A ransomware attack can lock away your important documents behind a wall of encryption, but identity theft can lock you out of your very life. If someone commits a crime using your identity, you could even go to jail. And recovery can be a long, slow process. Malwarebytes builds in monitoring systems to catch identity theft early, along with remediation to restore your daily life if needed.
If you’ve read many of my reviews, you may find that the descriptions that follow sound familiar. Malwarebytes and several competitors, including Avast One Platinum, Bitdefender Ultimate, and ESET Home Security Ultimate, all license identity protection from TransUnion. If you’re selecting Malwarebytes Ultimate specifically for its identity protection, you should consider the other three as well.
Chances are good that when you first activated Malwarebytes, it sent you through a process to activate the identity protection system. If that didn’t happen, or if you skipped it, just click the Identity Protection menu item and click Manage protection.
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The activation process is simple. You enter a few pieces of personal information, such as your name and address, then authenticate using your SSN and a texted code. Once you accept the terms and conditions, you’re ready to start using the identity protection system.
You manage identity theft protection entirely from an online dashboard. A menu at left offers access to various identity features, and panels at right describe the lost wallet assistance and dedicated resolution specialist support that’s available to you. Down the middle is a column of useful information, stacking recent activity, a panel titled Let’s Get Started, quick access links for services, and a credit score summary.
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For now, we’ll check out the panel about getting started. This panel contains five action items, with a percent-complete indicator in the top right corner. You’ve already finished creating your profile, so you’ve made it to 20%. Next, you’ll add additional personal data.
The additional information referenced here specifically means your driver’s license, passport, medical insurance, and your mother’s maiden name. As long as you fill in a driver’s license and mother’s maiden name, Malwarebytes considers this step complete, taking you to 40%.
Next up, you’ll connect your social media accounts, specifically Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. The service warns that you should only connect YouTube and Instagram accounts that you use to broadcast your content. If you just like to watch, don’t bother. With Facebook, partner ZeroFox handles the connection. With X/Twitter, it goes through Sontiq. Presto, you’ve reached 60%. I do find it odd that X/Twitter gets such prominent coverage, given the number of users bailing on the troubled site. And where’s TikTok? BlueSky? Mastodon?
IDX Complete tracks social media in a similar fashion, with similar false positives. So does IDShield. IDShield also offers a separate Reputation Management component for social media, a feature that proved seriously unreliable in testing.
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For another quick (but pointless) 20%, open the so-called password manager component and add something, anything. Unlike what we’d normally call a password manager, this is just a storage system. It does include a password generator, but the all-important password capture and replay is entirely absent.
Closing out the initial task list, you’ll next enter data that will be useful in the event your wallet is lost or stolen. You can record one or more items of the following types:
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Bank Account
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Combination
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Credit/Debit Card
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Customer Rewards Card
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Driver’s License
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ID Card
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Medical ID Card
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Passport
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Social Security Card
This isn’t quite the same as listing personal items for dark web tracking. Here, you fill in all the details that you would need, including the issuer’s website and customer service phone number.
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That’s it—you made it to 100%! You can now hide the whole Let’s Get Started panel, since you’re thoroughly started by now.
Filling Up the Identity Vault
Working down the menu, the next item is Identity Vault. You’ve already worked with the vault when you entered your additional personal information, but there’s more to it. You probably already have one apiece of the following on the Monitored Info page; if not, fill them in:
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Address
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Date of Birth
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Driver’s License
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Mother’s Maiden Name
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Social Security Number
Most identity protection systems let you enter just one of these, though McAfee permits two driver’s licenses, and Norton will track as many as five physical addresses.
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You can expand on what you’ve entered, adding up to 10 phone numbers and email addresses. Consider filling in the details in these categories:
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Bank Account
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Credit/Debit Card
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Email
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Medical Insurance ID
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Passport
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Phone
Malwarebytes stores five passport numbers and 10 of the other types. Once you’ve made your additions, it slides them right into the dark web tracking system, looking for any signs your identity is already compromised.
Dark Web Alerts
If Malwarebytes finds your personal information on the dark web (and it almost certainly will), you’ll receive an email notification. The latest alerts also appear at the top of the dashboard, and they have their own page selected from the menu at left.
