You’ve probably seen LifeLock’s ads on TV: The CEO, Todd Davis, hands out his own Social Security number to strangers and even has a truck with the number painted on it drive around town, assuring the viewers that, thanks to LifeLock’s protection, no one can steal his identity. He also claims that, should a client’s identity be stolen, LifeLock will fix the problem and reimburse the client. But can this service, which costs roughly $10 per month, truly protect you from identity theft, reduce your junk mail and give you peace of mind? And is it all it claims to be?

Experian, one of the three main credit bureaus, says no. They filed a lawsuit against LifeLock in February, claiming deception and fraud in the attention-grabbing advertising campaign. Davis calls the lawsuit groundless. Some of the details of Experian’s claims:

1. Fraud alerts, which notify companies that check credit to be on the lookout for imposters, are LifeLock’s main fraud prevention tool. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, fraud alerts be requested only by an individual, either the consumer or someone acting on the consumer’s behalf, not by a corporation. They can also be requested only when there is a strong suspicion of impending fraud or identity theft (say, when your credit card goes missing). LifeLock, however, has placed continuous fraud alerts on the credit files of its approximately 1,000,000 customers, which is against federal law, Experian claims. They say that LifeLock pretends to be the consumer and actively avoids detection as a corporation. They also maintain that this constant “crying wolf” ties up the Experian systems and slows the process down for legitimate fraud alerts.

2. Experian also claims that LifeLock uses deceptive advertising because credit reporting is free under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, but LifeLock does not make it clear to consumers that the credit reports (and many of the other services, such as junk mail reduction) are free to obtain through other means. Experian also charges that the advertising is deceptive because the service does not afford all of the protection it claims; it cannot prevent an identity theft in progress or the unauthorized use of a credit card, and is not always effective in preventing undocumented workers from using stolen Social Security numbers to get a job.

Davis counters the first claim by saying that placing fraud alerts is legal and “in the spirit of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.” He notes that LifeLock customers are happy and satisfied with the service, and that he had received no complaints of deceptive practices. He addresses the second claim by saying that his service makes it “virtually” impossible for someone to steal a client’s identity (the word “virtually,” he says, keeps the ads from being deceptive).

It should be noted that the fraud alerts do cost the credit bureaus time and money to run, which they don’t appreciate, obviously, but may not be as illegal as they claim. Experian is also under investigation by the FTC for running www.freecreditreport.com, a site that charges customers for credit monitoring and could be considered a competitor to LifeLock. Davis suggests that Experian simply wants to make more money and sees LifeLock as a threat.

As to the reports that Davis’s identity WAS stolen, the reality is that it was not. One man got a $500 payday loan using Davis’s Social Security number, but the clerk who took his information did not run the number through any of the credit bureaus for verification before handing over the money. Once the fraud was discovered, LifeLock fixed it, and Davis’s credit is just fine, even after 87 other, failed attempts to steal his identity.

LifeLock is not the only company that offers its services to consumers (see also Debix, LoudSiren and TrustedID). But as of this month, LifeLock had become the target of several class-action lawsuits from competitors, credit bureaus and lawyers in several states. LifeLock an easy target, thanks to its memorable and slightly scary advertising. But many experts doubt that the lawsuits have any merit, and interpreting the Fair Credit Reporting Act might easily go in favor of LifeLock (especially since many people have been potentially compromised when their personal information has gone missing from the computers of companies, banks and other agencies, so they’d have reason to put fraud alerts on their accounts).

Wired Columnist Bruce Schneier makes the point that LifeLock does what the government should do anyway: make stolen personal information harder to use. That said, though, he is not a customer of LifeLock because, as he puts it, dealing with identity theft is routine and not nearly as damaging as it used to be. Also, it’s hard to tell how effective LifeLock is, since it gains customers more from the fear of identity theft than the theft itself.

In the end, LifeLock can be a very useful and reassuring service if you choose to pay for it, but you can keep track of your own credit and identity yourself, for free. You can put your own fraud alerts on your account if you remember to renew them every 90 days (since fraud alerts expire). You can request free credit reports at one per year (visit www.annualcreditreport.com, for example). And of course, above all, you should be careful with your personal information. Shred credit card offers and other documents that come to you in the mail; don’t give out your personal info over the phone or in email; and investigate unknown charges to your accounts. Being a conscientious consumer may be all it takes to protect yourself from identity theft and fraud.

Sources for this article: MSNBC, LifeLock Reviews, WIRED