We store a lot of our sensitive information online, and hackers have gotten better at figuring out new ways to access it. If you want to keep your personal and financial data safe, an identity theft monitoring service could help by keeping an eye on your credit, personal information and more. Aura is CNET’s choice for the best overall ID theft protection and monitoring service thanks to its price-to-value and three-bureau credit monitoring included in every plan.
We liken Aura to a bit of a catch-all service, as It offers competitive plans for both individuals and families. It’s also one of the few identity theft monitoring services we’ve come across that also caters to couples.
No matter the plan you choose, Aura doesn’t skimp on the features you get. In addition to white glove resolution services, identity theft insurance coverage and dark web and Social Security number alerts, Aura provides an expansive list of online security and credit monitoring options.
Keep your identity and sensitive data safe
Who should use Aura?
We recommend Aura if you want an identity theft service that offers three credit bureau monitoring and an expansive list of features included in every plan. Aura offers roughly two dozen features with its Individual plan and more through its Family option.
If you’re looking for an individual identity theft plan that doesn’t cut corners, Aura’s base plan may appeal to you. For $15 a month, you get services that most competitors charge more for. For example, LifeLock by Norton charges $23 a month for credit lock access, a monthly credit score and bank fraud alerts under its Advantage plan. You’ll have to pay $20 on ID Shield to receive three credit bureau monitoring.
Families looking for full protection should also consider Aura. At $50 per month, Aura’s family plan is a bit on the expensive side compared to most competitors, but it offers decent value. You get all of the perks of the individual plan, including a VPN and antivirus protection, and you can add up to five adults and unlimited children to a subscription. All industry family plans vary, but they generally cover two adults and anywhere from five to 10 children.
On the flip side, Aura’s plans are not right for you if you’re looking to include social media monitoring, USPS address changes, medical data reports and utility alerts in your identity theft protection. These services are not offered by Aura. You can look at LifeLock or ID Shield as potential alternatives. Additionally, if you want more than the base $1 million in identity theft insurance, LifeLock’s Standard plan may be a better fit. ID Shield also offers up to $3 million in reimbursements for unrecovered expenses through its individual plan.
Another factor that may sway you away from Aura is price. If $15 a month is too steep, consider another service like Zander, our pick for the best identity theft protection service for those on a budget, starting at $7 per month.
What products does Aura offer?
Aura offers four plans -- Individual, Couple, Family and Kids -- that range from $13 to $50 per month. Each plan also includes a 14-day free trial. As is the industry norm, Aura offers a discount if you pay annually, rather than monthly. Annual plans come equipped with a 60-day money-back guarantee.
Rather than charging you based on the services you want, Aura’s pricing is largely based on the number of people on a plan. This means that you basically get Aura’s full suite of services even with its base plan.
We like that white glove restoration is available with all identity and fraud protection plans, along with dark web monitoring and around-the-clock customer service. All Aura plans, except Kids, provide identity theft protection, credit monitoring and $1 million in identity theft insurance in case your identity is stolen.
Individual
Aura’s individual plan is quite impressive, despite the fact some benefits available through Aura’s Family and Kids plans aren’t accessible with this plan.
What you get is a long list of credit and identity monitoring services that track your Social Security number, bank accounts, investments and more on the dark web. You even get a lot of online security features with this plan, too, including:
- Email alias: You can hide your email address to prevent unwanted messages in your inbox and limit data breach exposure.
- Password manager: To store your strong passwords so you don’t have to remember them
- Vault: A digital lockbox to keep your sensitive online files safe
- VPN: Browse the Internet with privacy (available on up to 10 devices)
- Antivirus protection: Protect your devices from malware (available on up to 10 devices)
- Spam call and message protection: Filter out robocalls and potential phone scams and messages (available as an add-on option, but is free with family plan)
Aura’s Individual plan costs $15 per month or $144 per year. That works out to $12 per month with an annual subscription.
Couple
Aura’s Couple plan costs $29 per month or $264 per year. That’s $22 per month with an annual subscription.
