Ahem. A subject near and dear my heart.
I do not use paid for ID protection services as you can get most of what they offer by utilizing this-one-trick-that-the-credit-bureaus-hate*.
You can lock your credit for free at all of the credit bureaus, by law, and it's free.
Here's a good article explaining it :
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/09/credit-freezes-are-free-let-the-ice-age-begin/
In addition to the big 3 credit bureaus, if you are going the do it yourself route, don't forget to lock your chexsystem account as well
https://www.chexsystems.com/security-freeze/information
It was a bit of a hassle back in the 2010s to unfreeze your credit before applying for something, and then having to go back in and refreeze it, but it's not so difficult any more. You can go in and set an unfreeze for X days or for specific vendors.
Now, it's a hassle so possibly credit services like Lifelock have value in terms of effort saved in return for money spent.
But I've also heard these services described as having your burglar alarm go off 5 minutes /after/ the thieves get in your house.
But in the interest of fairness, two counterpoints to my thinking above
1) The login security and general idiocy at the Equifax and Experian (Transunion /seems/ to have their crap together) means you can never be really certain that your freeze stays frozen.
(Two further articles from the same most-excellent source above)
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/03/myequifax-com-bypasses-credit-freeze-pin/
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/04/experians-credit-freeze-security-is-still-a-joke/
2) There is one advantage that some credit locking services offer that do-it-yourself does not, and that's assistance in remediation after identity theft - that might also be worth the cost as well.
Note - while not directly related to credit freezing and monitoring, a very helpful tactic is to put an alert on everyone of your credit and bank cards that sends you an email or text whenever a transaction is being charged and your card is not physically present. It can get a bit chatty around Christmas-time but it has absolutly saved me and my wife when our cards got skimmed/cloned or however they were compromised. Both times I was on the phone to the bank's fraud department in minutes and got the cards shut down immediately.
* No really. They /hate/ that you can freeze your credit for free by law. After the 2018 Equifax breech American's spent 1.4 BILLION dollars locking their credit to protect themselves from the incompetence and the problem that Equifax created in the first place. Remember this the next time some whack job starts going off about the big-bad-ebil-gubbmint-n-shits. The gubbmint, er, government did what it was supposed to do and protect the citizens against predatory businesses.
** Equifax also really hates that you can get your credit report for free as well. They are the only one of the 3 agencies that still play games and dick around with people trying to get it. I go out of my way every year (no really, I have a calender reminder) to get mine from Equifax just because they are such dicks about it. Not that I have any feelings about it.