price

Overall Ranking

4.5/5

Overview

Pricing Options

4.5/5

Features

4.5/5

Dedicated Support

5/5

Mobile Accessibility

3.5/5

Identity IQ is a service that will help prevent identity theft. We explore the service to see if it’s worth it.

Chris Muller

Editor's Note

You can trust the integrity of our balanced, independent financial advice. We may, however, receive compensation from the issuers of some products mentioned in this article. Opinions are the author's alone. This content has not been provided by, reviewed, approved or endorsed by any advertiser, unless otherwise noted below.

Identity theft is a massive problem. In fact, the number of consumer complaints relating to identity theft lodged with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission has skyrocketed from around 86,000 in 2001 to 650,000 in 2019, according to Statista.

So naturally, you should consider how to protect yourself. While there are now many options out there, in this article I am going to talk about a newer player to the game–Identity IQ. I’ll cover everything you need to know to determine if they’re the best fit for you.

What is Identity IQ?

Identity IQ is an identity theft protection company that provides a multitude of services to help safeguard you and your family from identity theft. They utilize enhanced monitoring techniques to protect both your identity and your credit. This helps you mitigate the risk of being a victim of identity theft, or if you are a victim, reclaim your identity as quickly as possible.

For preventing identity theft, Identity IQ offers services like credit monitoring, dark web monitoring, and application monitoring. These services take a look at your credit-related actions to make sure you’re not opening yourself up to risk. And on the back-end (meaning, if you are a victim of identity theft), they offer things like personally identifiable information (PII), data breach monitoring, identity theft insurance, and identity restoration.

Identity IQ Features

Below are some of the most important Identity IQ features to help protect you:

Credit Reporting & Score Delivery

We all know how important it is to get a copy of your credit report and make sure things look as they should. The problem is that you can only get one free credit report per reporting bureau every year. Beyond that, you’ll have to pay for a service.

Many services just give you a credit score and a copy of your report. What Identity IQ does, though, is to monitor your credit report for any abnormal changes and alerts you immediately. This helps mitigate any risk early on. Also, you’ll get up to 12 copies of your credit report each year–this way, you can stay on top of everything.

Credit Monitoring

To build off the feature above, Identity IQ offers robust credit monitoring. They monitor your credit daily for things like address changes, personal information changes, new public records, new judgments, and new delinquent accounts.

If any of these items pops up, they catch it right away and tell you. Their U.S.-based service team helps you dig into any inaccuracies and helps you get them fixed right away.

Enhanced Credit Monitoring

The enhanced credit monitoring feature takes the standard credit monitoring to an entirely new level. For example, you’ll get alerted when there’s a 10-point fluctuation (either up or down) in your TransUnion credit score. That kind of jump is significant, so it’s worth knowing what caused it (immediately).

Some of the other monitoring features include foreclosures, collections, charge-offs, lost or stolen cards, new tradelines, closed tradelines, and more. The enhanced monitoring is a great way to stay on top of EVERYTHING going on with your credit profile–and the monitoring is all done for you.

Dark Web Monitoring

The dark web is a portal on the internet that’s accessed securely and anonymously by criminals undertaking criminal activity. I’m not going to go too deep into what the dark web is since it can get pretty dark, but I’ll focus on what Identity IQ can do.

Dark web monitoring is also called cyber monitoring and can pick up traces of evidence if your information is compromised and being sold on the black market. This includes things like your name, social security number, address, credit card number, and other highly-secure information. Identity IQ will monitor this activity through a global search and notify you immediately if anything looks suspicious.

Identity Protection

Identity IQ also offers identity protection, which goes beyond just your credit. For example, someone could steal your identity to commit criminal acts in your name. So, Identity IQ monitors criminal databases for traces of your information.

They’ll also let you know if your Social Security number is used anywhere without your authorization. They go pretty deep with this, using robust databases to monitor and track your information to ensure nothing slips through the cracks.

Application Monitoring

This is another handy feature. In most cases, you don’t know if your identity has been stolen until you see a tradeline on your credit report that you don’t recognize or get an odd bill in the mail.

Identity IQ monitors all types of applications–including utility, payday loans, cell phones, and credit–to make sure your information isn’t being used without your permission. They also help you take action even when your credit isn’t pulled–which might indicate that someone HAS your information and they’re trying to use it.

Identity Theft Insurance

Identity theft can cost you a lot of time and a lot of money. Identity IQ provides up to $1 million in identity theft insurance for the primary member on the account–which will help you cover things like lost wages, legal expenses, and reimbursement of any stolen funds. I can give a personal story to let you know how critical this is.

A friend of mine, years ago, was about to get married. Just before he left on his honeymoon, his identity was stolen, and all of his money was drained from his checking and savings account. It took him months to fight this and get his money back–but this is an excellent example of where Identity IQ can help with stolen funds reimbursement–so you can go on living your life while the issues are resolved.

Identity Restoration

With Identity IQ, you won’t have to restore your identity on your own. If your identity is compromised, Identity IQ provides you with a dedicated case manager to help you every step of the way. I love this since having your identity stolen can be scary and you may not know where to begin.

