Introducing the Identity Defender app: New features, one dedicated home

A clearer place to keep track of what happens to your identity when you’re not looking.

Identity Defender has been part of ExpressVPN’s protection offering for U.S. customers since 2024. It’s now upgrading from a feature to a dedicated platform.

• Identity Defender now lives in its own dedicated app for iOS and Android, centered around a real-time Protection Score.

• The new app adds Home and Auto Title Monitoring, Neighbourhood Watch, and Court Records to your existing Dark Web alerts.

• It also includes Credit Scanner, Monthly Credit Reports, and automated Data Removal to scrub your info from broker sites.

• Insurance coverage has increased up to 5 million USD, the best offering in the business, and now includes Cash Recovery for stolen funds.

• It’s available now in the U.S. and included in ExpressVPN subscriptions at no extra cost.

• These features will remain in the main VPN app for a limited time, after which they’ll move exclusively to this new standalone app.

Identity problems rarely arrive as a single obvious event. They surface as small changes that are easy to miss. A new credit inquiry, an address change you didn’t request, or personal details resurfacing in places you never shared them.

Identity Defender was built to catch those signals early and give you a clear way to act. Until now, it lived inside the ExpressVPN app. That made sense as a starting point, but as the protection suite expanded, it became clear that these tools needed their own dedicated space. 

The new standalone app for iOS and Android is now available in the U.S. 

Moving to a dedicated environment allows us to significantly upgrade what the tools can do. The new app introduces a clearer dashboard, a Protection Score to track your safety at a glance, more extensive insurance coverage, and new monitoring capabilities (including Home Title Monitoring, Neighbourhood Watch, and much more) that weren’t available before.

A dashboard built for action

Moving Identity Defender out of the VPN settings and into its own app allows us to organize your protection around how you actually use it.

The new dashboard centers on a Protection Score. This real-time health check gives you a clear snapshot of your risk level, helping you spot gaps and showing you exactly what to fix to improve your standing.

To help you manage the expanded range of features, the app organizes your tools into three focused tabs:

• Security: This is your home for ID Alerts and ID Theft Insurance. Here, you can find all the alerts related to your Identity data, such as Dark Web findings or SSN use, categorized in one place so they’re easier to act on.
• Credit: This tab houses your Credit Scanner and Credit Reports. It’s designed to separate financial health from general identity risks, giving you a distinct view of your credit score and alerts regarding your credit profile.
• Privacy: This is the workspace for Data Removal, where you can manage and track requests to scrub your personal info from broker sites.

ID Alerts: Comprehensive monitoring in one list

ID Alerts brings every monitoring tool into a single alerting system. Instead of checking separate screens, you get one feed that flags important changes.

We’ve also significantly expanded our coverage. Depending on your plan, you now have access to checks that weren’t available before. 

Identity Defender can now monitor:

• Dark web data: We’ve expanded our existing Dark Web Monitoring capabilities and now offer one of the most comprehensive monitoring engines in the industry, scanning for even more types of personal data on your behalf on the dark web. 
• Social Security number use: Flags if your SSN is used for credit or services.
• Home and Auto Title records (new): Watches public records for changes to property or vehicle ownership, which can be early signs of title fraud.
• Your neighbourhood security (new): Alerts you if a registered sex offender moves into your area.
• Court and judicial records (new): Checks for criminal or court records filed under your name.
• High-risk financial transactions (new): Connects via secure, read-only access to highlight unusually large or suspicious transfers without the ability to move funds.
• 401(k) account activity (new): Monitors retirement accounts for unauthorized access using read-only data, ensuring no changes can be made to your account.
• Change of address requests: Flags attempts to redirect your mail.

Credit: Scanner and Reports together

Credit is often the first place where identity theft becomes visible. We’ve simplified how you track it by combining our credit tools in the Credit tab.

Credit Scanner monitors your credit profile continuously. If it detects suspicious activity, such as a hard inquiry you didn’t initiate or a new account you didn’t open, it alerts you. Included within this view for Advanced and Pro plan users are monthly Credit Reports, which let you dig into the details of your accounts and history to verify that everything looks correct.

Privacy: Automated Data Removal

Data brokers and people-search sites collect personal information—like your name, addresses, and phone numbers—and sell them to anyone willing to purchase them. 

The Privacy tab is home to Data Removal. This tool regularly searches for your personal information on data-broker and people-search sites and automatically sends removal requests on your behalf. It runs in the background, continuously working to reduce the amount of your personal data circulating on the open web.

Security: Up to $5M in Identity Theft Insurance

Monitoring reduces risk, but it can’t eliminate it entirely. If identity theft does happen, the recovery process can be expensive and time-consuming.

Identity Defender includes ID Theft Insurance provided by Assurant. We’ve significantly upgraded this protection to close a critical gap. Previously, our 1M USD coverage focused on expense reimbursement, covering costs like legal fees and lost wages. While valuable, it didn’t cover the direct theft of funds.

The new 3 million USD and 5 million USD coverage tiers introduce Cash Recovery. This means that if money is stolen directly from your 401(k), HSA, checking, or savings accounts, you are now eligible for up to 1 million USD in cash reimbursement for those specific losses. This sits alongside our standard full-service restoration support, ensuring you have both professional help and financial backing if the worst happens. Please review the Summary of Benefits for full details of coverage up to $3 Million USD (Advanced) and $5 Million USD (Pro).

Availability and plans

The Identity Defender app is available for iOS and Android in the U.S. only. It’s included as part of ExpressVPN’s subscription tiers at no additional cost, though feature availability varies by plan:

• ID Alerts: Available on select plans, with the full suite of enhanced monitoring (such as Home Title and 401(k) alerts) available on higher tiers.
• Insurance and Data Removal: Coverage limits and availability scale depending on whether you’re on Advanced or Pro plan.
• Credit Tools: Credit Scanner and monthly Credit Reports are now available on both Advanced and Pro plans.

Check your account or the order page to see exactly which protections are included in your tier. Not an ExpressVPN user? Sign up below.

Get ExpressVPN

One subscription, complete protection

The launch of the Identity Defender app is part of a wider shift. We’re moving beyond just protecting your connection to protecting your entire digital life.

With a single ExpressVPN subscription, you now have a complete ecosystem of tools working together:

• ExpressVPN: The core app that secures your connection and privacy online.
• Identity Defender: Our new standalone app that monitors your personal data, credit, and financial risk.
• ExpressKeys: A password manager in its own app to secure your logins.
• ExpressMailGuard: A private email alias tool to keep your real inbox hidden from spam and tracking.
• ExpressAI (coming soon): A private-by-design AI platform that ensures your chats are never stored or used for training. 

It’s one subscription, with five powerful protections. We’re bridging the gap between online privacy and real-world safety, protecting not just your connection, but the person behind it.