We all know there are a ton of perks that come with a AAA membership. From discounted hotel accommodation to savings on movie tickets. But did you know you’re entitled to an exclusive offering for identity theft protection? Created by AAA and Experian, ProtectMyID monitors your identity and credit to ensure no one is using it for dubious activities.
But how does ProtectMyID compare to services like LifeLock and Experian’s other identity theft protection service, IdentityWorks? We decided to take a closer look at ProtectMyID’s plans, so we claimed our AAA perk and signed up. Here’s what we found out.
We were attracted to ProtectMyID’s low monthly fees right away. There are three plans to choose from: Essential, Deluxe, and Complete. The Essential plan is free, and we found the Deluxe and Complete packages to be cheaper than most competitors in the industry. At any rate, with ProtectMyID you can get solid identity monitoring starting at only $10.95 per month, while most brands charge $15-$20 per month for similar protection.
ProtectMyID Price Snapshot
Plan
Price for AAA members
ProtectMyID Essential
Free
ProtectMyID Deluxe
$10.95 / month
Add child monitoring for $3.95 / month
ProtectMyID Complete
$17.95 / month
If you’re an AAA member, we think you’ll want to give this service a closer look. The pricing tiers are pretty straightforward. And note that you can add child monitoring to ProtectMyID Deluxe for an extra fee, while Complete includes child monitoring for free. As for the Essential plan, that one doesn’t offer child monitoring as an option. So that’s something to keep in mind if you have little ones at home.
The child monitoring feature isn’t the only difference between these plans, though. Let’s dig a little deeper to help narrow down your options.
ProtectMyID Notifications
ProtectMyID Essential
We really appreciate that ProtectMyID Essential has credit monitoring. Not bad — especially for a plan that’s free to AAA members! Of course, it’s not comprehensive credit monitoring, as the monitoring covers only one of the three major credit bureaus. The one bureau is Experian, which makes sense, since Experian runs this service.
FYI: All three national credit bureaus offer some form of identity theft protection. Equifax has ID Patrol, and then there’s TransUnion Identity Protection.
The Essential plan comes with some other nice perks, too. We took advantage of the Experian credit report, which also comes with a fraud resolution service. If we wanted this service from Identity Guard or IdentityForce, we would have had to pay for one of their subscriptions.
ProtectMyId Lost Wallet Protection
Keep in mind that the Essential plan doesn’t automatically include insurance coverage. If you’re an AAA Premier member, you’ll get $10,000 in coverage. But that’s not as much as the paid plans offer.
ProtectMyID Deluxe
The Deluxe plan comes with everything in the Essential plan, plus we had $1 million in insurance coverage for extra peace of mind. If you’re not familiar with identity theft insurance, it covers things like stolen funds and recovery expenses related to identity theft. While $1 million might sound like a generous insurance package, it’s actually the industry standard nowadays.
With the Deluxe plan, we also received real-time alerts. This is a big deal, as early detection is a big reason why we sign up for coverage like this in the first place. The Deluxe plan’s monitoring is stronger than the Essential package, too. It includes Social Security Number monitoring, and our credit monitoring bumps up from one-bureau to three-bureau coverage. ProtectMyID Deluxe also scans the dark web, which the Essential plan doesn’t do.
FYI: What is the dark web? It’s a private and anonymous part of the web that you need a special browser just to visit. There are legitimate reasons to use the dark web, but criminals use it to buy and sell stolen private information.1
Unfortunately, we don’t get access to child monitoring by default with the Deluxe plan, but we had the option to add it for $3.95 per month. If you’re doing the math, you’ll pay a total of $14.90 per month for protection for you and your kiddos. Not bad. It’s cheaper than the Aura’s plans that cover the whole family.
