Thursday, April 28, 2011

Contant Guard from Xfinity

Xfinity has rolled out a new product called Constant Guard.  According to their website it is a security dashboard  that will protect your passwords, credit card information and access to online accounts.   This is all offered at no cost with your xfinity subscription. 

Looking at this a little closer Constant Guard has four components:

  1. Norton Security Suite - This has been offered to xfinity customers at no cost for the past couple years.
  2. Secure Backup and Share - This is the online backup software that xfinity has offered to their customers for the past couple years.  The free version gives you 2 gigabytes of backup space which is pretty useless for most users.  The pay plans are $5 per month for 50 gigabytes or $10 per month for 200 gigabytes
  3. Online Account Protection - This is the new component of Constant Guard.  It is basically a password safe that remembers and secures your online account passwords ans credit cards.  I have used this type of software in the past and I usually end up disabling it as it annoys me with constant pop-ups.  I have my own methodology for remembering passwords.  But I may give this a shot just to see how they implemented it.
  4. Identity Guard - Provides lost wallet protection, ID recovery Services from the Identity Theft Assistance Center.  There are also options to upgrade you identity protection for $8 month which gives you periodic credit monitoring.  Or you can upgrade to the premier plan for $13 / month which gives you credit bureau scores  and ongoing credit monitoring.
Really except the Online account protection xfinity is just re bundling Norton Security Suite and Secure backup and share.  The Identity Protection isn't software but a service you sign up for that I assume you need to give your SSN to.  T think they are offering thsi to Xfinity custmers for free hoping they will sign up fo the pay plans.  I don't think I would sign up for the identity protection unless I had a problem but it is nice to know it is there just in case.