Last Updated on March 18, 2023
Identity theft and its related crimes are continuing to be one of the biggest threats to our personal safety. As criminals become more and more advanced with their techniques to access our personal protection, the need for quality identity theft protection increases. In this article, we will be looking at two of the top rated identity theft protection products, Aura vs Identity Guard.
After looking closely at the two products, Aura really stands above Identity Guard in just about every important category. It really gives the best protection for a lower price. Our single complaint with Aura is that the user interface and website dashboard is clunky and not well thought out. If you can get over that, it really is the best value.
When it comes to Aura vs Identity Guard, you really cannot go wrong with either product. Your choice will simply boil down to the features that you need and think are most important, and the price you are willing to pay for identity theft protection.
Aura and Identity Guard are products from the same company, but they are different. And, they offer different options for identity theft protection for the consumer. Just because you get differing levels of protection and a range of options from the two products, this doesn’t necessarily mean that one is better than the other. Both products are outstanding at monitoring for threats, offering resolution, and providing helpful customer service.
The real difference lies in the way that Aura and Identity Guard package and price their products. Each product offers a range of packages and options that easily fit a wide range of individual and family needs and budgets. As we continue on through our article, we will show you the options in Aura vs. Identity Guard.
We hope that our evaluation of the two products will help you select the right identity theft protection for you or your family.
Who Should Buy Aura
Aura is a robust software suite that is intended to protect you from identity theft by computer hackers and individuals with criminal intent. Aura offers a range of plans.
Each plan starts with tools that may not be standard with many other identity theft products. With Aura you always get a personal virtual private network (VPN), antivirus protection, password manager, a higher level of identity theft insurance and white-glove fraud resolution service. These features are just the base of what you get with Aura, and for many people, this base package is perfect.
When we look at what each of these base products offer you’ll see that this product is a great value. Aura works to scan and protect not only your financial resources and transactions, but they provide comprehensive monitoring of your social security number, personal data, home title and criminal prosecution that may involve your identity or personal information.
In addition to this comprehensive scanning of your personal information, the Aura identity theft insurance offers you one of the highest coverage plans available. For families and couples Aura covers up to $5 million in losses, and for individuals they cover up to $2 million in losses.
When it comes to watching for your personal data, Aura looks not only on the world wide web, but they also search data brokers, the dark web, and criminal court servers for your personal information. If you have children, Aura will also monitor their social security numbers and personal information to ensure that their identities are also protected from illicit activities.
To protect your finances, Aura monitors your credit ratings, bank activity, retirement funds and any other financial products that you may have. One of the nicest features of Aura is the lost wallet product. This helps you shutdown your credit cards and other financial and personal information should you lose your wallet or purse.
Finally, Aura’s antivirus and VPN products provide strong protection of your personal information when you are surfing the web. Aura’s antivirus product provides protection against malware, spyware and viruses. It also has a safe browsing feature that protects you against phishing. This protection allows you to use the antivirus and VPN protection on up to 50 devices, depending on the plan you select.
With all of these features, you may be wondering if Aura is right for your identity protection needs. Aura is the plan for you if:
Who Should Buy Identity Guard
Identity Guard is a great product that has been on the market for a while now. It has a solid reputation for providing you with outstanding protection of your personal information across the internet and dark web.
Identity Guard works with IBM’s Watson Artificial Intelligence (AI) system to scan all aspects of the internet, including social media and news articles, looking for potential signs that your identity or your family has been stolen. Identity Guard provides its users with warnings of suspicious activity on member’s bank accounts and credit cards. Additionally, Identity Guard will let you know if your credit card or bank company has been the victim of a phishing or data mining attack.
Identity Guard also offers identity theft insurance. They offer a single level of insurance with up to $1 million in protection. Insurance along with a number of other add-on features are available through Identity Guard, but you will need to pay extra for any service you select that is above and beyond their basic packages.
One of the services that Identity Guard provides that we really like that you won’t find with many other identity theft protection products, is their high level of customer service. If your identity should be compromised, Identity Guard will provide you with a dedicated case manager to help you through the process of repairing and taking control of your identity.
Upgraded packages from Identity Guard include features like credit profile monitoring, monitoring of your financial accounts, home title fraud detection, and court activity protection. Additionally, Identity Guard can help you clean up your public image on social media for an upgrade cost.
You should select Identity Guard if:
Aura vs Identity Guard: Most Important Features Compared
Now that you know a bit about the two products, it is time for us to take a deeper evaluation of Aura vs Identity Guard. Below, we have broken out some of the features that more and more people are looking for in an identity theft protection product. For each of the features we will discuss how the two products, Aura and Identity Guard differ or how they are similar.
Dark Web Monitoring & Alerts
While Aura shines in many other ways, Identity Guard is really the winner when it comes to dark web monitoring.
Because Aura and Identity Guard are products from the same company, they use the same base technology, but Identity Guard has taken this technology just a bit above the Aura option, and provides a much faster response to potential threats on the dark web.
When provided with similar data and information, Identity Guard and Aura both gave similar information and alerts. Identity Guard just populated the list faster. While a few minutes isn’t likely to make a huge difference in your response to dark web threats, it does give us a little more comfort to know that both products work well and within a similar amount of time.
We were equally impressed with the detail of the information provided about each threat, from each product. Since they use a similar base technology, this was to be expected, but it was nice to have it confirmed.