For the price, you get every benefit and perk of the company’s individual plan for two adults, plus more covered devices; 20 instead of 10. Account holders each also get $1 million in identity theft insurance.
Family
Aura’s Family plan gives you everything the company has to offer. In addition to the features of the individual plan or couple plan, you get AI spam call and message protection for free and online security tools for unlimited devices. You also get access to parental features and controls, including site blocking, online usage reports, safe gaming and cyberbullying alerts.
Aura’s family plan will scan the dark web for the personal data of up to five adults and unlimited children. The company also alerts parents if a sex offender has moved within a one-mile radius of their address. Aura can even help you freeze your child’s credit with all three credit bureaus under this plan.
Family costs $50 per month or $384 per year. That works out to $32 per month.
Kids
If you’re just looking for protection for a child and don’t want to enroll in a family plan, Aura offers a standalone Kids plan. Aura’s Kids plan doesn’t offer dark web, credit and financial account monitoring or identity theft insurance. It does include online security tools like a VPN, antivirus protection and a password manager.
Like the Family plan, Aura’s Kids plan comes with both parental controls and safe gaming with cyberbullying and predator alerts.
The plan costs $13 per month or $120 a year for an annual subscription. This breaks down to $10 a month when you pay annually.
Aura products, compared
| Individual | Couple | Family (Five adults, unlimited kids) | Kids | |
| Plan cost | $15 billed monthly | $29 billed monthly | $50 billed monthly | $13 billed monthly |
| Identity theft insurance | $1 million | $1 million, per adult | $1 million, per adult | None (plan doesn’t include identity theft protection) |
| Top features | Dark web, SSN and 3-Bureau Credit Monitoring; white glove restoration, Antivirus, VPN and password manager; financial fraud alerts | Everything in Individual, but for two people | Everything included in Individual, Couple and Kids plan, plus child identity theft and AI Spam call and message protection, child credit freeze support | Parental controls, including site blocking and online usage reports, plus safe gaming and online security tools |
| Number of protected devices | 10 | 20 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
What’s it like to use Aura?
I tested Aura’s individual plan and was impressed with just how intuitive the software is. Its ease of use reminds me of TurboTax‘s simple interface
After you sign up with your Social Security number and credit card info, you’re prompted to answer a few questions as Aura creates your profile, such as how often you check your bank account for suspicious activity and if you suspect any of your passwords have been leaked online. The questions feel like a way of reassuring you that all of your privacy concerns will be addressed through the service. Every time you answer a question, the software touts a feature available to you to mitigate risk.
This may seem insignificant to some, but I found it reassuring after entering so much of my personal identifiable information, or PII, including my passwords, bank accounts, Social Security numbers and even passport, in one place.
Once your profile is created, you’ll be hit with a “safety checklist” but you can choose to skip it if you’d like. The checklist includes prompts to download Aura’s mobile app, set up your password manager and link to your financial accounts. Aura uses fintech company Plaid to link your banking and investment accounts to your Aura profile. Each task on the safety checklist includes a time estimate of how long it will take to complete it.
After the checklist, you’ll reach your dashboard. Your home screen will show an activity tracker with the latest updates from Aura about your account and the steps the service is taking to keep your identity safe. It looks a lot like a live blog or RSS feed. You can filter this log by feature: vault, credit, transaction, antivirus and data brokers.
I believe there are only two dropdown menu options you’ll likely use on your dashboard. The first is “My Protection.” Here, you can lock your credit with Experian, check your credit score, view your transaction history on linked accounts and view your online security tools available in your Aura plan.
Under “Vault,” you can view any personal data you’ve added to your digital lockbox, as well as your home and auto titles. You’ll also be able to view any passwords you’ve set up with Aura’s password manager. This is where you’ll also find the data broker removal tool. When you sign up for Aura, it automatically searches for your information on sites that sell your information to advertisers. After one day, Aura informed me it successfully deleted my information from 12 sites.
Other notable features
You can upgrade your Aura individual plan at any time by clicking on the “Family” tab at the top of the screen when you’re logged in. Aura’s family plan lets you sign up to five adults and unlimited children. Your immediate family, cousins, in-laws and friends are also all eligible.
