Experian IdentityWorks has been growing in popularity over time. It is an identity protection product offered by the credit reporting company Experian. Aside from IdentityWorks, Experian also offers other credit monitoring and protection services as well as financial education resources.
Introduction: What Is The Experian Identityworks About?
Experian Identityworks works as a service to help protect users from scams. As a credit card user, one of the major risks you face is the stealing of your credit cards.
Since these cards have access to your account and a lot of scammers have learnt how to bypass OTP where applicable, Experian Identityworks exists as a service to help protect you.
Identity theft protection services like Experian Identityworks empower individuals to stay steps ahead of fraudsters and criminals who want to get access to their data and money.
Advantages:-
Some of the advantages of Experian Identityworks over others include;
- They offer a free Basic plan.
- There is a free 7-day trial for their basic plans.
Also, it might be worth noting that all their plans include Experian credit reports, FICO Scores and dark web surveillance.
Disadvantages:-
Some of the things I think they should improve on include;
- They have limited customer service.
- Their services do not prevent ID theft, they just identify potential suspicious activity.
Also, the Free Basic plan does not include TransUnion and Equifax credit report monitoring.
Experian Identityworks Cost and Membership Plans
The membership plans for Experian Identityworks range from $0 to $34.99 a month. They offer resolution support and identity theft insurance with paid plans.
With the free Basic plan, you will get alerted to potential fraud through their credit monitoring service.
Can I trust Experian IdentityWorks?
Well, yes. Aside from the disadvantages I listed above, the services provide users with a financial sense of security.
It is one of the best identity theft protection services you can patronise and even on the free plan you still get to enjoy a lot of benefits.
In fact, even without signing up for IdentityWorks, you still benefit from these things from Experian at no cost;
- Dispute filing
- Credit report monitoring
- Security freezes
- Experian Boost
- Experian credit report and FICO score (every 30 days)
- Personal privacy scan (free one time)
- Dark Web triple-scan (free one time)
For the Experian IdentityWorks Basic plan, users will get it for free. Its competitor, the IdentityGuard goes for $8.99 per month or $80 per year.
Other services like the LifeLock by Norton will cost you $11.99 monthly or $89.99 annually while McAfee costs $49.99 annually.
Conclusion
Experian IdentityWorks’ Basic plan works just well to protect you. You can however upgrade to premium to enjoy additional services and alerts.
It will cost you around $24.99 or $34.99 a month to access their monitoring and alerts for a variety of suspicious activities, including dark web activity and financial account takeovers.
The downside however is that they do not have a very active customer care and it is a huge issue for a security company. Some other users also pointed out issues like difficulty unfreezing credit reports and inability to reach a live agent.
Another major legal issue is that on signing up for the service, you lose the right to sue the company in court over any incorrect information on your credit report.
Whether the free or premium plans, you will get to enjoy;
- Experian credit monitoring and alerts
- Experian credit reports
- Free personal privacy scan
- Free dark web surveillance report
- FICO score monitoring
- FICO score tracker
To sign up, all you need to do is provide the last four digits of your Social Security number together with your phone number.
You will also need to submit a brief registration form with your contact information.
