With the LifeLock vs Aura comparison, it is pretty safe to say that one of these is the better choice for most us concerned about Identity Theft, or even trying to prevent repeat occurrences in some cases.
Having used seven Identity Theft Protection solutions and learning how they work under the hood, watching how they respond to breaches, and working through issues with their support teams, if I could only keep one that would be Aura.
Especially if you want to protect your whole family, you know your spouse, your parents, your in-laws, your kids.
While LifeLock is the self-proclaimed most-recognized brand in Identity Theft Protection, it is one of the first I’d get rid of. In just a bit, I’ll talk about where Aura outperforms LifeLock.
Whichever you choose check out my links for the latest deals and recommendations. Right now I have deals for both and a really awesome deal for Aura, but I’ll keep that up to date as things inevitably change.
Now, my second-biggest beef with LifeLock is that their customer support is just terrible, all the other companies I’ve used run circles around them.
I know it’s boring but with Identity Theft Protection it’s actually pretty important. Just think about the situations where you’re likely to call these companies. Maybe it’s a billing issue or maybe you have a question about your account and in those cases, with any luck you have some patience to spare. Unless of course your kid cried from midnight to 4am last night. I’ve been there.
Now what about the day your gmail login gets leaked on the dark web, or someone gets access to your bank account, or worse?
When you’re freaking out on the inside do you want to be on the phone with an overseas agent in a loud call center listening to them read you responses off a script? I don’t.
Just think of the last time you called your phone or internet provider for troubleshooting. I do everything I can to avoid that phone call.
Now, LifeLock plans do give you US-based Identity Restoration Specialists, but you have to get there first and you’re already starting off on the wrong foot.
Like a friend of mine who was played by John Travolta once told me, if it’s bad in the beginning, it’ll be bad in the middle, and it’ll be bad in the end.
Aura’s customer support, on the otherhand, is stellar. They’re efficient, they know their product, and they know their customers.
Setup: Aura vs LifeLock
Now let’s take a step back. What makes Identity Theft Protection great?
Well, it is good monitoring and excellent threat resolution. Let’s start with monitoring.
How LifeLock and Aura work, much like the rest of the Identity Theft Protection companies is that you input your personal information and they monitor the dark web and they let you know if they find your information online.
You can monitor things like your name, your email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses, social security numbers, and the list goes on—it is pretty extensive.
When you get an alert it usually tells you what information was found, where it was found, and any recommended actions you should take.
If it’s anything of particular concern you’ll probably want to contact their support team and by then you’ll be wishing you’d chosen Aura.
Unless of course LifeLock doesn’t find anything, which is likely cause for concern in and of itself. If you’ve been the poster child for cyber safety your whole life then maybe you haven’t been pwned yet, but odds are these companies will find something.
And I’ll show you how LifeLock and Aura compare in what they find for me further below. For now, let’s go over some features and see how these two brands compare.
Monitoring the Public Web

Monitoring the public web is a great feature. While Aura proactively submits opt-out requests with data brokers on your behalf, with LifeLock you have to pay extra if you want them to do that. Unfortunately, this is kind of a recurring theme with LifeLock— something that will come up often throughout this review.
Aura also monitors public records so if something nutso happens like someone adds their name to your home deed or uses your name during an arrest you’ll get an alert. LifeLock offers this, but only in their upgraded plans. Nutso great LifeLock, nutso great.
Credit and Utility Monitoring
Both of them will also monitor your credit and utility accounts. On one hand, LifeLock does only 1-bureau credit monitoring unless you get their Ultimate Plus Plan. On the other hand, Aura does all three on all of their plans.
While we’re on the topic of credit, it is worth noting that Aura gives you monthly VantageScores and annual credit reports for all three bureaus which LifeLock doesn’t fully offer at all.
Although if you upgrade to their ultimate plus plan you can get daily updates for one bureau and annual updates for the other two. But with anything less than the Ultimate Plus plan you’re stuck with reports and scores from one bureau, or none at all depending on the plan.
Credit Lock

