Civic Identity Theft Protection Review

Civic is a new player in the identity protection world that brought an unprecedented feature to market. What is that feature you might ask? Well, it WAS 100% free. That’s right, this identity protection service is of no cost to it’s members. So what’s the catch? Good question, and as is with anything that sounds too good to be true there is in fact a catch with Civic which we’ll get to below.

UPDATE: Civic entered the market as a completely free service but announced that for 2017 their service would have a cost to it’s members for the protection that was previously offered at no cost. Members who have the free program and enrolled before 2017 would be grandfathered in with no cost to their Standard service which is normally a $29.99 annual fee. Here’s the notice from Civic to it’s members.

“You will notice from the changes on the transition page, that we have decided to create a Basic (Free), Standard and Premium Plan. There are many features & services that we need to offer our members to provide comprehensive protection options (such as stolen funds replacement coverage), and we realize that we just cannot afford to offer it for free.

Because you are one of our first and most loyal advocates, the great news is you will be automatically upgraded to our Standard Plan for FREE (FOR LIFE!). The list price for this plan will be $29.95/year and will include all of the great benefits that you already associate with Civic and much more.

As we continue to enhance our offering, it makes sense to create a basic plan for free (including the $1M identity theft insurance coverage and other great benefits) and paid plans for those who need that extra coverage and support.

We will be rolling out the Standard Plan later this month and the Premium Plan some time in the early Spring. Thanks again for all your support in helping us to protect your identity!”

NOTE:The following review was created prior to Civic’s change to a paid provider.

What We Like

This one is easy. We LOVE that the service is free! Identity theft protection is a relatively new but increasingly necessary cost for the every day citizen. Before technology made it very easy for criminals to access personal records and information, identity theft was subject to crooks having to obtain physical possession of this information. For criminals that’s a lot of work and doesn’t scale well. But now with the endless possibilities for how your info can be stolen, identity theft protection services are now being lumped into the mandatory expense sheet like car insurance and your daily Starbucks run. Civic solves this problem by introducing a level of protection that’s free and effective.

We also like the technology side of Civic’s services. Civic allows partners (companies who regularly have to run credit inquiries on their customers or employees) to tap into Civic’s alert system via API which shares their credit inquiries with Civic so that they can then alert their customers, if that person has an account, of the pending credit request. Simple, but not many protection companies are doing this.

We also like that they offer $1 Million in identity theft insurance especially when they aren’t charging the customer for service. This is like having car insurance but not having to pay monthly for it.

We’ve also come to find during our review of Civic that their identity resolution services are provided by IDT911, a B2B identity and data risk management service who will handle any fraudulent issues that occur on your personal information. You can see our IDT911 review here.

What We Don’t Like

Civic has pretty glaring detection and protection limitations. The service only looks at credit inquiries but leaves out bank account transactions, dark web and black market websites, lost wallet protection, and a number of other monitoring points that other providers cover. We know that credit inquiries are often the result of your information being available through those channels but we like that other providers like LifeLock or Identity Guard still have processes built to monitor them.

The Bottom Line

We love what Civic has to offer both with its technology and of course the price. For anyone looking for peace of mind and a layer of protection that will actually do something at a reasonable cost, this is a great service for you. If you’re more interested in bells and whistles and want to know your credit score monthly, have a interactive dashboard, and want all your transactions and bank accounts monitored, then you’ll need to look elsewhere.