Monday, June 11, 2007

Lifelock founder (Robert Maynard Jr.) resigns, while Fred Thompson takes heat for pitching the company

Kim Zetter from Wired News announced this today:

LifeLock co-founder Robert Maynard, Jr. has resigned from his position with the identity theft protection company following a story published in the Phoenix New Times about his past, which I wrote about last week. CEO Todd Davis left me a voicemail message this morning saying, "Even though we found no merit to any of the claims made by the New Times article . . . Robert Maynard has chosen to step down from the company so we don't allow any distractions or anyone have the ability to question the integrity of LifeLock and our service offering. . . . He is now no longer an executive or officer of the company as of this time."

Although, reading further, it appears Robert will still have something to do with the company:

Davis acknowledged that Maynard, Jr., still owns 10 percent equity in LifeLock and that he is launching a marketing company. When asked if Maynard will work as a contractor for LifeLock doing the same marketing work he was until now doing as a staff member, Davis said yes.

The article also revealed that Todd Davis, LifeLock's CEO -- who post's his own social security number all over the place, to market LifeLock's services -- recently became an identity theft statistic, himself.

Interesting read from Kim Zetter, here.

Meanwhile, Fred Thompson is taking heat for pitching Lifelock. Not sure if this is really fair. A lot of news organizations and other radio personalities from Rush Limbaugh to Howard Stern (strange combination) have pitched Lifelock in the past.

Why is everybody picking on Fred, and Fred, only?

MSNBC story, here.

To read the original post, I did on Lifelock, click here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The double whammy for Lifelock is that their product, which is guaranteed to prevent an identity thief from using ones identity, didn't help the CEO of the company from getting his identity stolen!

So the company was founded by a supposed identity thief and their product can't even help the CEO of the company.

Hmmmmm.....

Anonymous said...

Ouch - he plasters his name on advertising with his social security number daring someone to steal it and they did.

Anonymous said...

Shame on Mr. Davis. He joins hands with Maynard whose past he's aware of. Their goal? Marketing spiff and spin. Ya. Cry a Maynard victim story to entice customers. Now Maynard is exposed and out --- but Davis keeps him "on" at an arm's length? Who's the stupid one? Now Davis gets his own taste of how "unguaranteeable" his services really are. Again - who's the stupid one. Need more? Check out Lifelock's Chief of Staff. Yup, that's right - Mr. Davis's wife. (Isn't that a position reserved for the bedroom?) What kind of CEO is this guy? Grow up Lifelock !