After you Sign Up for the service, LifeLock will register you for its fraud alerts with all the credit bureaus within 12 hours. You'll also gain access to all the benefits of LifeLock membership immediately, including free copies of your credit reports from the three credit bureaus and from the check reporting service, ChexSystems. These reports will arrive within a week of enrollment and will confirm that your alerts are set and working for each of the agencies.
The LifeLock alert will be seen by any creditor who opens your credit report before giving you (or an imposter) credit in your name. Any bank, credit card or other business which receives a request for credit from you will see this flag on your file; to extend you credit or approve you, they'll have to call you to confirm that you have indeed requested credit from them. So in other words, when a thief seven states away tries to open a credit card in your name, you'll get a call on your home phone about it and be able to decline the request. The thief won't be able to finish opening that account or any other. To be easily reached when you need credit, you can make your contact number in your file your cell phone number.
LifeLock's product differs significantly from Credit Monitoring services of banks and credit bureaus, which let you know that a security breach has occurred after the fact. LifeLock prevents the identity fraud from occurring in the first place. By the time Credit Monitoring services tell you what has happened, the damage has been done. LifeLock is also different in that it is the only service that specifically monitors the credit reports of children, checking for accurate work histories and for Social Security number-related fraud.