This means a game plan for how to regain your identity, which may include contacting legal authorities, fixing your credit report, getting legal support, etc. Really, anything that is required to restore your identity, Identity IQ can help connect you with and make sure that it’s all corrected in a timely fashion.

Family Protection

With Identity IQ’s Secure Max Plan, you get an additional $25,000 in identity theft insurance for your children (on top of the $1 million for you). This is important because, sadly, children are vulnerable to identity theft too. If you have a Social Security Number, you’re at risk. It sounds scary, but it happens.

In fact, most of these identity thefts go unnoticed because you’re not exactly pulling a credit report for your toddler, are you? But what’s better is that the protection covers children up to age 24. If your child is under 24 years old, they can still receive the protection–which gets them through most, if not all, of their college years.

Pricing for Identity IQ

Identity IQ features four different plans to choose from, with features for each:

Secure Plan – $6.99 per month

• 1-bureau credit report monitoring
• Dark web and internet monitoring

Best for: Getting just the basics

Secure Plus – $9.99 per month

• Annual 3 bureau credit reports and scores
• 1-bureau credit report monitoring
• Dark web and internet monitoring
• Up to $1 million in stolen funds

Best for: Most individuals who want identity theft protection

Secure Pro – $19.99 per month

• Bi-annual 3 bureau credit reports and scores
• 3-bureau credit report monitoring
• Dark web and internet monitoring
• Up to $1 million in stolen funds reimbursement

Best for: Individuals who want to keep more frequent tabs on their credit

Secure Max – $29.99 per month

• Monthly 3-bureau credit reports and scores
• 3-bureau credit report monitoring
• Dark web and internet monitoring
• Up to $1 million in stolen funds reimbursement

Best for: Families needing protection

Signing Up for Identity IQ

To get started with Identity IQ, it’s pretty simple. First, you’ll head to their sign up page in the upper right corner of the home page (click “Start Membership”):

From there, you’ll fill out your personal information–including your name and address. One thing to notice is that they default you to signing up for their most expensive plan, so you’ll want to make sure you choose the exact plan you want.

After that, you’ll activate the account with a credit card, verify your identity, and begin accessing your benefits.

Once you’re signed up, you’re on Identity IQ’s radar, and they’ll begin monitoring and alerting you of any suspicious activity.

Security

Identity IQ takes security very seriously. Heck, they’re a company that is designed to protect you from identity theft! Identity IQ claims they’ll use their “best efforts to protect and restrict access to your nonpublic personal or business information,” and that they’ll “limit the access of your information to those individuals and entities that need to use it to provide our products or services to you.”

Every piece of information you put into their website is secured through SSL encryption technology. Still, they do state that “no data transmission over the internet or any wireless network can be guaranteed to be 100% secure, and you acknowledge that there are security and privacy limitations of the internet which are beyond our control.”

Meaning – if your information does get hacked, they’re removing their liability. This is actually pretty common nowadays and doesn’t FULLY protect them from lawsuits, but when you put your personal information online, you’re taking some level of risk.

Mobile Support for Identity IQ

There is no mobile app for Identity IQ (yet), but the website works perfectly fine on a mobile device, so you can access your account and related alerts on the go.

Identity IQ Customer Service

Identity IQ doesn’t give hours of availability, but customer service is available for you to call at 877-875-4347. You can also connect with them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Beyond standard customer service, though, remember that you get a personal account manager if your information is stolen and you need to recover your identity. This is one of the best features of their customer service as you get dedicated support.

Pros & Cons

Alternatives to Identity IQ

There are quite a few options for identity theft protection these days. While LifeLock was the biggest name to hit the market, they’re not the only ones. Here are a couple of my favorites.

LifeLock

LifeLock is well-known because they advertise well. They’re a reliable company that offers excellent identity theft protection solutions. Plus, you get Norton 360 with LifeLock, which allows you to protect all of your devices from spyware, viruses, etc.

Related: Is LifeLock Worth It?

Identity Force

Identity Force has been in business for almost 40 years, and they claim to have a 100% success rate in recovering identities. They offer some excellent protection solutions for a reasonable price, but what I like most is their claim to reclaiming identities–since you can’t prevent identity theft.

Learn More: Best Identity Theft Protection Services

Who is Identity IQ For?

With so many options, why would you choose Identity IQ? It really comes down to preference. For the most part, pricing on identity theft protection solutions is going to be pretty close to the same. I don’t know that Identity IQ offers any solutions that you can’t find anywhere else, but for the money, you might be getting the most bang for your buck. If you’re comfortable with a newer player to the game and want to use a service that gets you great features at a reasonable price, this might be for you.

Bottom Line

Overall, I think Identity IQ has a lot to offer. It’s a very competitive space to be in–with so many other companies fighting for your business. They do well, though, offering a lot of the same features as the more mature companies, at a solid price. So if you’re new to ID theft protection, this is probably a good place to start.