Aura review: Is it worth the price?

Fraud losses, many of which relate to identity theft, increased 30 percent from 2021 to 2022. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported losses of almost $8.8 billion related to fraud for Americans in 2022.
Protecting yourself from becoming a part of these statistics can be a challenge. Daily threats to your identity appear on the internet, in your email, on your smartphone, and elsewhere. It just takes one lapse for identity thieves to grab your information and attempt to use it, incurring financial losses for you.

If you are seeking help with guarding your identity, an identity theft protection service like Aura may be the answer. It actively monitors your personal information and the way it appears on the internet. If it finds oddities, it sends you alerts, so you can take actions to protect your personally identifying information.

Aura recently upgraded its list of features and tools aimed at protecting your information, prompting me to run the service through its paces again after undertaking a detailed Aura review many months earlier.

I liked Aura quite a bit during my initial review, but the new features are even more impressive. It should meet the needs of nearly anyone, whether you want protection features for a single individual, a couple, or a family.

But how does Aura stack up to other identity theft protection services? And will it fit your needs? To help you determine whether you should subscribe to Aura, I tested the subscription service again in my hands-on 2023 Aura review.

I’ll answer some of the most common questions that potential subscribers to an ID theft protection service like Aura have, including:

• Is Aura worth the money?
• Does Aura actually work?
• Can I trust Aura with my SSN?
• What is the reputation of Aura?
• Is Aura better than LifeLock?

Summary of benefits: Aura

Aura: Hands-on review

Before digging into all the bells and whistles Aura offers, it’s important for any identity theft protection service to deliver accurate alerts about oddities related to your personal information. And it must have an insurance policy that protects you through reimbursement if theft of your identity occurs.

Aura delivers perfectly in both of these must-have areas.

Now let’s dig into the features that put Aura near the top of the list among ID theft protection services.

Aura’s pricing is highly competitive in all three tiers. It offers family, individual, and couple plans. You’ll save quite a bit more if you agree to an annual contract, rather than a month-to-month contract, but all its pricing options are competitive.

I appreciate that Aura offers a 14-day free trial period, so you can try its features with no risk. Should you choose to subscribe to the annual pricing plan, you have access to a 60-day money-back guarantee (with a few restrictions). Both of these policies are extremely consumer friendly versus some other ID theft protection services.

You receive a $1 million insurance policy against identity theft with Aura, matching what other services offer. This policy helps to cover fees related to attempting to recover your identity. It also reimburses you for covered financial losses if thieves take directly from your accounts.

Signing up for Aura is an easy process. You only have to enter some basic information to start using the software. Once you begin using it, you can enter information in the areas of your identity that apply to your personal situation. This saves time versus a service that forces you to answer a lot of questions at signup.

In my last review of Aura, I was a little disappointed in the user interface, which made it tougher to find the features I wanted. But Aura improved the interface quite a bit, and I feel like it saved me time. I didn’t have to search for features as often, as it was easier to find everything.

The interface also looks great, as do all of the web pages associated with Aura. Having a professional look goes a long way in giving you confidence about the service’s performance and ability to protect your information. This is an area where some ID theft protection services drop the ball, but Aura does not.

Aura has a strong mobile app that also looks great and delivers the information you need in an easy-to-understand format. Some other identity theft protection services struggle with developing a mobile app.

Another greatly improved area for Aura is in the amount of self-help documents and informational documents and articles that Aura now provides. You can learn a lot about ID theft protection and protecting yourself from fraud just by reading the information that’s accessible through the service.

When Aura finds an oddity regarding the use of your personal information on the internet, it sends you an alert by email. You also can potentially receive alerts via text message, telephone, and WhatsApp. Aura lists alerts on the dashboard when you sign in to your account. Having so many options for receiving alerts sets Aura apart from its competitors.

Aura’s customer service options continue to be among the best you’ll find among all ID theft protection services. You can reach Aura by telephone 24/7 when you need help, or send inquiries by email or live chat.