If you decide Aura’s identity theft protection isn’t for you, you can cancel your plan by hovering over the gear icon on the top right part of the screen and clicking membership. I did encounter a technical glitch on Aura’s site that forced me to call the company’s customer support at 833-681-7577 to process my cancellation.
In your settings, you also can set your contact preferences. Email notifications will always be turned on. But you can toggle SMS notifications on and off.
Aura’s plans vary in the number of devices supported. Individual plans support 10 devices, Couple plans support 20, while Family and Kids plans support unlimited devices. You’ll need to download Aura’s Chrome extension, desktop and mobile apps to use Aura’s VPN, antivirus and password manager features on your devices. Spam call and text protection is also available on mobile.
Finally, don’t underestimate the capabilities of Aura’s digital vault. You can use this feature to store documents and protect them from bad actors. Documents can either be uploaded or linked so they can be monitored on the dark web. Some examples of information you can keep in Aura’s digital vault include:
- Bankruptcy filings
- Birth certificates
- Court documents
- Divorce agreements
- Gamertag
- IP address
- Living will
- Real estate agreement
- Power of attorney
- Driver’s License
- Passport
How do Aura’s identity restoration services work?
If you suspect you’ve been a victim of identity theft, report it to an Aura immediately. Aura’s expert remediation team will come up with a customized plan of action based on the severity of the identity theft. You can contact Aura via telephone or email 24/7 here.
It can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months to fully recover your identity.
Aura breaks down its identity theft recovery process into a few steps:
- Report identity theft: Call Aura’s white glove restoration team anytime or day at 1-844-939-3681. You can also contact Aura via a chat function on its website, available between 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET Monday through Friday.
- Wait for Aura to provide next steps: Aura will record your case specifics and guide you through early steps, including securing bank accounts to prevent further unauthorized access. You should also report your fraud case to the Federal Trade Commission via IdentityTheft.gov or by calling 1-877-438-4338.
- Lock your credit profiles: You can instantly lock your Experian credit profile through Aura. But Aura will also guide you in freezing your credit with TransUnion and Equifax.
- Flag fraudulent transactions: After you identify and dispute any charges, Aura can work as an intermediary between you and your bank or lender to help reverse fraudulent charges or close new accounts.
Aura’s identity theft insurance covers stolen funds, out-of-pocket expenses -- such as travel fees and time off work reimbursement -- and coverage for lawyers and experts. Every adult on a subscription plan is covered up to $1 million.
Is Aura’s Family plan worth the price?
Aura’s Family plan offers more value than the Kids plan. It includes everything that the Kids plan offers, plus identity theft monitoring services for minors and assistance with freezing your child’s credit.
In our opinion, Aura’s Family Plan is only matched by Identity Guard’s Ultra Family Plan (Aura also owns Identity Guard). They both include white glove restoration services, coverage for five adults and unlimited children and three credit bureau monitoring.
Where they differ is in the quality of identity theft insurance offered. Identity Guard offers $1 million total, whereas Aura offers $1 million per adult. Notably, there are services that Aura offers that Identity Guard doesn’t and visa versa.
Be sure to compare family plan options from multiple service providers if you are in the market for family identity theft protection.
Is Aura right for me?
Aura is a good choice for you if you want a long-list of credit and identity theft monitoring services at a competitive price point. We like that this service offers features like three credit bureau monitoring with all plans, while top competitors charge more for this feature.Aura is also one of the only identity theft protection services to cater to couples (most exclusively offer individual and family plans.)
Aura doesn’t offer everything. LifeLock, our choice for the identity theft monitoring service with the best features, offers social media monitoring and alerts in case your USPS address is changed without your permission. LifeLock can also potentially offer you more in Identity theft insurance.
Then there’s the price. While we appreciate Aura’s straightforward pricing model, there are cheaper options available for both individual and family plans. We think Aura offers a great price for the value you get, but if it’s too steep, we recommend looking at Zander, Identity Guard or IdentityIQ.
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