ProtectMyID Child Identity Monitoring
ProtectMyID Complete
ProtectMyID Platinum is our high-end option from ProtectMyID. It includes a few extra monitoring and credit-related ProtectMyID Complete is the high-end option from ProtectMyID. It includes a few extra monitoring and credit-related perks. The Complete plan will also monitor sex offender registries, check payday loan applications, and keep an eye on other public and online records.
We also had access to some unique credit alerts. The Complete plan would let us know if someone increased our credit limit or attempted to charge a credit card we no longer use. We also set it up for usage alerts. Thankfully, we could set up when to receive an alert based on the dollar amount so we didn’t get spammed.
ProtectMyID Complete also gave us social media monitoring, which helps to identify hacked accounts (a serious cyber-security concern). Social media monitoring can also help us see if any posts are hurting our reputation or giving away personally identifiable information.
Finally, the Complete service also includes child monitoring features; unlike the Deluxe plan, you don’t have to pay extra to protect your kids from identity thieves and fraudsters. You can include up to ten children under the age of 18. That’s better than LifeLock plans, which only allow up to five kids on the top family plan.
Did You Know? Child identity theft is rare, but it’s easy to miss when it happens. If a crook uses your child’s social security number to get a credit card, a loan, or government benefits, it could be decades before anyone finds out — unless, of course, you have child monitoring.2
Right from the start, we were really impressed with the helpful features that AAA members get for free. In fact, it’s somewhat rare to see credit monitoring included in cheap plans (Zander, for instance, doesn’t offer it). But ProtectMyID puts it on the table… for free! That’s a pretty good deal in our book.
With that said, we recommend you pay for a little more protection, as the free ProtectMyID Essential plan doesn’t offer recovery and only $10,000 insurance coverage. On the other hand, ProtectMyID Deluxe offers a pretty great deal on three-bureau credit coverage, identity monitoring, recovery, and up to $1 million in insurance.
Sure, the Complete option is the most expensive plan, but it comes with some great features like child monitoring. So if you have a family, the top-tier plan makes a lot of sense. Instead of paying for the Deluxe plan and adding child identity monitoring, we recommend just upgrading to the Complete plan. The extra costs give you child identity monitoring plus loads of other useful credit monitoring features.
About ProtectMyID, AAA, and Experian
We’ve established that the major credit bureau Experian owns and runs ProtectMyID. You might be surprised to learn that ProtectMyID is one of three different Experian products that deal with identity security.
Experian’s main identity protection service is Experian IdentityWorks. But Experian also partners with other organizations (like AAA!) to make special identity protection products that they can offer their customers and members. Note that Experian is also behind Complete ID, an exclusive offer to Costco members.
Now what about AAA? Well, you probably know that the AAA is the American Automobile Association. It’s a national lobbying group that offers a ton of perks to paying members. Some of those perks and bonuses are car-related, like roadside assistance through AAA partners. But plenty of other bonuses, like ProtectMyID, have nothing to do with cars or driving at all.
In our research, we found that Experian has a strong reputation in identity monitoring. Interestingly enough, when the credit reporting bureau Equifax suffered a major data breach, it was Experian that stepped in to provide identity monitoring to the victims.3
ProtectMyID offers three tiers of service. As prices increase, so do the number of services. The Essential package is free, the Deluxe package costs $10.95 per month, and the Complete package costs $17.95 per month.
You can get an Experian report for free with the Essential plan. But for three-bureau credit monitoring, you’ll need to subscribe to the Deluxe or Complete plan.
SafeHome.org only uses high-quality sources to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial guidelines to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.
Patterson, D. (2016, September 1). How the Dark Web Works. ZDNet.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-the-dark-web-works/
Max Sheridan brings over two decades of writing experience to our team. He has spent 1,000-plus hours researching VPNs, identity theft protection, and various topics in cyber technology. Previously, Max was an investigative journalist, and he is also a published novelist. He earned a B.A. in Classics from the University of Virginia and an M.A. in Classics from the University of Illinois. He currently lives in Nicosia, Cyprus.
Updated December 27, 2024
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