Best Identity Theft Protection for Seniors

A free credit freeze at all three bureaus stops new credit accounts being opened in your name, and every adult should have one. These services add what a freeze does not: monitoring of existing accounts, the dark web, court and address records; a person to fix it if something happens; and insurance for stolen funds. If you would not know where to start after a theft, the restoration service is the part worth paying for.

Mostly expenses — legal fees, lost wages, document replacement — up to the limit. Reimbursement of stolen funds is a separate, often lower limit (Aura and LifeLock Ultimate Plus cover up to $1 million in stolen funds on their top plans; several services cap it at $25,000–$100,000). Read the summary of benefits.

Three-bureau monitoring catches an account opened with a lender that reports to only one bureau. Cheaper plans monitor one bureau; in our test the address-change and new-account events were caught faster by three-bureau plans.

We enrol the same consenting team member on each service, then trigger six events: a soft credit inquiry, a credential posted to a dark-web test site, a USPS address change, a new bank account, a public court filing and a data-broker profile. We record which events produced an alert and the hours to alert, then open a restoration case to see who answers.