Last Updated on August 5, 2023
I enjoyed testing IdentityForce. Weeks of working with it revealed that it’s a good service – one that’s absolutely capable of protecting your identity.
But if you want a product that fully protects your family online – keeping them safe from scammers, hackers, bullies, and identity thieves – I recommend Aura instead.
- You’re short on time and want the best all-in-one award-winning digital solution you can set and forget.
- You have children and want comprehensive tools to protect them from identity thieves to cyber bullies.
- You have assets worth protecting, like a home, so you want a range of digital safety products so you can strike down threats before they happen.
- You want the assurance that should something happen, you have the solution with the best insurance on the market.
- You want peace of mind knowing Aura is always keeping an eye out for you, and their white glove customer service is on standby 24/7/365.
- You’re looking for the most granular credit monitoring service available so you can feel confident that you’ll detect any suspicious activity early on.
- You’re happy to do manual work to keep your identity safe, like emailing data brokers to remove your info.
- You have kids and want a service to look out for them and protect them from cyberbullying and discrimination.
- You don’t currently own a home, so you’re not worried about a spammer changing your home title deed.
Aura offers more tools to protect your family on top of comprehensive and accurate monitoring, 24/7/365 access to a U.S.-based threat resolution team, and theft insurance that increases with each adult you add to your plan.
It’s a full-service digital security solution, while IdentityForce is identity protection with a few extra features.
Because I like Aura so much, I have a promo code you can use as a Family Security Matters reader. And I suggest you use it! It makes Aura far more affordable than IdentityForce.
But if you’re still interested in IdentityForce, I get it. They’re a big name in identity protection and worth considering.
So, let me walk you through what IdentityForce brings to the table. As we cover its many features, I’ll also show you how it compares to other identity protection services (like Aura).
By the time you’re done reading this, you’ll know which service is best for you and your family.
IdentityForce Reviews: In-Depth Features Analysis
Fast Scores
We rank services as either poor, average, great, or excellent. Here’s how IdentityForce fares:
| Monitoring Capabilities | Excellent |
| Ease of Use | Average |
| Insurance | Average |
| Customer Service and Threat Resolution | Excellent |
| Family Plans | Great |
| Online Privacy Features | Average |
| Value | Average |
| Final Score | Great |
Monitoring Capabilities: Excellent
I’ll break IdentityForce’s monitoring services down in detail below, but if you’re looking for the cliff notes, this is it:
IdentityForce’s monitoring capabilities are excellent overall.
The service is accurate, comprehensive, and timely with its alerts, meaning it meets all my expectations for a good identity protection service.
Monitoring Services
To start, let’s look at what IdentityForce includes with its monitoring services. When you sign up for UltraSecure plus Credit (their top-tier plan), you get the following:
There’s only one thing missing on this list – home and auto title monitoring.
While very valuable if you own your home or car, home and auto title monitoring is rarely included (Aura is one of the few services to offer it), so it’s not surprising that IdentityForce misses it. And, I can’t judge them too harshly for not offering it with their plans.
On top of the monitoring tools above, IdentityForce’s top-tier plan offers for following for managing your credit score:
The simulator is a unique tool that allows you to see what might happen to your credit if you take certain actions – like taking out a home mortgage or paying off a credit card.
Unfortunately, IdentityForce’s credit monitoring and credit tools are only available with the top-tier plan. Their lower-level option doesn’t include any credit monitoring.
While you can opt to use a free service like CreditKarma or Experian’s CreditWorks (free plan) to monitor your credit, I find it incredibly convenient to see everything in one place. It helps me stay on top of things, and I imagine I’m not alone.
So, ideally, IdentityForce wouldn’t charge significantly more for credit monitoring. Given their prices (which we’ll get to at the end of this review), I would think credit monitoring could be included with all plans.
Does IdentityForce’s Monitoring Work?
Yes, the real reason IdentityForce scores an excellent rating in this category is that its monitoring services work and work quickly.
Within seconds of signing up for the service, alerts began to pour in. I was amazed at the alacrity and accuracy – it was right in line with what Aura does (something I’ve yet to see another service replicate).
In total, it found eight unique dark web alerts on my information. Each alert was actionable, too – letting me know what information was on the dark web and what to do about it.
Ease Of Use: Average
When it comes to usability, IdentityForce isn’t bad. It avoids the frustrations that many other services seem to almost purposely build in, but it’s also not stellar.
Everything looks a little dated, and during testing, my alerts dashboard quickly filled with “E-mail Address Monitoring Alert” notifications, as you can see above.
To see anything else, I had to click on each alert individually. Using drop-down functionality to show more information is a little more convenient to users (that way, you don’t have to wait for page after page to load).
If I’m being picky, I also think IdentityForce could have made better use of home page space. Lost wallet assistance information is placed prominently and in detail. It feels a little like they’re still trying to sell their services to you, except you already purchased it. A simple lost wallet icon would probably suffice.
Other services use this space to give more monitoring information. They might include your credit score so that you can see it right away. Or, they could use it for a transaction monitoring summary – something you’ll probably want to review each time you log in.
So, overall, IdentityForce’s interface isn’t bad. But it certainly has room to grow.
Insurance: Average
Theft insurance is something almost every identity protection service includes, and frankly, it’s one of the major reasons you should purchase identity theft protection.
There’s a wide range of insurance coverage available, but most services offer $1 million in aggregate coverage for stolen funds, expenses, and legal fees.
IdentityForce is no different than the masses here. They offer $1 million whether you sign up alone or with your family.
The policy looks like this:
The limits on lost wages, travel expenses, and child/elder care are all very normal and included in most policies.
