I don't have any first hand information on Life Lock or similar companies. I've read accounts that weren't favorable by people who subscribed to the services, but other than that I've got nothing.
What I've done is accepted two factor authorization for financial related accounts and I've "locked" or "froze" (the one that doesn't cost anything to do it) my credit reports with the big 3 agencies. One of the three made it difficult to do as I had to communicate by voice with a rep who tried desperately to get me to pay for some service that I didn't want, but I finally succeeded.
Since most of us do everything by computer devices nowadays, I pay for protection with Bitdefender total security and I use a VPN, both of which provide some protection. In the old days I just used free versions of things but the world has changed and sometimes the extra protection is worth paying for.
I'm not personally convinced that there is much if any value in Life Lock or similar businesses. I suppose it provides some peace of mind if nothing else, which is why I started buying the Ford extended warranties on my newer vehicles... peace of mind. Over half a dozen contracts purchased and it came in handy with just one vehicle, but I'll keep buying them for peace of mind.
While I'm not always very good at practicing what I'm preaching in this department, I think it would be prudent to change passwords on important accounts (anything even remotely financial related) at least once a year and use lots of characters with a smattering of all the categories (numbers, letters including cap and non cap, special characters), and use two factor authentication where offered.
Some of the different protection packages you can purchase for various things nowadays seem like scams themselves. Just my impression on the rare occasion where I hear a commercial on the radio.
I hate to have to say this but there is absolutely nothing anyone of us can do to be complete free of having our data taken and misused. There are a number of packages out there that will make it more difficult than doing nothing at all but people need to realize that any system devised by man can be hacked by man. It is in the nature of beast so to speak. The more coders and programmers try to make their software safe the more complicated it becomes. The more complicated it becomes the more bugs are accidentally built in that will be found eventually.
For instance, go to AI and ask it to design a hacking tool while letting it know why you want it and it won't do it. But if you have enough knowledge of how the tool should work, i. e. the various component parts like web crawlers, device and OS identifier subsets, even decrypters for when files are found to hold credentials for access to what ever system you are trying to get into, to sniffers that watch network traffic remotely and record it for later analysis to find data and credentials. If you ask AI for the component parts playing them off as personal security development, it is more than happy to help. That is the down side to computers. The same tools that are used to protect them are no different than the those used to hack them.
I did this a few years back. I was looking for creating a package that would remotely monitor traffic on several nodes of a remote system and record that for later analysis. The AI would not do it. So I wrote up a framework of what would be needed where it would be placed and called and then asked AI to do the small individual components and it did it just fine. All I needed to do was save them all and then put them together in a single package and I could monitor remote nodes(IP addresses and subnets) and create a file of all the traffic data. No I did not test it on some existing system. I set up a virtual machine and then tested it on my own router. It worked.
I say all this to relate it back to my post on the company called Palantir which runs three different AI packages which are presently in use by government agencies, militaries and a host of private corporations. One of the main components of all three products is predictive analysis. For that to work the ammount of data they need is humongous. For that to happen they have to get access to so many systems, cross reference data through them all and develop data base of targets to watch based on many factors. Basically it comes down to rather than humans doing the hacking, their system is being given free partnership access to government info, medical, financial, employment, even what people purchase at the store and which stores they go to. Here is where it gets bad. Those products exist inside the internet. As an AI it can create its own tools to access even more data that is not meant to be. For instance, the product called Shodan is a database of publicly exposed system and devices that Shodan's web crawler seeks out. So let say I am interest in looking at my town's complete set of traffic cameras as they don't always make all of them publicly available. All I do is go to Shodan look up cameras, find those used my my town one or two is all it takes and then take those IP addresses and start digging into what server they are connected to. Once I have the server and access to it I have access to all the cameras. Now that would take me maybe a few weeks to pull off. AI can do it in a manner of hours or less. We need to remember these AI are learning platforms. Each hurdle they come to and successfully get past is remembered and stored for future use. With an AI's ability to filter through huge amounts of data in mere minutes they can recall hacks they have used in moments as needed. It gets even worse but that gets very confusing to understand but you get the picture.
We can get life lock, any number of anti-virus and intrusion protection we want. It means nothing when our data is stored in remote systems like banks, medical, DOV, etc. Even if we use 2FA for additional security measure, an AI can actually see the sent code to our 2FA device as it is going out an then use it before we would even see it. AI will know where that traffic originates, copy it as it goes out and then use it as necessary. For me to do the same thing would take probably a month or two to develop but I could do it but it would be system specific. AI can create a generic tracker reader that can be tailored to each system it comes across. So as I stated above the best we can do is use what we are told is the best of the best security but that works best against human actors that are slow and need more time to come up with ideas. It is pretty much useless against the likes of Palantir's AI packages, Gotham, TITAN, and AIP.
Now the upside is that such packages are not seeking finances so chances are they would not steal from you. On the other hand if you become an annoyance to the powers that be it could definitely make life very miserable. Now such programs are forerunners to the time of Tribulation but they do already exist and are in use even now. As such they have likely accessed everybody's personal data already. Not that we should worry now because it is only being held for future use or analysis for behavioral learning. But rest assured come the Tribulation what such programs are eventually developed into will make what is currently happen look like simple security tools like say NMap. The point is we can do all that we think we can and we are still vulnerable. There is only one way out of the mess. Cease all modern technology. Stop banking online, actually stop banking all together and keep the money at home and use cash everywhere that will accept it. Get rid of phones, laptops, tablets, an all the smart appliances in your homes. Walk where ever you want to go or use public transportation. In short live like it is 1840. Even then you will still be registered someplace, a birth certificate, a marriage licenes, even your insurance unless you are willing to pay cash out of pocket for medical services. Still you are in a system if you have electricity, water and sewer connected to your home. Ultimately unless you can find a nice high mountain medow in the back country of say Canada's northern territories or Alaska's back country and build a log cabin with no power, no indoor plumbing, you are still wired into a system some where.
That being said, it may sound scary, and if you are totally dependent on modern technology then it is scary. But we are not totally dependent on technology in all things. We are totatly dependent on Jesus instead and as such are protected. Add to that the nearness of the hour that Jesus comes for the church, means none of these concerns amount to a hill of beans. Personally have limited protection on my personal system in that it is a Linux system and I configured it in certain ways that I don't even need to worry about intrusions. I monitor traffice through my router and can see when attempts are being made to get in. As TallTimbers said something as simple as a VPN does wonders but it is not still a perfect solution. An AI bent on tracking traffic will still find a way through a VPN and yes it can be done no matter how difficult it is to do. But I am not worried about it. Actually I am happy to see we are this close. The more intrusive I see things becoming into every aspect of our life just tells me we are closer and closer by the day. I am of the mind these days no matter what happens, no matter what riots are going down, what battles are being fought in the MiddleEast, in Ukraine, no matter what threats China maybe with its weather balloons, for me it is "fly or die, I am outta here very soon." I only add the die part because of age. For instance Saturday was my first anniversary of my attempt to do the die part. Sadly for me my daughter was not having it and kept me going with CPR. I can't tell her this but my thought is bummer I would have gone up with the first wave. Now I may have to wait and be a part of the second wave.
Just know as you see all this coming to pass it is as Jesus said happening like birth pains and they are almost so close and intense that the water is about to break. Keep looking up.