When an identity theft situation occurs on a weekend, the last thing you want is to be told to wait until Monday morning to speak to someone. Aura makes sure you never have to feel this way.

As part of the signup process, Aura immediately asks you whether you want to set up two-factor authentication (2FA). You also can set up this feature later. I really appreciate that Aura emphasizes the importance of 2FA, as this is one of the best ways to secure your account.

I must mention that this is truly a hands-on review. I subscribed to and tested the service myself, entering my own information to run Aura through its paces. To give you a realistic idea about how the service performs, having real-world information to use is important, rather than using a demo account the company provides to me.

I subscribed to the Family tier for Aura, which costs $37 per month on the annual plan. If you want to take advantage of the 14-day free trial plan, you must provide a credit card at the time you sign up. However, Aura won’t charge the card unless you continue using the service after 14 days.

One final thing to mention: Aura Sub, LLC, is the parent company for the Aura identity theft protection service. Aura Sub, LLC, owns both Aura and Identity Guard, which I reviewed recently. Both have similar ID theft protection services, but Aura provides a few extra features, like antivirus software, a VPN, extensive self-help documents, and a password manager, that aren’t available in Identity Guard.

Aura features and insurance

Aura’s feature set is impressive, providing a mixture of basic and advanced features to meet the needs of multiple potential customers. Aura’s basic features help monitor your personal information. You then can add in the advanced features as you need them. Features available in Aura include the following.

Insurance and compensation

Insurance is a significant benefit that all identity theft protection services simply must provide. It’s nice to have the peace of mind that you can receive help with paying for the cost of trying to restore your identity, should you suffer a theft of your identity.

With Aura, you receive up to $1 million in insurance to help you deal with costs. This has become the industry standard amount. This insurance covers costs related to:

• • Lost wages from missing work as you tried to recover your identity
  • Qualified stolen funds from accounts related to the ID theft
  • Costs for an accountant
  • Costs for a private investigator

• Costs for an attorney
• Costs for adult care or child care while you try to recover your identity
• Costs for traveling to track down or submit documents

It’s important to understand that you do not receive $1 million if you suffer identity theft. You do have to provide proof of your costs and losses to receive reimbursement, and you can receive an amount equal to those losses. For the latest information on Aura’s insurance policy, read the Aura insurance summary of benefits document.

Activity alerts

Whenever Aura takes an action on your part or finds something related to your personal information that requires your attention, it will list the item on the home page in the Activity section.

Aura sorts these alerts based on the category in which they fall, so you can easily see the information you want. Some of the alerts provide tips on protecting your personal information.

Should the alert require immediate attention on your part, you can receive notification through email, text, and other communications options. To set your options for alerts, click the gear icon in the upper right corner of the screen. Then click Alert Preferences. Otherwise, you’ll see the notes the next time you log in to your account on the home page.

When you click on an alert, you’ll see additional information that can help you.

When I signed in to my Aura account the first time, I received notification of an alert related to an email breach. I knew about this breach from a few years ago, but it was good that Aura found evidence of it immediately.

Data broker removal requests

Many of the alerts that Aura generates relate to requests that Aura is making to data brokers for you. Data brokers gather your personal information and then sell it to other parties. Depending on which state you live in and the privacy laws it has, data brokers possibly must remove your information and not offer it for sale, if requested.

Reaching out to these brokers is a difficult process to do on your own. Most brokers try to hide their contact information. You may not even know all of the different data brokers that exist. Aura simplifies the entire process for you.

To see the progress of Aura’s data broker removal requests, click on Vault across the top of the page, followed by Data Broker Removal.

Even after the initial request for removal of your information, Aura contacts the data brokers on a regular basis and requests that they don’t start collecting your information again. This is a service that saves a lot of time and effort versus trying to do it on your own.

