Aura vs. IDShield: Which One Offers Better Protection This 2024

Over three hundred hours of testing made it clear – in the Aura vs. IDShield battle, Aura is the clear winner. 

Aura provides more accurate and comprehensive monitoring, uncovering 15 unique identity threats – IDShield only found eight. Aura also offers more theft insurance coverage than IDShield. 

Plus, Aura comes with more security and privacy features, like an email alias creator, a safe gaming tool, and automatic data broker removals – none of which IDShield includes.

In other words, Aura provides peace of mind for your entire online experience.

With our discount code, you can lock in off Aura for life – making it the lower-priced service as well.

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This is a matter of quantity plus quality being simply better than quality alone.

IDShield is actually an excellent service when it comes to monitoring. Its alerts are lightning fast, populating lists within minutes to seconds after something happens, and the alerts are quite detailed as well.

However, Aura matches it in terms of accuracy, and isn’t too much slower in the grand scheme (it takes about an hour to populate the list; well within an acceptable time range), but it has a wider monitoring breadth than IDShield, which goes for the most important and relevant to every one types of monitoring.

IDShield offers:

Which is an impressive array. But Aura augments this with home title monitoring (which is absolutely critical for any homeowners out there), as well as 401(k) and investment monitoring, which is likewise important for many people.

The greater breadth combined with similar performance levels means Aura takes it, though I do want to reiterate that IDShield’s monitoring is great compared to most of the market.

This is an interesting one, as IDShield is one of the few services that offers a nonstandard form of threat resolution.

Most options, including Aura, offer two things: customer support, and wallet restoration, which is a more dedicated customer support line for canceling and re-ordering credit cards and the like if your wallet is lost or stolen.

Aura definitively wins the customer support department, offering 24/7 customer support year-round.

IDShield by contrast has very limited hours. They’re open for standard use between 7 AM and 7 PM, though they do have 24/7 emergency support. However, calling this crew will generally result in them being unable to help you with most things, as they’re a skeleton crew without access to all the tools available during normal hours.

However, IDShield does have a nice side benefit: in-house private investigators that all customers have access to.

This is very close to a tie here, as that benefit is pretty huge for most customers. However, I give the edge to Aura because in roughly 90% of circumstances, having 24/7 customer support and knowledgeable representatives is going to matter more for the average user, and Aura’s insurance would pay for private investigations needed from third-party investigators in any case.

IDShield loses in part because the site is a bit obtuse about the exact benefits of its insurance. It’s clear that you get $1 million in coverage from their plan, but even for an existing customer finding the exact details and limitations of coverage is extremely difficult.

Aura is much more straightforward and upfront, offering $1 million in coverage for lost funds reimbursement, and a separate $1 million pool for expenses. And that’s $1 mil per adult on a Couples plan too.

Additionally, Aura offers up to $5 million in lost funds for each adult covered by their Family plan.

There’s no contest here, in other words.

IDShield has a pretty decent site layout, as opposed to Aura’s which just kind of annoys me more than anything.

IDShield’s site is a little bit clunky but overall competent. Everything you’d really need access to is on the main dashboard page, except for, weirdly, the alerts, which you have to click to later. That’s mainly what makes me dock its points, as in some areas IDShield’s website is a little bit inconvenient to use. Still, it’s overall solid and definitely better than Aura’s site.

At first glance, it’s a fine website, but a closer look reveals its faults. There are seven buttons on this page: five of them are mostly worthless. I say mostly because it is stuff you’ll likely want to mash at least once, just to make sure the option is activated or downloaded. After that though…you’ll never need to look at them again. And they’re just there forever now.

The only things that really belong here are your credit score and “watchlist info”. Arguably, the financial accounts monitoring page belongs here as well, but even if we give it that, there are still four mostly pointless options here.

I’m also not a huge fan that the alerts are in the top right corner with all the other notifications. This is a minor nitpick since at least they’re still noticeable, but I’d prefer a layout more similar to Identity Guard, Aura’s predecessor.

Aura has a bit of a side focus on additional services, as lackluster as the offerings are. With Aura you get an antivirus program (which is decent, especially since you get it for free) and a “WiFi protection” service which acts as an extraordinarily limited VPN service; it’s really just an IP masking tool.

This is, however, better than most services, including IDShield which offers…nothing, really, in this slot.

This is clearly a case of no contest when it comes to value for your money… Aura is not only cheaper for an individual, it is more flexible in terms of a couple. And with all, you’re getting for these prices, it’s a no-brainer. 

IDShield’s family plan is a bit cheaper on the face of it, but you’re getting less for it too. With only $1M total in theft insurance, it doesn’t compare very well to Aura. Instead, for just $25/m (using our coupon code), Aura has hands down the most flexible family plan deal on the market. Aura’s family plans to cover 10 individuals. That is, adults and children in any combination, or 2 adults and unlimited children.. Adults can live in different households and everything, though there is a stipulation for children that they have to be under the legal guardianship of the primary account holder.

All of these accounts have separate logins and keep the information on them private from the primary account holder, and are fully featured: including insurance.

And don’t sniff at the added value of a 60-day money-back guarantee and a 14-day free trial… and if you make use of our exclusive Aura promo code, that price remains locked in for life.

It’s impossible for IDShield to compete with that kind of value.

IDShield is one of the best, relatively “cheap” ID protection services out there, and I truly mean that. Despite being swept in every category that matters by Aura, there’s actually still a lot to recommend it over Aura in many ways.

Access to private investigators is great for certain kinds of fraud for example.

But for a lot more people, Aura is better, has a wider breadth of monitoring, more features, and a slightly cheaper than IDShield. If you need any kind of family coverage, getting Aura is a much better deal than any alternatives out there.

Other Comparison Articles:

Citations:

1. https://hr.caltech.edu/documents/4883/2022_IDShield_Overview.pdf

2. https://www.cerritos.edu/hr/_includes/docs/Benefits/IDShield_Plan_Summary.pdf

3. https://www.udmercy.edu/faculty-staff/hr/benefits/ID-Shield_Easy-Acess-Flyer.pdf

4. https://www.michigan.gov/mdcs/employeebenefits/voluntary-benefits/new-voluntary-benefits/identity-theft-insurance/identity-theft

5. https://nasafcu.com/personal/financial-planning/identity-theft-protection