Villains steal arrogant businessman’s social security number

By Mark O’Neill

One of the things I really appreciate in life is seeing the cocky arrogant people being taken down a peg or two. I can’t begin to describe how satisfying that is and I hope this guy gets to eat his humble pie very soon.

Todd Davis owns a fraud-prevention company called LifeLock and this company sells “comprehensive fraud protection”. What this basically boils down to is that he charges people $10 a month to set fraud alerts with credit bureaus so that if someone suddenly goes on a credit spending spree, the credit bureaus are alerted and the person in question is also alerted. Helpful if you’re not the one who has been doing the spending, so you can then shut down the credit line and stop the person who has stolen your identity.

By the way, Davis is actually charging people for something that can be done for free – and he knows it.

The reason why Davis is making me laugh is because he tried to prove how effective his service was by widely advertising his Social Security number in all his advertisements. In fact he dared people to steal it. He wanted people to try and steal his identity so his fraud alerts would get set off and he could boast about how super his service was.

So all the villains decided to take him up on his offer and his fraud alerts failed him big time.

There have been at least 87 attempts to steal his identity, including 20 driving license applications. One guy successfully got a $500 loan and now Davis is stuck with repaying it. Unhappy Lifelock customers are now suing him because the fraud alerts didn’t work for them either, a lawyer is trying to get a class-action suit going, and to top it all, the Experian credit bureau is suing Davis in California for “deception” and “abuse”.

Oh and by the way, Todd Davis’s Social Security number is still on Lifelock’s website. Does this guy never learn?

Via Wired