Dark web monitoring

The dark web is a portion of the internet that search engines cannot index but that people can use if they know where to look. Because these areas are not traceable, hackers often use these dark websites to sell and trade information stolen from people like you.

Aura uses its technology to scan the dark web for signs that your personal information is available for sale. Should it find something like an account associated with you that has an exposed password, Aura would give you an alert, encouraging you to change your password.

You can see any problems that Aura finds on the dark web through your list of alerts.

Aura can only search the dark web for information that matches what you’ve entered into the ID theft protection software. The more information you enter, the better job Aura can do monitoring the dark web and the internet for odd appearances of your personal information.

Free credit report and monitoring

As an Aura subscriber, you receive credit report monitoring. Should Aura find something strange on your credit report, it sends you an alert.

You also can view your credit report through the dashboard. Click Me across the top of the home page, followed by Credit. The first time you do this, you must verify your identity by answering a series of questions.

Along with your credit score that’s displayed on this page, you can view your credit report by clicking the report icon that’s just above the credit score graphic on the page.

The first few days I subscribed to Aura, I was unable to see my credit report. The service returned an error message when I tried. Eventually, though, it was able to deliver my credit report.

Credit score tracking

Click Me followed by Credit to see your credit score. Your number appears in a large graphic at the top of the screen. You also can see how your score ranks in terms of overall credit score, ranging from Poor to Excellent.

Scroll down the credit score page to see another graphic that shows the progress of your monthly credit score over time. (Admittedly, this graphic is far more valuable after you’ve been using Aura for several months.)

Continue scrolling down to see information on how the credit bureaus determine your credit score, as well as tips you can use to try to improve it.

Aura automatically shows your credit score from Equifax, which is one of three primary credit bureaus. Scroll to the bottom of the page to request to see your credit score from the other two credit bureaus of Experian and TransUnion.

Freeze your credit report

One of the most effective ways to protect your credit and your personal identity is to freeze your credit report when you have no reason to seek new lines of credit.

When you freeze your credit, no one can open any new lines of credit in your name. Should someone steal your identity and try to use it to open a new banking account or a new credit card, having your credit frozen prevents them from doing this.

With Aura, you can open the Credit page by clicking Me at the top of the window, followed by Credit. You then can freeze your credit with Experian by using the slider button for Experian CreditLock across the top of the screen.

Should you prefer to freeze your credit at all three credit bureaus – which is a smart idea – click the Credit Lock and Freeze button in the upper right corner of the screen. On the Credit Lock and Freeze screen, click the name of the credit bureau where you want to freeze your credit toward the bottom of the page. Click the Freeze button for each credit bureau. You then will see instructions for freezing your credit.

Should you ever want to apply for credit, you will need to return to this screen in Aura and unfreeze your credit. You also can call the credit bureaus directly to freeze and unfreeze your credit, but Aura makes it extremely easy to do this process online.

Financial account monitoring

Having Aura monitor your financial accounts, like your checking, savings, retirement, and credit card accounts, can help you spot signs of potential financial fraud. You can tell Aura to watch your accounts for certain types of transactions that may indicate unauthorized activity.

Start by entering the information for the financial accounts that you want to track. Click Me followed by Transactions. You then can click Add More to begin adding the information from your financial accounts. Aura uses a service called Plaid to verify your accounts. You need to log into your account through Plaid to verify the account.

Once you have your financial account verified in your Aura account, you then can begin keeping an eye on your transactions, looking for signs of problems. Aura uses a process called Transaction Monitoring to watch your accounts for things like:

• Unusual large purchases
• Cash withdrawals
• Balance transfers

Aura doesn’t block these from happening, but it notifies you when they do happen. You can set the amount limit that Aura uses to trigger a transaction alert.

Additionally, Aura generates an alert if any of your personal information, including your Social Security number, ends up associated with risky transactions like payday loans.

Address monitoring

Aura constantly monitors your home title and your personal property titles, such as automobiles, for any changes that could indicate fraud.

