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InfoArmor Allstate Identity Protection vs. Identity Guard: A Comparison of Modern Protection

allstate

An excellent choice for individuals and small families. Allstate provides monitoring of your credit and financial accounts with alerts.

  • Fully managed identity recovery experts help you recover your identity quickly
  • Credit monitoring at 1 credit bureau provides alerts
  • Theft insurance of up to $1 million and up to $500,000 in stolen fund reimbursement

Ideal for individuals and families of any size. Children are no extra charge, and you receive top-of-the-line monitoring and alerts.

  • Fully managed identity recovery with the top-tier plan
  • State-of-the-art scanning and alert system, with $1 million in theft insurance
  • Full 3-bureau credit and financial account monitoring

The many uses for and conveniences of technology continue to expand. Technology has blended our identities into the digital realm, making our information more accessible to criminals. To combat the theft of our identities, we need to remain vigilant and continually monitor our information. The difficulty in monitoring is that there is simply too much to look through on our own.

Technology exists that can scan the internet for our information and monitor our accounts and credit for us. In Allstate Identity Protection vs. IdentityGuard, we’ll examine these identity protection technology suites to help you decide which provider might be right for you.

Allstate vs. Identity Guard: Comparison

WHAT YOU GET

ALLSTATE

IDENTITY GUARD

Coverage

  • 4 adults and all children that are financially supported
  • Adults and children

Insurance

  • Up to $1 million
  • Up to $1 million

Identity Theft Protection

  • Social media monitoring
  • Dark web monitoring
  • Data breach alerts
  • Email scanning
  • Bank and retirement account monitoring
  • Identity theft risk report
  • Lost wallet assistance
  • Risk management report
  • Data breach alerts
  • Dark web monitoring
  • Bank and investment account monitoring
  • Court documents, criminal records, and sex offender monitoring

Identity Restoration

  • Up to $500,000 in stolen fund reimbursement
  • Up to full identity restoration assistance

Credit Monitoring

  • Up to full identity restoration assistance
  • Credit file monitoring of up to 3 bureaus with alerts

QUICK FACE-OFF

Similarities

  • Both companies analyze the information and accounts you provide to them for monitoring, send you a report highlighting your risk of identity theft, and recommend actions you can take to mitigate it.
  • Identity theft recovery assistance is available, up to a fully managed identity recovery that does everything for you.
    Different plans allow you to tailor coverage for individual or family needs.
  • Your social media accounts can be monitored for takeovers.
  • Options to monitor all of your financial, retirement, and investment accounts for activity and receive alerts.
    The dark web is scanned by artificially intelligent software to look for your information on known exchanges.
  • Both companies monitor and scan corporate and government data breaches to see if your information is included. If it is, you’re notified and covered.
  • Support is available 24 hours a day.
  • Neither supplies device security options nor antivirus protection.
  • Mobile apps provide alerts and actions that let you monitor and react to situations on-the-go.
  • High-risk transaction monitoring is watching bank accounts for primary account holder name changes, significant fund transfers, or look for accounts created in your name for illegal payments and transfers.
    Your credit file at 1 or more credit bureaus is monitored for attempts to access your credit.

Differences

  • Allstate credit monitoring only watches your credit file at 1 credit bureau, while IdentityGuard scans up to 3 bureaus.
  • All of IdentityGuard’s plans offer up to $1 million in insurance coverage, including stolen funds and costs.
  • Allstate provides up to $1 million to cover expenses in addition to stolen funds coverage of up to $500,000.
  • Allstate scans your social media account for unethical content, bullying, or otherwise threatening behavior oriented toward you to protect your reputation.
  • Your tax refund is flagged by Allstate if someone filed fraudulently for you.
  • Lost wallet assistance is offered by Allstate that can initiate freezes on stolen credit and debit cards and help you replace your license and identity cards.
  • Opt-out of solicitation by lenders, email scammers, and scam phone calls with Allstate’s services.
  • IdentityGuard provides a browser plugin for safe browsing. Allstate doesn't have any device security tools.
  • Allstate promises quick identity restoration with identity monitoring, which stores a snapshot of your identity at specific intervals to allow for rapid restoration.
  • Allstate’s premium plan lets you jump to the head of the line when calling for support.
  • Credit card monitoring from Allstate confirms that transactions are yours and not fraudulent.

Allstate Identity Protection Features and Services

Coverage

With Allstate ID Protection (AIP), you can cover up to 4 adult family members and unlimited children, provided that you financially support them. Adults and dependent children over 18 must enroll and verify their information independently if they are covered under your plan.

Insurance

Allstate Identity Protection offers identity theft protection insurance covers up to $1 million in fees associated with identity theft. Lawyers, experts, replacement documents, or any other cost related to theft is included. Additionally, AIP covers any stolen funds up to $500,000.

Identity Theft Protection and Restoration

Your financial accounts are monitored for activity to alert you if you did not initiate it. If you become a victim of identity theft, AIP’s restoration experts do everything that doesn’t have to be done explicitly by you, speeding up your recovery time and allowing you to get back to your life.

Continuous monitoring of your identity allows AIP to store what is a picture of your identity that enables them to recover your identity more quickly than if they had to reconstruct your identity from scratch.

Credit Monitoring

Theft protection is provided by monitoring your credit file for attempts to access your credit. You receive notices if lenders initiate credit inquiries or if your file changes. 

Plans and Pricing

Essentials Plan

AIPs lowest-tier plan is comprehensive with insurance, identity, essential financial monitoring, web scanning, and credit monitoring. Identity monitoring is included in this basic plan, enhancing your recovery if you become a victim. The individual plan costs $9.99 per month, and the Allstate Identity Protection family plan costs $18.99 per month.

