Identity theft protection is a popular add-on above and beyond the typical components of a security suite. In a few cases, notably Norton and its LifeLock subsidiary, the security company handles identity protection internally, but most must rely on a third-party provider with strong identity protection. Like Avast One Platinum, Bitdefender Ultimate, and Malwarebytes Ultimate, ESET partners with TransUnion’s IdentityForce. ESET’s identity system will look familiar if you’ve seen any of the others.
Getting Started with ESET Identity Protection
You begin your identity journey at the ESET Home online dashboard; a click causes it to email you an access code. Using that code, you create your identity protection account. I did note an odd comment from the program stating that it might take up to 24 hours to receive the code. In testing, it took 20 minutes.
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As with similar services, you start by entering basic contact information and agreeing to the terms and conditions. You also set a password specific to the identity account, along with three security questions. Yes, security questions can become a security nightmare if you use answers that a hacker could find by searching. ESET offers three dozen choices for questions, more than most, but you still need to pick answers that nobody but you would know. You could also answer with lies, though, of course, you must remember those lies.
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Multi-factor authentication is also required. You can choose to receive security codes via email, text, or voice. Verify your identity with TransUnion, and you’re ready to go.
What Is Two-Factor Authentication?
Identity Protection Dashboard
The dashboard serves as your base of operations for identity matters. As with Bitdefender and Avast, it initially displays a list of five tasks under the heading “Let’s Get Started.” These are:
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Create your Profile
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Add your Additional Information
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Add your Social Media Accounts
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Check out your Password Manager
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Lost Wallet Assistance
Each of these is worth 20% toward completion of your introductory tasks, and you’ve already earned 20% by creating your profile. You can work down the list and complete each task, or just do a tiny amount of each and return to it later. Either way, once you reach 100%, you can hide the task list and get a full view of the dashboard.
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You can open a menu down the left side of the display with seven items: Dashboard, Identity Vault, BreachIQ, Alerts, Credit, Resources, and Support. The dashboard itself lists the five most recent alerts, with a link to the full list. On the right side are panels explaining how to contact an identity resolution specialist and how to prepare and use your lost wallet data. Scroll down for stats for the most recent identity, credit, and social media scans. Finally, there’s a simple protection score from 0 to 100, with 100 indicating maximum protection.
Stash Your Details in the Identity Vault
Select Identity Vault from the menu, and you’ll see that you already have some protected personal data. The contact items you entered during registration, along with any additional information you added during startup, are there. The vault has three pages, identified by tabs across the top. On the Monitored Info page, you can record one for each of the following:
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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
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Most identity protection systems treat these items as singular, though Norton lets you track up to five physical addresses, and McAfee handles two driver’s licenses. In various spots on the page, you can also record information in these categories:
You can enter five passports and 10 of the other types. There’s also an option to upload scans of these documents on the Secure Storage tab, up to 100MB of images.
At the bottom of the Monitored Info Page, you can link ESET with your social media accounts, specifically Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. ESET works with partners Sontiq and ZeroFox to review your posts and their comments for potential issues, and to warn you if they detect personal information or inappropriate contact.
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Preparing for a Lost Wallet
In addition to securely archiving images of passports and similar documents, the Secure Storage tab is where you make advanced preparations to handle a lost wallet. It’s a simple matter of dragging your wallet out of your pocket or purse and recording everything you find in it, specifically these types of items:
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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
Just because you recorded some of these items for monitoring doesn’t mean they’ll appear on the lost wallet list. For lost wallet protection, you fill in every detail down to the card issuer’s website and the customer service phone number.
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Dealing With Alerts
Once you’ve recorded personal information for monitoring, ESET immediately starts checking whether any of your data is being bandied about on the dark web. For every problem it finds, you get an alert. As noted, the Dashboard displays your five most recent alerts. To see them all, click See More below those five, or choose Alerts from the menu on the left.