Through a public records search, Aura automatically downloads information about any homes or property you owned for at least the past 20 years. It tracks property information including:

• Names on the property deed
• Any lienholders
• Official address of the property
• Tax assessments
• Assessed value

You can view the loans you held on the property, but not any loans that occur on the property after you sell it.

Should someone steal your identity and open home loans against the value of your property, you can see this information through Aura’s tracking of the public records. Check this information periodically for any oddities that could indicate an identity theft attempt.

To see these documents, click Vault across the top of the page, followed by Home and Property in the popup menu.

Additionally, if you own other types of personal property, such as motor vehicles, it may show up on the Home and Property page. You can see any autos that have been in your name for ownership for at least the past 20 years, as well as the VIN for those autos.

Document monitoring

Aura gives you a secure option for storing various documents that you may need to access from time to time. It does not download these items automatically for you. Instead, you can choose to scan or photograph and upload these documents.

Aura encrypts these documents, ensuring no third parties can see them. Aura does have a search function, so you can search your list of stored documents easier. Documents you may want to upload include:

• Living will
• Last will and testament
• Power of attorney
• Court documents
• Divorce documents
• Contact information
• Proof of purchase
• Important receipts

Click Vault in the upper portion of the home page, followed by My Documents. Click the plus sign icon to add a new document. Follow the directions to upload the item.

To access your stored documents, just click on the document name along the bottom of the My Documents page or use the search bar toward the top of the page.

Personal data monitoring

You can store a number of personal documents and personal account details inside the Aura Personal Data window. Such items can relate to your personal identity and to your health. Some of the items you can store include:

• Birth certificate
• Driver’s license
• Email addresses
• Phone numbers
• Gamertag
• Passport
• Social Security number
• Health insurance card

Aura then can watch the dark web for instances where this type of information appears in an odd manner. To add any of these items or to see the items you have stored, click Vault across the top of the home window, followed by Personal Data.

Click on any of the items listed to see the stored data or to edit it. Click the plus sign icon to add new items. You can use the search bar near the top of the page to find certain pieces of personal information.

Sex offender registry monitoring

Aura will send you alerts if it discovers any changes to the National Sex Offender Registry near your home, meaning someone who is on the registry is living within a certain distance of your home.

This is a feature Aura recently added to its service.

You can turn this monitoring feature on and off with a toggle switch on the Home and Property page. Click Vault followed by Home and Property to see the toggle switch, which is near the bottom of the page.

Social media monitoring

Aura does not offer specific monitoring for social media accounts.

ID restoration

If you believe you suffered identity theft, or if you just have any questions about your account, then you can reach the Aura customer service team 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Aura deploys its White Glove Fraud Resolution team, which is based in the United States, to walk you through the process of restoring your identity. This team works with you to create a plan for fixing the situation.

Aura lists its phone number at the bottom of every page, as well as its customer support email address.

You can activate a live chat session with Aura customer support at any time by clicking the Chat button that’s at the bottom right of every screen. The chat function only has a human customer service team member available during normal business hours, though. So you’ll need to make a phone call outside office hours.

Having the ability to access a customer support person anytime you need one gives you quite a bit of peace of mind regarding the way Aura helps you guard your identity.

Should you determine that you need to file a claim against the Aura $1 million insurance policy to help with the costs of restoring your identity, click the gear icon in the upper left corner of every screen. Then click Benefits, followed by the $1M Identity Theft Insurance box.

You can learn more about how the insurance policy works on this screen. You’ll see the phone number for the insurance company, so you can file a claim, if needed.

I did not suffer any threat of identity theft while I was testing the Aura ID theft protection service, so I did not directly test the ID restoration capabilities of the Aura team.

2FA login

I greatly appreciate that Aura gives customers the option to enable two-factor authentication on their accounts. This is a highly effective means of protecting your information entered into Aura.

