Discover Financial Services has added a feature to its mobile app that relieves customers of a tedious — and often overlooked — task.
Online Privacy Protection is a free and automated service that scours 10 people-search sites that collect personal information such as names, ages, home addresses and contact information. The sites, which include Spokeo.com, Intelius.com and InstantCheckmate.com, share some of this personal data publicly for free and sell in-depth reports. Discover’s service will submit opt-out requests when it finds records of the user on a lookup site, and repeats the process every few months. It launched in April but marketing has been limited thus far.
Discover, which is based in Redwoods, Illinois, is an early adopter of some privacy- and security-related features that few other financial institutions offer. For example, it introduced dark web monitoring for Social Security numbers in 2017; these types of monitoring services typically scan illegal marketplaces and hidden corners of the internet where stolen personal data may be sold. In its second-quarter credit card scorecard, competitive intelligence firm Keynova Group found four out of 10 credit card issuers offer some form of dark web scanning. Meanwhile, all 10 issuers it surveyed offer more-common credit monitoring services that give users a window into their credit score, recent changes to their credit report or score, or credit inquiries. Capital One and JPMorgan Chase have both launched dark web surveillance in recent years.
Online Privacy Protection is even more unique.
“There are third-party services that offer to remove personal data from the web,” said Beth Robertson, a managing director at Keynova Group. “However, I am not aware of another card issuer or bank currently offering something comparable to Discover’s Online Privacy Protection service.”
It’s the first Discover benefit or feature that is available to any customer, whether they have a deposit account, credit card, loan or an identity theft protection subscription, as long as they have the mobile app. Other features, such as dark web monitoring, are provided to customers of specific products, like a credit card. Beyond the usual goals of attracting new customers and engaging current ones, the company also hopes to encourage more customers to download the mobile app to obtain this feature.
“We want to have our storefront on your phone,” said Shannon Kors, vice-president of marketing and product strategy at the $107.4 billion-asset Discover.
Another piece is reinforcing Discover’s position as a “leading digital bank,” said Kors.
“I think most people know us as a card company,” she said. “We have so much more to offer.”
Discover’s security alerts and monitoring program (for card members only) scans the dark web for signs of a customer’s Social Security Number and monitors card members’ Experian credit reports for new accounts and inquiries.
“Privacy is a natural extension,” said Kors. “It’s not about the places you can’t see, but the places you can.”
Discover partnered with an online reputation management company called BrandYourself to offer this service. After scanning the 10 select people-search sites, the service will instantly relay back which ones contain personal information, and submit opt-out requests on the user’s behalf. It can then take days or weeks for the information to be scrubbed.
These 10 lookup sites are meant to strike a balance between popularity and a high percentage of successful opt-outs.
James Lee, chief operating officer of the Identity Theft Resource Center, says it is standard practice now among financial institutions to have some form of identity theft protection and monitoring, but this particular privacy feature “is pretty unique among financial institutions,” he said.
He points out that protective features considered table stakes are always shifting, “because the bad guys are always innovating,” he said. “With Discover adding this service it’s a reflection that they realize they can’t be static. They have to always be adding new things or looking for new ways to not only protect their account holders but help their account holders protect themselves.”
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But it’s far from foolproof.
“Identity criminals don’t generally pay for those databases,” said Lee. “They go to illicit identity marketplaces. That is where the problem lies with people’s identity and information being misused.”
Banks and credit card firms see higher satisfaction when they have strong security features on their mobile apps, said Jennifer White, senior director of banking and payments intelligence at J.D. Power. That can include iconology, screen design, alert functionality, and credit report monitoring.