The list of alerts could be more informative. For each alert, it shows the date of discovery, not the date of the actual breach. It displays the type of concern, such as data found on the dark web, but no information about which website was involved. To see those important details, you must open each alert in turn.
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The detail page for each alert includes advice on what actions to take. When you’ve done what you can, you click to Archive the alert. Serious alerts, such as account takeover risks, may come with an Open Case button that connects you to a resolution specialist. A separate tab helps you track those open cases.
Reviewing alerts is tedious, in no small part, because every time you close the one you’re viewing, the list snaps back to the top. Your best bet is to go through them individually, archiving them as you go. When you’ve cleared the initial cluster of reports, new alerts will stand out.
Social Media Tracking Alerts
In addition to personal data exposure alerts, the Alerts page also reports any alerts generated by the social media monitor. If you share personal data on social media, ESET should warn you, though this warning comes long after your privacy gaffe hits the interwebs. It also checks posts and comments for inappropriate verbiage, but as with most similar monitors, it is prone to false positives. For example, I posted a YouTube video of scrub jays dive-bombing a peanut offering. It got flagged for violence due to the word “bomb.”
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.
BreachIQ and Safety Rating
While ESET alerts you on all types of dark web data detections, the BreachIQ page focuses on known data breaches that expose your personal information. This page has five tabs: ID Safety Score, My Breach Exposures, Action Plan, Search Breaches, and FAQ.
The My Breach Exposures tab lists the date of each breach, a Breach Risk Rating, and some of the exposed data types. Clicking a link lets you see all data types exposed in the breach.
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On the ID Safety Score page, you see a dial representing your risk score. A score of 100 means you’re perfectly protected—I don’t imagine that happens often. Equally unlikely is a score of 0, meaning you’re not protected at all. My test account came in at 52. The score page also lists some factors that affected the rating. If you want to raise a poor protection rating, ESET covers you—just skip to the Action Plan page.
Some components of your Action Plan set clear tasks for you to complete, such as setting up fraud alerts on your credit report or requesting a PIN from the IRS. Others are relatively vague, like telling you to watch out for spam. As you take care of each item, you mark it as complete. Once you’ve gone through many of these items, your ID Safety Score should rise. I paged through the list, found several vague ones like “Beware of social engineering,” and marked them complete. Doing so raised my safety score to 63, a definite improvement.
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If you find any concepts related to data breaches and exposures unclear, the FAQ tab should help clarify them. There’s also a page where you can search all known data breaches to see if a specific company has been hit. I’m not sure why that would matter, given you’ve already been notified about breaches that affect you personally.
Tracking and Managing Your Credit
If a crook opens a credit account based on your stolen credit information, that affects your credit score. Pretty much any attempt at identity theft will cause a change. That’s why keeping an eye on your credit score is essential. The Credit page of ESET’s identity protection, reached by clicking Credit in the left-side menu, has four tabs: Credit Score, Credit Report, Credit Simulator, and Freeze My Credit.
The main Credit Score page pulls your score from TransUnion once a month. After you’ve been using the system for a while, the Credit Score Tracker graph shows how things have changed. This page also offers a link to set a yearly reminder to place a fraud alert on your credit report. Adding this alert simply notifies creditors to take extra steps to verify your identity before extending credit.
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On the Credit Report page, you can view the details from your latest report as formatted by ESET or print out the whole report for reference. ESET updates your score and reports monthly. Note that you can get your annual reports from all three credit agencies for free, with no involvement by ESET.
Opening the Freeze My Credit page in ESET’s identity protection system displays links to impose a credit freeze with TransUnion, Experian, or Equifax. Bitdefender offers the same DIY style, while Aura can freeze your Experian credit with just a click.
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Many financial actions can affect your credit score, but you won’t know about those effects until the next monthly score update. Wouldn’t it be nice to know the effect on your score before you cancel a credit card or take out a car loan? ESET’s Credit Simulator lets you game out the results of 17 common financial events. These include, among other things, adding a new credit card, paying off all your cards, and letting an account go delinquent. Of course, the estimated new score isn’t guaranteed, but you can learn a lot by experimenting in the simulator.