If your Aura password is somehow compromised, or If your web browser automatically prepopulates your username and password on the Aura website, then your account is vulnerable without 2FA.

Should you step away from the computer, theoretically, anyone could sit down and access your Aura account through the prepopulated login information. That person then could see – and steal – all of your personal information stored in the Aura service. All you did was make hands-on identity theft extremely easy for them by gathering all your information in one account.

By adding 2FA to your account, no one can access your Aura account without a one-time access code. Even if an attacker has your password, they would need access to your phone to see the access code texted to you.

At the time you sign up for Aura, it asks you to set up 2FA on the account, which shows how seriously Aura takes this aspect of its security.

If you want to set up 2FA at a later time, click the gear icon in the upper left corner of every screen, followed by Account Details. On the Account Details page, scroll toward the bottom and click Enable next to 2FA. Then follow the directions to set up 2FA.

All identity theft protection services should offer 2FA, but they don’t, unfortunately. Very few of the ones that do offer 2FA place as much of an emphasis on it as Aura does.

Lost wallet protection

If you lose your wallet while subscribing to Aura, you can use your personal information stored in Aura to quickly cancel credit cards and regain access to cards and important documents.

Click the gear icon in the upper left corner of the screen, followed by Benefits. Then click the Lost Wallet Remediation box. You’ll see the Aura customer service phone number, which you can call for help with dealing with the situation. You’ll also see a list of steps you can follow on your own.

Extra features

Aura offers a number of extra features that are built into its ID theft protection service. Unlike some competitors, all of Aura’s features are highly relevant to protecting yourself online and to protecting your personally identifying information.

• Aura Online Security: Aura gives you access to Virtual Private Network (VPN) encryption and ad blocking services, but you need to activate this service. A VPN attempts to make online activities more secure. Aura also can block ads and can block trackers that are monitoring your online activities. Click Me followed by Online Security to access this feature.
• Parental Controls: Aura offers a number of features that help you keep your kids safe as they work and play online. Should your child play online games, Aura even keeps an eye out for any online bullying that is happening.
• Safety Checklist: If you are not taking advantage of any specific data security features found in Aura, you can access the Safety Checklist to see what items you’re missing and how to activate them. From the Online Security screen, click the View Safety Checklist button to see your checklist.
• Antivirus: If you don’t have antivirus protection for your devices, Aura offers its own antivirus protection through the Aura app. As part of the antivirus protection from Aura, it also gives you warnings about clicking on scam and phishing websites. Click Me followed by Antivirus to see a button where you can download the Aura app.
• Password Manager: Aura will securely store all of your web passwords or your smartphone passwords through its Password Manager feature. You’ll use the mobile app or the Aura extension on Chrome to take advantage of this feature. Click Vault followed by Passwords to set up this feature.

Call Assistant feature

I do want to specifically discuss one extra feature that is especially impressive. Aura recently added a Call Assistant feature, which is part of the Aura mobile app that you download to your smartphone.

Call Assistant uses artificial intelligence (AI) to judge the legitimacy of telephone calls and text messages that you receive. It filters out spam calls and text messages highly effectively, including those that use AI to try to fool you, such as in vishing attacks.

Fraud attacks using AI and other sophisticated technologies are only going to continue to increase in frequency, which makes Aura’s early emphasis on protecting you from these attacks a forward-thinking feature.

I wasn’t receiving an avalanche of spam calls and texts before beginning to use Call Assistant, but I definitely noticed a drop in them during my testing period.

Aura’s Call Assistant also screens calls that come from unknown numbers. Rather than simply dumping such calls, the screening process lets you decide whether to answer the call by transcribing the caller’s voice message before you pick up. This can ensure you don’t miss any key calls about appointments from a new doctor or similar calls.

Through the web browser interface, Aura provides a QR code that you can scan to gain access to the mobile app. Click Me followed by Call Protection to see the QR code. If you subscribe to the individual or couple pricing tiers, you may need to call Aura’s customer service to activate this service.