What bothers me about IdentityForce’s coverage is this…
As you’ll come to see later in this review, IdentityForce has really tried to market itself as the best option for families. But, their insurance coverage fails to increase when you add family members to your plan.
Other services that claim to be family-friendly products offer increasing insurance coverage.
Take Aura, for example.
When you sign up for Aura’s family plan, you get $1 million per adult. And, with Aura, you can include up to five adults in your plan. In case you don’t enjoy math – that’s $5 million in coverage!
If IdentityForce wants to compete in the family protection world, it needs to step up its insurance game. For now, it remains perfectly average (which isn’t enough for most families).
Customer Service and Threat Resolution: Excellent
There are several reasons IdentityForce does well in this area:
- They list their customer service and threat resolution contact information in easy-to-find places.
- They offer 24/7 customer service, and in testing, they had an exceptionally fast response time. I called bright and early one Monday morning and reached a helpful representative in under one minute.
- They offer white-glove identity restoration with all plans. This means they’ll handle phone calls and paperwork on your behalf.
- They also offer white-glove identity restoration for your family. Even if you’re not on a family plan, immediate family members have access to IdentityForce’s white-glove restoration services. If you can’t afford to cover your whole family on a family plan, this is a huge plus.
- IdentityForce comes with deceased member fraud remediation. Unfortunately, identity thieves often target the deceased, creating a huge headache for surviving family members. But, with IdentityForce, you don’t have to worry about it.
See what I mean?
It’d be hard to find something to complain about in this area. I’m sure there’s something IdentityForce could be doing better when it comes to threat resolution services, but I’m hard-pressed to figure out what it is!
Identity Force Family Plans: Great
Here’s where things start to get interesting for IdentityForce.
On one level, their family plans are fantastic. They include award-winning child monitoring services and offer decent flexibility with their family plan structures.
But at the same time, IdentityForce tries to push itself as the number one choice for family protection, and there…
I have to disagree. There are much better family protection options available.
But let’s start with the good.
IdentityForce’s ChildWatch service is a great tool for parents who worry about their children on social media. It includes:
As I already hinted, the big selling point here is its social media tools. That’s because ChildWatch monitors for scams, hacked accounts, and what they call “suspicious activity.”
I put that in quotes because when I think of “suspicious activity,” I think of criminal dealings. And while ChildWatch will flag that its monitoring goes far deeper, looking for signs of violence, profanity, drugs, discrimination, and sexually explicit content.
Thoughtfully, IdentityForce allows you to add ChildWatch to any plan for under $3 per month per child. So, if you’re a single parent, you can easily add your children on without purchasing a full-blown family plan.
That’s fantastic, but that’s pretty much all IdentityForce offers families.
Compared to other services, IdentityForce is missing several family-friendly features. As an example, let’s look at what my top pick for identity protection, Aura, offers as a standard with their family plans…
IdentityForce also doesn’t make it easy to sign up a family. For a brief moment in time, IdentityForce featured their family plans on their website.
But I visit their website at least two times a week to review their plan pricing (and ensure my reviews are accurate)…and sadly, IdentityForce seems to have gone back to its old ways – making you call in for family plan pricing.
As a parent myself, I find this practice super annoying. I want to sign up for a service quickly and easily (maybe after reading a few top-notch Family Security Matters reviews). I don’t want to waste time talking to a sales rep on the phone.
And while IdentityForce does make it easier to build a family plan that fits single-parent households, it doesn’t offer quite as much flexibility as other services. With Aura and Identity Guard, for example, you can include up to five adults on a plan.
If you have college-aged kids, aging parents, or dependent siblings, that’s a major plus! And unfortunately, IdentityForce doesn’t offer it. With their plans, children must be under 18 years old.
So, I give IdentityForce a “Great” rating for their unique ChildWatch service, but they’re far from the best pick if you have a family to protect.
Online Privacy Features: Average
More and more identity protection services are choosing to offer online privacy and digital security bundles along with their monitoring and threat resolution packages.
I’ve hinted at this already, but IdentityForce isn’t the cheapest protection service you can purchase. Yet, their online privacy features are far from the best available.
With IdentityForce, you get the following:
They’re great services, but it’s not the longest list of extras I’ve ever seen. For comparison purposes, let’s look at what Aura provides in this category:
That makes it pretty clear, doesn’t it?
IdentityForce’s online privacy features are average at best.
Value: Average
If you’ve been reading carefully, you probably know what I’m going to say about this category…
IdentityForce doesn’t provide the best value.
Their family plans run at $35.90 per month – at least, that’s the current rate. Given that it’s unpublished and you have to call in to get a quote, it’s likely that rate could change at any moment.
Alternatively, you can sign up for an individual plan and add the ChildWatch feature for $2.95 per month per child. Depending on the number of children you have, that may or may not make sense.
No matter how you slice it, those rates are relatively high. And given IdentityForce’s lack of family and online privacy features, it doesn’t make a ton of sense.
What I’m saying is…
You can get more for less with other services (including Aura).
Final Score: Great
Overall, IdentityForce is a great service. It features accurate monitoring and fantastic threat resolution features. But, given its price point, I expect more. That’s why I don’t recommend it to most families.
If you’re trying to protect young children, college-aged children, or your aging parents, there are better services.
Aura is my favorite because it offers everything from award-winning identity theft and credit monitoring to safe gaming with antibullying tools.
Aura does all of this at a price point that makes sense, but you can get it for even less. Using our discount code, you can slash Aura’s typical price down – making it far more affordable than IdentityForce.
IdentityForce isn’t a bad service by any means. But if you want to fully protect your family and you’re looking to save a little money, Aura is the better option.
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