I’ve been a LifeLock member for almost three years now. I’ve always been satisfied with their service and felt like I received effective identity theft protection at a reasonable price, and felt more secure for having it.

I upgraded my LifeLock membership to Command Center recently, and feel better than ever, especially because my Command Center membership provides me with a service I never expected to receive from an identity theft protection company: a list of sex offenders in my neighborhood.

No other crime frightens women as rape does. I doubt there is a woman in America who does not know a rape survivor, or someone who was molested as a child. An estimated 1 in 6 women has been raped, and another woman in America is raped every two minute. As parents, most of us believe we would kill to protect our children, yet an estimated 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 7 boys is molested.

Sex offender registries were established after 7-year-old Megan Kanka was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a repeat offender who had recently moved into a house across the street. Megan’s law was crafted specifically so people could periodically check the records to see who lives near them.

The sex offender registries are public record, and I could check them myself, just like I could order my own credit reports and remove my name from mailing lists for pre-approved credit offers. Instead, I’ve always paid LifeLock $9 a month to do these things for me, because before I enrolled in LifeLock, I never got these things done despite my best intentions.

Now LifeLock regularly sends me the list of sex offenders, and, because of that, I know a convicted child molester lives about 10 blocks from my son’s elementary school. I’ve studied his picture and I’ve driven by his house because I want to be able to recognize his car, and I want to know who else comes and goes in this man’s house—the man who raped and murdered Megan Kanka lived with two other men, both convicted child molesters.

What does all this have to do with identity theft? Criminals sometimes use stolen names and information when they’re arrested. They go to jail, they get booked, and they hire a bondsman and never show up for court—but the identity theft victim ends up with a criminal record and a bench warrant for failing to appear in court or worse. A man in England lost his marriage, children, reputation, his career and his home because he was misidentified as a child pornographer. It took him years to prove the man who used his credit cards to buy pornography online had stolen his identity.

In other instances, convicted sex offenders use a stolen address when they register after leaving prison so they can evade law enforcement agencies charged with checking up on them. Because I have LifeLock, I know nobody but me uses my address.