Signup

If you would like to try Aura before you subscribe, the service offers a 14-day free-trial period. You will have to enter a credit card number to receive the free trial. As long as you cancel the service within 14 days, though, you won’t receive any charges.

Click Start Free Trial at the Aura home page. On the next page, start the signup process by clicking Start Free Trial underneath the pricing plan you want to use.

Then begin entering your information, such as your email address, name, address, and other personal information items. Eventually, you must enter your date of birth and Social Security number.

Move through each of the signup screens by clicking Continue after entering your information.

On the final signup screen, add your payment method. Finally, click Start Free Trial to complete the signup process.

Understand that when you sign up for the free trial, Aura automatically selects the annual pricing plan for you. You do save at least 50 percent with the annual plan over the pay-by-the-month plan. However, if you want to switch over to the pay-by-the-month plan, you can only do it on this last screen.

You then can select your password to pair with your email address. Aura will send you a text message with a verification code in it that you must use before you can access your new account. This is a nice bit of extra protection.

You can click Get Help on any of the screens to find the phone number for Aura customer service. Or scroll to the bottom of any screen to see the phone number.

If everything goes smoothly, you can sign up for Aura and begin using it in less than five minutes.

Before you sign up for Aura and create an account, I would recommend reading through all the legal documents related to subscribing to Aura. Read the Aura privacy policy and the Aura terms and policies to ensure you have the latest information regarding how the service works.

Although all the information about Aura in my review is current at the time of writing, if Aura makes any changes to its policies, such changes will appear in these documents.

Ease of use and design

Aura reworked several aspects of its design since my previous review of the service, and it simplified things even further.

The changes to the interface – as well as all the new features – are extremely impressive and show Aura’s willingness to constantly tweak its service to make it better.

Having such an active piece of software with an attentive design team gives me confidence that Aura is always on the lookout for ways to improve its service and for ways to combat new threats to your identity.

Other ID theft protection services that haven’t changed much in a few years, making me wonder if they are paying any attention to the ever evolving world of identity theft. Are they even looking to improve their services, or are they happy just collecting your subscription fees without having to devote time to upgrades? That is not a concern with Aura.

The old design was a little clunky on the home page, not providing links to all of Aura’s features. It took longer than I liked to figure out how to find certain features.

The updated design gives you a list of alerts, provides a summary of the features you’re using, and gives you advice on new features you could activate to further protect yourself.

Even better, Aura now places all the features under the menus and submenus that are available across the top of every screen. It won’t take you long to get the hang of using Aura, thanks to its smart design upgrade.

As another design improvement, Aura places information about its identity theft protection features in the primary positions on the home page. If you want to find information on some of the extra features Aura offers as part of its subscription, such as its VPN, you have to work through a few menus. This differs from the old design.

Although these extra features are important to have, I much prefer the new Aura design that focuses on its ID theft protection services. After all, you subscribed to Aura for identity theft protection. The VPN and other extra features are nice bonuses, but they probably aren’t why you subscribed to Aura.

Click on the Get Help link at the upper right corner of any page to learn more about how to use certain features of Aura.

As I did during my previous hands-on review of Aura, I had a great experience with operating the service from inside my web browser. There were no lags or hiccups. Everything ran smoothly at all times of the day and night.

As part of its security features, Aura logs you out of your account after several minutes of inactivity. Some people may find this feature annoying, but it does help protect your account and personal information, should you ever step away from the computer and forget to log out of the account.

If you ever have a question about the status of your account, click on the gear icon in the upper right corner and click Membership. You can see the subscription tier you’re using, as well as its price. If you ever want to cancel your membership, you can click a link on that screen.

Mobile app

The mobile app that Aura offers is an impressive option. It’s available for download for either Apple or Android mobile devices. You can see your alerts through the app, ensuring you have access to any alerts, even when you aren’t sitting in front of a computer.