Premier Plan

The Premier plan adds financial account and investment monitoring, social media account features, and tax fraud help to the Essentials plan. You’ll receive front of the line privileges with the Premier plan. The plan runs $17.99 per month for an individual and $34.99 for a family.

Pros and Cons

PROS

  • Comprehensive coverage in both plans works to keep your identity safe.
  • Choosing the lower-tiered plan doesn’t reduce your protection; it only omits nice-to-haves.
  • The identity monitoring feature to speed up recovery isn’t seen in many protection suites.
  • Pricing is attractive and low for the features within each plan.
  • Allstate Digital Footprint lists your online accounts, alerting you if there is a breach.
  • Separating theft recovery expenses and stolen funds is a significant enhancement of protection.
  • Both plans include full-service identity restoration, where some providers charge extra for it.
  • Receive support for any problems 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
  • Convenient Allstate Identity Protection app.

CONS

  • AIP offers no device protections to help keep mobiles and personal computers safe.
  • No virtual private network is provided for anonymous web browsing.
  • No option to receive 3-bureau credit monitoring, reports, or alerts.
  • AIP’s website has confusing wording in their FAQs about coverage.
  • Priority members might take assistance away from someone with a critical issue.
  • Your medical identification number is not monitored and can be used without detection.
  • If Allstate is breached, all of your information is available for thieves.
  • Consumers can conduct many of the services provided for free.
  • The gap between stolen fund reimbursement in the two plans is very large.

Find out more unique features of Infoarmor.

Identity Guard Features and Services

Coverage

IdentityGuard coverage extends to individuals and families, with protection added for children at an affordable cost. Most notable of its services is the risk management report, which analyzes your accounts and identity security and indicates the risks that you’re most vulnerable to.

The lowest-tiered plan includes web monitoring, data breach notices, and high-risk transaction alerts. Each plan builds on the lowest plan coverage by adding credit monitoring and different financial account monitoring levels and alerts.

Insurance

Each of the IdentityGuard identity theft protection plans provides up to $1 million in coverage for expenses related to identity theft. Expenses can include legal fees, stolen funds, theft expert fees, lost wages (5 weeks only), child care, and travel expenses.

Identity Theft Protection and Restoration

If your identity is stolen, IdentityGuard’s customer care team guides through the steps of restoring your identity. The Ultra package is the only one that provides more assistance in restoring your identity.

Credit Monitoring

Identity Guard credit monitoring is the backbone of protection. There is no known method of preventing identity theft, so we are limited to alerts and taking action. Credit fraud via opening new accounts is one of the most used identity theft tactics.

The lowest-tier plan from IdentityGuard doesn’t include credit monitoring, while the upper 2 do. With credit monitoring, you receive alerts when attempts are made to access your credit. 

Find out more about Identity Guard credit monitoring.

Pricing and Plans

Value Plan

The individual plan costs $8.99 per month and $90 annually. You can select an IdentityGuard family plan from the Value plan for $14.99 per month or $150 annually.

Total Plan

The Total plan adds credit protection to the Value plan for $19.99 per month or $200.04 annually. You can select a family plan from the Total Plan for $29.99 per month or $300 per year.

Ultra Plan

The Ultra plan, weighing in with 18 features, comes with a price tag of $29.99 per month or $300 annually for an individual. The Ultra family plan costs $39.99 per month or $399.96 per year.

Pros and Cons

PROS

  • Dark web scanning for every plan. This is excellent —it’s hard to do yourself.
  • High-risk transaction monitoring alerts.
  • The risk management reports let you be proactive with your identity instead of reactive.
  • Data breach notifications can get to you much faster than they usually would.
  • There is too much to do on your own. IdentityGuard automates it all for you.
  • IdentityGuard app is convenient.
  • IdentityGuard’s suite is full-featured and monitors most methods of identity theft.
  • Large families are covered, with the addition of 1 IDGuard plan per child.
  • Tailor each plan to meet your changing needs.
  • Customer support is available 24 hours a day.

CONS

  • No device protections, like antivirus or virtual private network, is available.
  • Credit monitoring is unavailable in the lowest-tier plan.
  • The safe browsing tool is an extension, and extensions can be hijacked or tampered with.
  • The aggregate insurance amount is $1 million. Stolen funds should be separately counted.
  • No matter how many features you get, there is no preventing identity theft.
  • If IdentityGuard is breached, all of your information is available to thieves.
  • Consumers can accomplish most of the features for free.
  • More expensive than many other identity protection suites available.
  • There is no assistance for tax fraud or refund fraud.
    Your medical identification number is not monitored and can be used without detection.

Conclusion

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With so many identity theft protection services to choose from, it is challenging to decide which one is right for you. You have to determine which providers have what you need, the price they charge, and the benefits you receive for your money. Allstate Identity Protection has some excellent features but won’t cover your entire family if you have more than 4 members, which means you’ll have to purchase extra plans. Any additional charges such as this put even more of a burden on already financially stretched families.

We don’t particularly like the fact that Allstate requires additional credit coverage for a spouse or domestic partner when IdentityGuard offers a family plan for a few dollars more. It also seems as if IdentityGuard is more concerned about the children’s credit since there are affordable plans available for children.

IdentityGuard provides complete, automated identity protection services with the most features of the two compared here. You might pay a few dollars more, but the 3-bureau credit monitoring, family protection, and financial guards that IdentityGuard puts in place make this our choice between AIP and IdentityGuard.

There simply isn’t enough time to work, manage a family, and rest in a day. The daily automated identity scanning and monitoring from IdentityGuard give you the security you need.

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About the Author

Keith Morris is a 20+ year veteran of the security game, with the knowledge and experience to set you on the right track toward personal safety and security. His firm is committed to giving you the tools and know-how to combat any threat to your safety.