Nord Security has added family and couples plans to Coveron, its identity theft protection service which until last month could only be bought one person at a time. The family plan covers up to five adults and any number of children under 18 on a single subscription, in much the same way a shared Netflix account covers a household. The couples plan is designed for two adults, though it also accepts an unlimited number of kids.
The plans went live on August 17, a few weeks after we published our own Coveron review: We liked the service overall, mainly for the amount of insurance it packs into a low monthly price, but the lack of a family option was the first thing we flagged. At the time, we suggested households compare Aura and LifeLock, since insuring four people with Coveron meant four separate bills.
Adding people doesn’t reduce what each of them gets. According to its parent company, Nord Security, every member has access to professional recovery support and to reimbursement of up to $2 million for eligible costs such as legal fees or lost wages, after an identity theft. The plans also carry Coveron’s cyber insurance, which goes up to $50,000 for cyber extortion and $25,000 for home title fraud with another $10,000 for online fraud and the same amount for cyberattack losses. On top of dark web and credit monitoring, the family plan includes criminal records monitoring and malware breach alerts, along with NordVPN and Incogni, a service that sends deletion requests to data brokers on your behalf.
A Plan That Includes Children
Letting families add as many children as they want also addresses a type of fraud that tends to go unnoticed for a long time: A child isn’t supposed to have a credit history, so nobody thinks to check one. A thief who gets hold of a minor’s Social Security number can use it to build a new credit profile and open accounts, and the family may only find out years later, when the teenager applies for a first loan. Coveron points to LSEG research showing a 40% rise in child identity theft over the past three years, with one child in 50 affected each year. “Your children and elderly family members may not have the same awareness or ability to safeguard their information,” said Tomas Sinicki, Coveron’s managing director.
The comparison with a streaming account has its limits when it comes to privacy: On most shared streaming accounts, anyone in the house can open anyone else’s profile. Coveron keeps members more separate and only the main account owner can add a child to the plan and see that child’s data and alerts, and the other adults can’t see information belonging to the children or to one another.
Coveron remains available only in the United States, its territories, and the District of Columbia, and New York residents are excluded. The 30-day money-back guarantee that applies to individual subscriptions also covers the Family and Couples plans, according to Coveron’s website.