Resources for Identity and Credit Protection
To reach 100% in the list of startup configuration tasks, you had to at least peek at the Resources page. This page is worth more than a glance. It’s divided into three tabs: Calculators, Forms, and Junk Mail & Calls.
On the Calculators tab, you’ll find a variety of financial calculators. For example, you can compare two mortgage options—it’s amazing how much less interest you pay overall for a 15-year mortgage than a 30-year one. If you’re unsure whether to buy or lease a car, you can plug in all the numbers and get a summary. These are calculators hosted by TransUnion, not links to some random external resource.
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Sometimes, you just need to sort out a misunderstanding with the credit company. The Forms page presents letter templates for various purposes, including resolving a credit dispute. You’ll also find resources such as consumer action handbooks, consumer contacts for major corporations, and contacts for federal, state, and local consumer protection offices.
While not directly related to your credit and identity, junk mail and robocalls are annoying. A surfeit of spam letters might even mask more important mailed communications. The Junk Mail & Calls page contains links to external sites where you can remove yourself from direct marketing lists, opt out of preapproved credit offers, and reject specific direct mailings.
Your Dedicated Resolution Specialist
As noted, some alerts and breach warnings come with a built-in button to open a resolution case. If you find that your details are for sale on the dark web, ESET can help. Click the Support tab and start a help ticket, or call the provided number to speak with a dedicated identity theft resolution specialist.
A promise to pay up to $1 million to remediate identity theft is the norm in this field, and ESET matches that offer. As always, this comes with some restrictions. For example, if you lose your job due to identity theft, it covers only eight weeks of lost wages, up to $1,500 per week. The insurance covers up to $1,000 for travel required for remediation. Norton, however, doesn’t focus on sub-limits like these in its coverage.
As always, I can’t test this service’s ability to help with recovery from identity theft. I can report, however, that it’s very easy to open a case.
Protecting Your Family
Most identity protection systems protect just one individual or charge extra to protect additional family members. ESET is unusual because its basic subscription covers you, your partner, and any number of children. Extending protection to another family member starts by clicking your name in the top-right corner of the ESET Identity Protection Page, then choosing Manage Account.
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Scroll down to the Family Protection panel, which has links to Add an Adult Household Member and Add Child Monitoring. For the former, you fill in basic contact info, including an email address. Your partner receives an email with instructions for setting up their identity protection account. Credit monitoring for a child is necessarily limited; you handle filling in the child’s data, which requires a valid SSN.
ESET specifically offers identity theft support for deceased family members, provided they were enrolled in identity protection before their death.
What’s Not Here?
While ESET, Bitdefender, and Avast rely on the same partner for identity protection, they don’t offer the same services. ESET’s protection closely matches Bitdefender’s basic offering, but you can pay extra for a Plus account with Bitdefender. That Plus account is backed by $2 million and includes a $50,000 ransomware-specific fund. It tracks three credit bureaus, not just one. Avast offers this Plus-level coverage by default.
Avast, Aura, IDShield, and Norton monitor bank accounts and credit cards for anomalous transactions. Bitdefender adds transaction tracking at its Plus level. Getting instant notification of an unauthorized transaction can help nip identity theft in the bud. However, it’s not a feature of ESET’s identity protection.
Other advanced features Avast and Bitdefender Ultimate Plus share include watching for spurious address change requests, tracking court records in case your identity is misused, and monitoring the sex offender registry. Norton reserves many tracking features for its Advanced level, including monitoring phone takeovers, checking criminal records, and detecting misuse of your address. At the most expensive Ultimate Plus level, Norton adds monitoring of home titles, 401-K plans, social media, and the sex offender registry.
ESET handles the basics of identity protection, but as you can see, some competing services do quite a bit more.