Aura also offers a convenient credit lock so that you can prevent unwanted inquiries into your credit file with the click of a button, rather than initiating a freeze with the bureau. LifeLock also offers this, but as you might expect you have to upgrade.
Transaction Monitoring
Aura’s plans include transaction monitoring so if you want to link your bank accounts and credit cards you can monitor activity and get alerts of any transactions over a specified limit.
And of course LifeLock offers this too, as long as you upgrade.
And all jokes aside, what I really love about LifeLock’s tiered plan structures is that the features are spread out all across the board so if you want even a few of these features, you have to upgrade all the way to the top. It’s a genius marketing strategy, really.
Extra Protection Features
Aura offers a few bells and whistles that even an upgrade won’t buy you with LifeLock, namely a VPN and antivirus software.
I imagine if you want these with a LifeLock plan they’ll send you over to Norton’s sister companies where they’ll just hose you down again like you’re at the bottom of Hannibal Lecter’s well.
Though to be honest, I think there are better solutions for those types of things than either of these companies have to offer.
Dark Web Monitoring
And now for my big reveal—how do LifeLock and Aura stack up on dark web monitoring?
I monitor the same information on both platforms—although LifeLock only allows me to monitor 5 out of the 6 email addresses I keep tabs on, so I leave one out that doesn’t turn up dark web alerts with any of the Identity Theft Protection companies.
Lucky for me, all of my hits are just associated with leaked login credentials, which obviously isn’t desirable, but it could be a lot worse.
Aura turns up a total of 18 dark web alerts from websites you are probably familiar with like Dropbox, Adobe, and Canva. One of the hits is even my leaked gmail username and password that fortunately I updated years ago. But at least that explains all the weird stuff I was seeing.
Of the 18 dark web hits 9 of them are unique. The remaining hits are breach compilations, which I believe are just like massive spreadsheets of people’s login credentials floating around on the dark web for identity thieves.
How does LifeLock compare?
Well, they find only 8 dark web hits total – though in their defense, they are all unique. But they miss hits associated with one of my email addresses that most of the others find, and they don’t turn up those leaked gmail credentials.
To put that into perspective, there’s only one Identity Theft Protection solution I use that turns up less dark web hits than LifeLock. On the flip side, there’s only one that turns up marginally more than Aura.
Now, dark web monitoring is not an exact science, but suffice to say that Aura’s dark web monitoring is pretty darn good whereas LifeLock’s dark web monitoring is notably sub-par.
Monitoring is only one part of the story. What about threat resolution?
Threat Resolution
Well, we’ve already talked about what it’s like to pick up the phone and call these companies, and I’d far prefer to be stuck in the trenches with Aura over LifeLock.
As I mentioned earlier, LifeLock’s plans do include US-based Identity Restoration Specialists. But Aura’s approach has a bit more finesse.

Aura’s plans include a White-Glove fraud resolution team that will develop a remediation plan for your incident and hand-hold you through the entire process until the issue has been resolved. I honestly believe that they’ll do a great job with this, Aura has exceeded my expectations every step of the way.
Identity Theft Insurance
In terms of financial backing Aura’s plans include $1M per adult in identity theft insurance, which is up to $5M on the family plan.

Now, recently LifeLock upped their coverage from $1M per adult to $1,050,000 per adult. But they break their coverage down into up to $1M for lawyers and experts, up to $25,000 in stolen funds reimbursement, and up to $25,000 in personal expense compensation.
So is it really more, or did they just wave their hands and make it look pretty? I can’t say for sure.
LifeLock also recently updated their plans so that you can get up to $3M in coverage per adult, but of course you’ll have to upgrade. Note also that their family plans also cover a maximum of 2 adults and five kids, whereas Auras family plan covers 5 adults and unlimited kids.
Conclusion
When you look at the prices of these plans from LifeLock compared to Aura’s, it really doesn’t seem worth it to me. Even if you are able to stomach the sub-par monitoring, the poor customer support, and all the confusing pricing tiers.
I just really appreciate how Aura keeps their plans straightforward, comprehensive, and cost-effective. And I love the fact that exceed my expectations time and time again.
And remember, all those prices are before you apply my discounts. Whichever Identity Theft Protection you choose, make sure to check out my links. I’ll always keep that up to date with my latest deals and recommendations.
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