The mobile app provides the same identity theft protection features that you find in the desktop version of Aura. It also gives you the ability to make use of Aura’s extra features, such as antivirus, password monitoring, and a VPN.

Customer support

I liked most of Aura’s customer support options the first time I reviewed this service, but Aura has taken a big step forward in improving the help and information it provides to subscribers with recent changes. Aura’s dedication to customer service through its numerous options almost certainly rank among the best of any ID theft protection service available.

It’s easy to find your customer support options on nearly every screen inside Aura. In addition to its 24/7 phone support and email support, you now can access live chat for support and to answer basic questions. Live chat was not available the last time I reviewed Aura. Live chat only has a human available during US business hours, but the automated chat bot can answer basic questions.

To find self-help documents and articles – something that was missing from Aura during my earlier hands-on review – click Get Help at the top right of nearly any screen. The level of informational articles you can find that provide advice and tips to help with protecting your identity is impressive.

During my first review of this service, Aura generated a lot of marketing emails that were more annoying than helpful. Now, though, I only received a rare marketing email from Aura. It’s nice to know that when Aura sends me an email, it’s almost certainly going to be something important to my personal identity or to my account.

Should you decide to cancel the Aura service, you will receive some marketing email messages, offering you deals to resume using the service. Unfortunately, this is something that every ID theft protection service does, hoping to convince you to begin subscribing again, so I can’t fault Aura for doing it too.

Aura: Pricing

Aura does not offer complexity in its pricing plans, as it does not have different pricing tiers with different features in them. You can select among three pricing plans, all of which contain the same features and are made for a different number of people:

• Individual (for one person)
• Couple (for two people)
• Family (for five adults and an unlimited number of kids)

You can either pay by the month or annually with any of the three pricing plans. You receive a discount over a 12-month period of up to 25% when you select the annual plan, but you must pay for the whole year up front (after the trial period ends). Each pricing tier offers the same 14-day free trial period.

When you subscribe to an annual plan, you can receive your money back for up to 60 days after you sign up for the service. There is no money-back guarantee with the monthly plan.

Aura’s pricing is highly competitive against other ID theft protection services, especially for an individual user. The price rises quickly when you subscribe to the Couple or Family tiers. You do receive the ability to track far more information in these upper tiers, but the Individual tier is a strong value versus competitors.

As an added bonus, Aura’s prices during my hands-on review remained the same as they were when I reviewed Aura the first time many months earlier. It was refreshing to see steady pricing from one of these services, which is not always the case.

Auto renewal options

Similar to other ID theft protection services, you must agree to an auto renewal when you sign up for Aura. Auto renewal means Aura collects your payment information at the time of signup and charges you automatically at the time of renewal, whether that’s monthly or annually.

If you fail to cancel the service before the renewal date, you will have to pay for the following month or year, depending on the billing option you selected initially. Should you fail to cancel before the end of your 14-day free trial, Aura will automatically charge you for the next subscription period.

How do I cancel Aura?

You can cancel Aura either online through your web browser or through a call to customer service. When I went through the steps to cancel Aura, I found it to be an easier process than with most ID theft protection services I’ve reviewed and then canceled.

To cancel the service online, click on the gear icon in the upper right corner followed by Membership. Toward the middle of the Membership page, you can click on the Cancel Membership link to start the process.

You’ll see a popup window that provides the customer service phone number and a button you can click to continue the cancellation process online. Follow the remaining prompts to finish canceling Aura online.

The cancellation process was smooth for Aura. Although some people report having problems with canceling ID theft protection services and continuing to receive credit card charges after canceling, I did not experience this problem with Aura.

If you have concerns about Aura continuing to charge you after you cancel, I would recommend taking screenshots of any messages Aura gives you as you work through the cancellation screen. Keep any emails that show the cancellation was successful.

