Aura vs Identity Guard Comparison Review

Aura vs Identity Guard. What if I told you they were the same thing?

Well, not exactly. But kind of.

And while I think Aura is going to be the better choice for most of us looking to avert identity theft or prevent it from happening again, I think both of these companies will treat you well.

And if you want to extend that protection to your spouse, your parents on both sides of the family, and as many of your kids as you’d like, Aura offers the best balance of a comprehensive package at an approachable price of the seven Identity Theft Protection solutions I’ve used.

Identity Guard’s not bad either.

And before you sign up, take a look at my links. I always keep that updated with my latest deals and recommendations.

Once you get behind the dashboards you’re going to see a lot of similarities between Aura and Identity Guard. The reason for this is simple—Aura actually owns Identity Guard.

When you call up customer support with either company they’re going to see your account regardless of which one you use. Which has led to some confusion for me, because I use both of them.

Luckily, this means you’re working with the same awesome support team and I know that’s boring but like I always say, that’s really important when it comes to Identity Theft Protection.

Just think of the mindset you’re in when you’re likely to be calling these companies. You need someone that has your back.

Setting Up: Aura vs Identity Guard

Now how both Aura and Identity Guard work in a nutshell is that you input your personal information and it they will monitor the dark web to see if you’ve been pwned.

Identity Theft Protection reviewer Zach Lovatt enumerates the personal information needed by Aura and Identity Guard for dark web monitoring.

There are all sorts of things you can track, obviously your name, your social security number, your email addresses. And even some things you might not think about like loyalty card numbers, IP addresses, and gamer tags.

If they find you’ve been pwned, which frankly who hasn’t, you’ll get an alert. They’ll tell you what they found, where they found it, and what you should do about it.

Just for giggles and that other benefit that kids get praised for and adults don’t, I’ll let you know what Aura and Identity Guard each turn up for me on the dark web in a little bit.

Beyond dark web monitoring, Aura and Identity Guard go a bit further by monitoring the public web for your personal information and proactively submit opt-out requests with data brokers on your behalf.

They do this on an ongoing basis and I really haven’t seen any other companies do this. It should help to reduce robocalls and spam mail—both digital and physical. And while I haven’t done a scientific study, it does seem I get less since signing up.

Extra Features: Aura vs Identity Guard

Here we’re at the point where Aura and Identity Guard start to diverge. Take a look at how they differ on the extra features.

Credit and Utility Account Monitoring

Both of them offer credit and utility account monitoring although with Identity Guard you need an upgraded plan to get 3-bureau credit monitoring, whereas all of Aura’s plans include it.

But basically, if anyone opens a credit card or a utility account like electricity for example in your name, you’ll get an alert.

All of Aura’s plans include public record monitoring so that if someone tries to make changes to your home deed or uses your name during an arrest, you’ll get an alert.

Now this is a little confusing with Identity Guard, because they say it’s only included in their highest-tier plan, but the section is available in my dashboard on the Value Plan.

Luckily I don’t have any of those alerts so I can’t confirm if it’s working on the Value Plan, but I’d assume you need an upgrade for this to work with Identity Guard.

In addition to 3-bureau credit monitoring all of Aura’s plans come with monthly VantageScores from all three bureaus and annual credit reports from all three bureaus. And all of that is pulled right into your dashboard.

Identity Theft Protection reviewer Zach Lovatt explains the Credit Lock and Freeze feature of Aura found on their website.

Aura even includes a credit lock so that you can prevent unwanted inquiries into your credit file with the click of a button, which is a nice added level of security.

And once again all of that is available with Identity Guard, but you will need to choose an upgraded plan to access it.

Transaction Monitoring

And it’s the same story with transaction monitoring, so if you want to link credit cards and bank accounts so that you can get alerts of transactions over a specified limit, that’s included in each of Auras plans, but only in Identity Guard’s higher-tier plans.

Extra Protection Features

Now Identity Guard says you get safe browsing which is a VPN and malware protection on all their plans, and you definitely do with Aura, but in my value plan with Identity Guard it says it is not included.

I may be on some sort of grandfathered plan or something, I’m not entirely sure, but if those benefits are important to you it’s worth getting in touch with them.

Both Aura and Identity Guard do include a password manager, but I think that with all three of those things—VPN, malware protection, and the password manager—you can find more specialized solutions elsewhere.

All of this is to say that the benefits that Aura and Identity Guard offer can be quite similar—or nearly identical—but Aura’s plans are more comprehensive and straightforward, whereas Identity Guard’s plans tend to follow a more tiered structure. Generally, I’m just not a huge fan of that. It’s kind of like if you signed up for Netflix, but you can only watch their Netflix originals unless you pay more. God, I hope that day’s not coming.

Nonetheless, all of the plans from both Aura and Identity Guard do offer great dark web monitoring, so let’s dig a bit deeper into that.

Dark Web Monitoring

I monitor the exact same personal information across both of these companies and I am fortunate enough that aside from the opt-out requests for my information on the public web, the only alerts I get are my leaked login credentials on the dark web.

Sounds scary, but unless you’ve been hyper-vigilant with your digital footprint, you’ll probably have some dark web hits too.

Come to think of it, I doubt you’d be able to avoid a lot of these breaches even with impeccable internet hygiene, they would probably just affect you less.

Now for the main event… Surprise!

Aura and Identity Guard turn up the exact same dark web alerts, which is probably because they are using the exact same technology to scan the dark web.

In total they find 18 dark web hits, and 9 of these are unique. Just to give you a sense of what this looks like, my 9 unique dark web alerts come from leaks at large websites like Adobe, Myspace, Dropbox, Ticketfly, Canva, and Twitter.

I have two from some smaller sites too—Indaba Music and Chegg. It’s like an archeology excursion digging up the decades you’ve spent online.

And here’s the kicker: the username and password for one of my gmail accounts was the ninth unique hit, which totally explains all the weird stuff going on with my accounts over the past several years.

Pro tip—or maybe it’s an amateur tip—don’t use the same login credentials at multiple websites. Or even the same password. Credential stuffing is a real thing.

The remaining non-unique dark web hits are from compilations, where basically someone scrapes up boatloads of people’s login credentials and puts them all in one place to make life easier for identity thieves.

Now, the dark web monitoring you get with both Aura and Identity Force is really really good when compared to the 5 other companies I’ve used.

Threat Resolution

While there’s good monitoring and bad monitoring, no one is bulletproof. That’s why it is also important to consider what these companies offer for threat resolution.

And here return to the story of Identity Guard’s tiered membership plans vs Aura’s comprehensive packages.

5 customer support representatives

Aura’s plans include White Glove Fraud Resolution, and if you’re ever a victim of identity theft they will develop a restoration plan and hand-hold you through the process until your incident is resolved.

While you get the same wonderful customer support with Identity Guard, if you want the White Glove Fraud resolution you’ll need to upgrade to their top-tier plan.

Additionally, while the family plans for Aura and Identity Guard will both protect 5 adults and unlimited kids, Identity Guard’s Identity Theft Insurance is capped at $1M, whereas Aura offers $1M per adult. That’s up to $5M in identity theft insurance with Aura.

Conclusion

So look, when it comes to price you may be able to sneak out a slightly better deal with Identity Guard depending on the features you’re looking for, but most likely you’re going to be pushed up to one of the higher tiers. If you do, Aura quickly becomes a better deal.

However, if you’re just looking for a stripped down Identity Theft Protection solution, then Identity Guard might make sense—but that’s before you apply my discounts.

Remember to check out my links for latest deals and recommendations. 


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