Credit & Financial Monitoring
When it comes to the breadth of credit and financial monitoring, Aura is our pick. When looking for credit and financial monitoring in identity theft products we look for the following features:
- Bank account monitoring
- Social security number monitoring
- Credit report monitoring and locking
- Retirement fund and investment monitoring
- Home title monitoring
- Payday loan monitoring
- Post office address change monitoring
- Social media alerts
- Sex offender and criminal registry monitoring
These are all common places where criminals can steal your identity, so having a product that can look at all of these places is so very important. Both Aura and Identity Guard can monitor and provide alerts on all of these areas. However, Aura offers this monitoring and identity protection as a standard in all of their packages. Identity Guard offers some of these as standard in their Value and Total packages, but others (home title and investment monitoring) are available only in their Ultra package.
Threat Resolution Services
When you get that dreaded alert that someone has tried to or has successfully stolen your identity or financial information, you don’t really want to wait to start fixing the problem. This is where Aura and Identity Guard are really different.
Aura has amazing threat resolution services. They have customer service representatives ready to help you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Even if someone steals your identity on Christmas morning, someone at Aura will be there to answer your call. In our opinion this is one of the most reassuring features that Aura offers when it comes to protecting your identity and helping you get back on track if someone does take advantage of your resources.
It’s not to say that Identity Guard doesn’t have good threat resolution services, but they just aren’t available all the time. Their customer service hours are 8 AM to 11 PM (EST), Monday thru Friday and 9 AM to 6 PM (EST) on Saturdays. They do not have customer service representatives available at all on Sundays.
If your identity has been compromised you shouldn’t have to wait for someone to help you. Even though it is just one day a week that Identity Guard isn’t available, it does not give us the same level of security as the 24/7/365 customer service from Aura.
Theft Insurance
There are a few differences between Aura and Identity Guard when it comes to their theft insurance coverage. They aren’t deal breakers, you just have to decide which provides you with the coverage you feel most comfortable with.
When it comes to individual theft insurance plans, Aura and Identity Guard are identical. They give you up to $1 million in insurance coverage. The insurance covers lost funds and expenses for identity restoration.
The family plans for Aura and Identity Guard is where the difference in the two products lie. Aura’s family theft insurance covers up to 5 adults, with $1 million in coverage for each adult. For a total of $5 million in coverage for your family. This is by far the best coverage industry wide for identity theft insurance.
Identity Guard does have a family plan, but it splits the $1 million policy between all members of your family, instead of providing $1 million for each individual.
Family Plans
Speaking of family, let’s look at the family plans that the two programs offer.
You will find that Aura and Identity Guard have similar family plans. They cover up to 5 qualifying adults and an unlimited number of children. Both companies offer family coverage that is more robust than the industry standard.
Aura does offer a bit more for their family plan. Specifically the theft insurance coverage. They also provide their Circle program, which is a parental controls app that is provided in all of their family plans.
Ease of Use
What we really find disappointing about Aura is their website. The user dashboard that they have developed is not terribly user friendly. It doesn’t provide much helpful information on the front page. Leaving you to dig to find alerts and threat information.
The one thing that the Aura dashboard does give you is a great snapshot of your credit score. That is helpful information and can be a good first step in catching unauthorized activity.
Identity Guard provides such a helpful user dashboard, with all of the information you need, right on the front page (alerts and found threats). The Identity Guard user interface is so helpful, and it is one of the biggest selling points for the Identity Guard product.
The real disappointment with the Aura user interface is that Aura is brought to you by the same people that give you Identity Guard. The fact that they can’t just use a similar style dashboard is a real bummer.
The disappointing user interface for Aura isn’t really a deal breaker if you are considering it for your identity theft protection. You can still find all the features you need, it just may take a click or two to get there.
Additional Services
We mentioned earlier that Identity Guard is really a great product for the person or family that just needs some basic identity theft protection. So, it isn’t really a surprise that the additional services with Identity Guard are quite limited.
If you are looking for a good identity theft product that gives you some nice additional features as a standard inclusion to their base package, Aura is one of our favorites. It isn’t the best product out there, but Aura does offer antivirus and VPN protection standard with all of their plans.
Aura also offers as a standard feature of their family plan, their Circle app which provides parental controls to help kids keep their identity safe. This is a huge selling point if you have children and want to protect them from the dangers that lurk on social media today.
Price
One of the best things about Aura is that they have three simple plans; Individual, Couple, and Family. Each plan comes with the same benefits, but they cover 1, 2, or up to 5 people. The plans are a little bit pricier than the Identity Guard plans, but they are all-inclusive. Aura’s plans are billed annually or monthly, depending on your preferences. Keep in mind if you need to be billed monthly your price will be a bit higher.
| Plan Type | Annual Billing | Monthly Billing |
| Individual | $144/year | $15/month |
| Couple (2 adults) | $264/year | $29/month |
| Family (5 adults, unlimited children) | $444/year | $50/month |
Identity Guard has a more complex pricing structure. They offer three levels of protection and just family and individual coverage. If you want coverage for you and your spouse but you don’t have children, you will either have to use the family level or buy two individual options. Also with Identity Guard, each level of pricing gives you different benefits.
| Plan Type | Annual Billing | Monthly Billing |
| Individual Value | $64.68/year | $8.99/month |
| Individual Total | $143.88/year | $19.99/month |
| Individual Ultra | $215.88/year | $29.99/month |
| Family Value | $107.88/year | $14.99/month |
| Family Total | $215.88/year | $29.99/month |
| Family Ultra | $287.88/year | $39.99/month |
Final Thoughts on Aura vs Identity Guard
After looking closely at the two products, Aura really stands above Identity Guard in just about every important category. It really gives the best protection for a lower price. Our single complaint with Aura is that the user interface and website dashboard is clunky and not well thought out. If you can get over that, it really is the best value.
When it comes to Aura vs Identity Guard, you really cannot go wrong with either product. Your choice will simply boil down to the features that you need and think are most important, and the price you are willing to pay for identity theft protection.