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It’s tedious, but after giving the system a day or two to find what it can, you should go through all the alerts. My experience is that many of them are from years ago, for accounts that no longer exist, but there might well be some live ones in the mix. Read each description, take any available action, such as changing the password for an exposed account, and then archive the item. Now any new alerts will stand out.
Rating and Raising Your BreachIQ Score
Dark web monitoring alerts you whenever it finds your personal information exposed. BreachIQ is focused on known data breaches that include your personal information. The page breaks down into five tabs: ID Safety Score, My Breach Exposures, Action Plan, Search Breaches, and an FAQ page. The basic breach display includes the date, a risk rating, and two items of exposed data. If there are more items, you can click to view them all.
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The ID Safety Score page presents your risk score, from 1 to 100, and reveals factors that went into the rating. To raise a poor score, look no further than the Action Plan page.
Many of the items in your action plan are specific tasks you can accomplish and check off, things like setting up USPS Informed Delivery and filing your taxes early. Others are more general, such as advice to watch out for impersonation emails and beware of social engineering. As you check off the actions, your score will rise.
Checking and Managing Your Credit
One of the first signs that someone is meddling with your identity could be an unexpected drop in your credit score. Malwarebytes captures your score with each of the three bureaus (TransUnion, Experian, and Equifax) monthly and displays those scores when you select Credit from the left-rail menu. It also presents a summary of the information in your three credit reports and keeps a history of reports received.
If your credit scores are lower than you’d like, you may want to take action to raise them. But what should you do? By using the Credit Simulator, you can get a preview of just what effect many specific actions would have on your score, and it’s not always what you’d expect. For example, canceling your oldest credit card can actually lower your overall score.
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Do you suspect someone might be trying to open credit accounts in your name? This would be a good time to put a freeze on your credit. On the Freeze My Credit tab, Malwarebytes supplies links to the credit freeze function for each of the three big bureaus, along with detailed information about just what a credit freeze is and how you use it. Really, unless you’re actively seeking to finance a house, car, or other large purchase, you’d be smart to keep your credit frozen and lift the freeze as needed.
Tracking Anomalous Transactions
If an identity thief starts buying things on your credit cards, you want to know about it as soon as possible. Malwarebytes helps here by tracking the financial accounts you connect and warning you about transactions that could be red flags.
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You start by choosing your financial provider from a big list, logging in, and giving Malwarebytes permission to track accounts from that provider. Once you’ve selected one or more accounts, you can configure your preferences for transaction alerts. You can set distinct thresholds for purchases, fees, deposits, transfers, and other transactions, and you can optionally set different thresholds for different accounts.
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The transactions page also gives you one big list of all transactions from all the accounts you’ve linked. If you suspect something fishy is going on, perusing this list could well help you confirm the details or dispel the worry.
I mentioned earlier that Avast, Bitdefender, and ESET also rely on TransUnion for identity protection services. There are a few differences in coverage. ESET doesn’t include transaction tracking, and Bitdefender reserves it for the higher-priced tier.
Resources for Identity and Credit Protection
The final menu item, other than Support, is Resources. Be sure to review this page, as it includes some useful items divided into tabs for Calculators, Forms, and Junk Mail & Calls.
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The calculators help you think about decisions like whether to refinance a mortgage or whether to buy a car versus lease one. You just plug in the figures and get some simple answers for comparison. The forms offer templates for complaints and other types of letters, along with a compendium of consumer protection information. Finally, there’s a page with links to help you opt out of various types of junk mail and telemarketing.
Dedicated Resolution Specialist
Prominent on the main dashboard page is a panel inviting you to contact your dedicated resolution specialist if you are a victim of identity theft. Some alerts have an Open Case button that connects you to a specialist. You can initiate remediation by phone or email.
Backing up recovery with a million-dollar guarantee is standard for services that provide identity theft remediation. Malwarebytes offers that standard guarantee, doubling it if you’ve subscribed at a level that protects two individuals. As is common, there are sub-limits on expenditures for particular costs of recovery. For example, the policy will pay up to $25,000 each for funds lost to ransomware and social engineering, and lost wages coverage is limited to $1,500 per week for no more than eight weeks. Norton is among the few similar services that do not impose sub-limits.
As always, I can’t test this service’s ability to remediate the effects of identity theft. I can report that it’s very easy to open a case.