Additionally, watch your credit card statements for a few months after canceling to be certain you aren’t continuing to receive charges. I always recommend that you should use a credit card to pay for any ID theft protection service. Should you run into some sort of problem, it’s always easier to receive help with disputing charges from your credit card company than with a debit card.

Pros and cons of Aura

Aura: Our final verdict

The first time I wrote a hands-on review of Aura, I thought it was an excellent service. However, it had a few undesirable quirks, such as some design oddities and a lack of self-help features.

In my most recent hands-on review of Aura, I found that the service addressed almost every issue, nitpick, and complaint I had.

Simply put, Aura now is on the short list of the best ID theft protection services.

It delivers the primary features that you want to see out of an ID theft protection service, including a $1 million insurance coverage policy to help you deal with costs associated with trying to restore your identity. It makes the process of guarding your identity extremely easy through both basic and advanced features.

Aura’s cost for an individual tier subscription is one of the best bargains among ID theft protection services. Unlike a well-known and strong ID theft protection service like LifeLock, Aura’s price doesn’t increase in year two and beyond, either.

The family and couple tiers are quite a bit pricier than the individual tier, but you do receive the ability to track quite a bit more information for more people in those tiers.

Aura doesn’t offer a bare-bones pricing tier that leaves you without important features, which I appreciate. Such skeleton tiers that other ID theft protection services offer simply aren’t all that useful, meaning you’re often just wasting your money. Aura includes all of its primary features in each pricing tier. The only difference between pricing tiers is the number of people the subscription covers.

I appreciate the vastly improved design of Aura now versus when I reviewed it previously. It now focuses its layout and home page on delivering the information and features you need, rather than focusing on add-on features that are nice to have but have little to do with ID theft protection.

Aura’s service looks highly professional in the web browser. You can access customer service information from nearly any screen. Its self-help articles are well written and provide advice you can actually use.

The fact that Aura pays close attention to its design and to delivering a service that doesn’t have sloppy layouts and spelling errors shows me that it is also going to have excellent attention to detail when it’s guarding my personal information. I definitely can’t say the same about every ID theft protection service out there.

The Aura mobile app is easy to use and has a great design. I appreciate how Aura encourages subscribers to make use of 2FA to add an extra layer of protection to your account. This is just another example that shows Aura’s designers did not miss a beat when creating a service that focuses on protecting you and your personal information.

Bottom line: Aura made some important design changes and changes to the way it operates over the last several months. These were outstanding changes, making an already strong identity theft protection service even better. The improvements to the Aura design interface and the inclusion of a new live chat feature, paired with the addition of useful self-help documents and articles, are outstanding. Even with the new interface and features, Aura decided to hold the line on prices, including its very competitive price for the individual tier. The new features found with Aura vault it near the top of the list when it comes to the best ID theft protection services.

Our testing methodology for identity theft protection

When testing identity theft protection services, I believe strongly in doing hands-on reviews. My methodology for reviewing the best identity theft protection services gives me the ability to run the services through the paces, much in the same way you would do.

I subscribe to each service myself. When performing my reviews, I do not request a demonstration account or fake information to use with the ID theft protection service. I use my own personal information to test the services. This gives me the ability to fully test all the features, understanding the service’s strengths and weaknesses. This would be far more difficult if I wasn’t using my own personal information during the testing period.

I would not feel comfortable making recommendations on ID theft protection services without testing them myself. Reading marketing materials is not enough.

During my testing procedures, I also contact customer service a few times to see how responsive the service team is.

Finally, by using my own subscription, I can give you advice on how to cancel the service in the future, if you decide to do so.

I focus my efforts on figuring out whether these services actually follow through on the promises they make in their marketing materials. You hopefully can gain a feel for whether you are receiving a good value for your subscription dollar through these reviews.

I believe it’s important to do a deep dive into the service’s features. This information can hopefully help you decide, first, whether to pay for identity theft protection and, second, whether you want to use Aura or another service.

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