The ReliaShield home page begins with some sobering statistics, albeit outdated as they are all from 2018, designed to inspire potential users to take action. This includes things like "consumers who use social media have a 46% higher risk of account takeover fraud" and "thieves stole €14.7 billion in 2018."
Headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, Reliashield offers an identity theft protection solution. It claims to provide a US-based service that is available 24/7.
Packages and rates
ReliaShield offers three levels of identity protection plans to choose from. While there's no free trial, first month, or year discount like some other service offerings, we were pleased to see that there's an annual discount available for paying in progress throughout the year.
The entry level is the Essential plan, which is affordable at €7.99 per month, or €87.99 when paid annually, for a savings of just over 8%. We love that it includes 24/7/365 support, address change monitoring, legal records monitoring, and up to €1 million in stolen funds and expense reimbursement. An important shortcoming is that it does not include any credit bureau checks, as this requires a higher level plan.
The middle plan is Prime, which costs €14,99/month, with a discounted annual cost of €164,99/year. It includes all the features of the lower Essential plan and adds features like neighborhood predator monitoring, social media monitoring, and credit monitoring in one desktop.
Topping the tiers is the Elite plan, which has a premium price of €21.99/month, with a discounted annual price of €241.89 per year. Unsurprisingly, this plan highlights all the features of the lower two tiers, while adding a few features that some would consider quite essential for an identity protection plan. These include three credit monitoring bureaus, a monthly credit score monitor, a credit card application notice, and a bank account takeover notice. To be fair, many other identity protection services relegate credit bureau control to a higher plane, but we still don't like to see it.
Features
The ReliaShield offering is pretty standard in many ways and doesn't stand out for the most part. It's unfortunate, because with a service that's not quite a household name, we wish there were more features to set it apart from the rest. It also doesn't help that on their website, the features of each plan level are simply listed as a laundry list, with no real details on what they actually do. For example, "Court Records Monitoring", if you mouse over it, indicates that it "tracks you and alerts you if a criminal act is committed on your behalf", without indicating which databases are monitored, it is- this is limited to the federal government or the 50 states and local municipalities, and how the alert arrives, and in what period. In addition, it seems quite unlikely that an individual would be found guilty of a criminal offense without being notified so that he can appear and have his so-called "day in court."
At least ReliaShield offers smartphone apps, both for iOS and Android. On the Apple side, unfortunately, there is only one review and it gives this service the lowest rating. The Android app, on the other hand, gets a 4.6/5 star rating, but the most recent review also gives it a single star, though other customers say they're happy with it.
One feature worth noting among its "likeness" is that ReliaShield provides identity protection for children at home at no additional cost. The other notable feature is that ReliaShield claims to have an incredibly high “100% recovery success rate” among subscribers who needed to access their recovery service.
Support
The ReliaShield bracket has two sides. On the one hand, we don't want to worry too much about the only support option out there. After all, when you have a problem with identity theft, it's comforting to know that help is just a direct phone call away, via a toll-free number. In addition, it is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
However, today we would like to have other options, such as a support portal, live chat or email. There are also no white papers, online videos, forums, or other advanced options.
Competition
Let's compare ReliaShield to one of the best credit monitoring options, Aura. Although Aura also offers three levels of plans, these are for individuals and must be upgraded to a family plan, while ReliaShield includes the youngest members of the family at no additional cost. However, we prefer Aura because it includes credit monitoring at all three credit bureaus with user alerts, on all but the lowest plan, plus helpful extras like a password manager, which ReliaShield doesn't have on any plan. I'm not sure yet? Aura closes the deal with a free trial that ReliaShield does not offer.
final verdict
When it comes to identity protection, ReliaShield gets you some basics with free support, affordable plans, million-dollar protection, and inclusion of children in the plan. Too bad this company doesn't have any other support options, a poor rating on the iOS app, and the three-bureau credit scoring feature is only available on their most expensive plan. We believe that unless there are some changes to ReliaShield, users should first consider other options for their identity protection needs.
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