Contributor

Hubris. LifeLock CEO has identity stolen.

Opinion
May 23, 20081 min

I am sure you have seen the full page ads or the TV spots where Todd Davis proudly displays his Social Security number while touting LifeLock’s guaranteed identity protection. How many thousands of hackers have been tempted to take him down a notch? Well, someone in Texas took out a $500 payday advance using Mr. Davis’ SSN. In addition, LifeLock is being sued for fraudulent advertising by several parties. Check out the report by Farhad Manjoo and see the MSNBC interview this morning with Mr. Davis.

I wonder if you can trust his claims of having induced over a million people to shell out $120/year for his service? I know advertising works but that is an amazing number.

Richard Stiennon is chief research analyst at IT-Harvest, the firm he founded in 2005 to cover the 1,600 vendors that make up the IT security industry. He is the author of Surviving Cyberwar (Government Institutes, 2010) and There Will Be Cyberwar: How the Move to Network-Centric Warfighting Set the Stage for Cyberwar. He is a member of the advisory board at the Information Governance Initiative and principal of TrueBit Cyber Partners. He also serves on the R2-TAC, the technical advisory committee for the Responsible Recycling standard for e-waste.

Stiennon was chief marketing officer for Fortinet Inc. and vice president of threat research at Webroot Software. Prior to that, he was vice president of research at Gartner Inc. He has a B.S. in aerospace engineering and an M.A. in war in the modern world from King’s College, London.

The opinions expressed in this blog are those of Richard Stiennon and do not necessarily represent those of IDG Communications Inc. or its parent, subsidiary or affiliated companies.

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