The service that aims to turn your smartphone into a security fortress against fraud launched an identity protection feature within its new plan structure for mobile yesterday (June 18).
While BillGuard has remained an entirely free service for quite some time, the personal finance security company is now offering its paid users access to additional features, including surveillance email/text alerts, credit monitoring, internet scans and help replacing and cancelling important financial items when users lose their wallets, VentureBeat reported.
The new three-tier approach — Free, Pro and Ultimate — keeps the unpaid version users have become familiar with intact but offers a slew of additional features for those willing to pay $3 or $7 per month, or slightly less if paid annually.
The BillGuard Ultimate plan includes $1 million identity theft insurance and fraud alerts setup specifically for a customer’s Social Security number, which is timely considering 2015 has already seen an uptick in identity fraud.
BillGuard’s crowdsourced security system allows users to track card transactions and receive alerts for scams, hidden fees and errors. A large part of the app’s data is sourced directly from its community of users, who share any erroneous charges they find.
“It’s not only hackers but legitimate merchants that are taking advantage of us with charges we’re purposefully meant to miss or forget about,” BillGuard explained on its website.
“By our estimates the average consumer loses over $300 a year to unwanted charges they’re not even aware of. Card fraud alone is a $7 billion a year crime with banks catching only a third of it. The rest is up to us,” BillGuard added.
The identity theft protection offered by BillGuard will also feature card fraud monitoring and alerts, card locations and alerts, data breach monitoring, spend tracking and analytics. BillGuard is partnering with Symantec for the distribution of BillGuard Pro and BillGuard Ultimate, in hopes of reaching existing customers of Symantec’s Norton security software.
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