Identity Guard vs. Aura: How Do They Compare?

Identity theft is one of the most persistent forms of consumer fraud. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Report, there were 27,922 cases of identity theft fraud reported in 2022, resulting in losses of over $189 million.

With greater public awareness of such risks, using identity protection services like Identity Guard and Aura has become the standard for privacy-conscious individuals. Both are market leaders in their own right, but the depth and breadth of their offerings vary.

We’ll compare Identity Guard vs. Aura side by side for their scope, feature emphasis, pricing structure, and customer service. We'll also discuss how mobile carriers remain one of the most overlooked yet important layers of identity security.

Aura at a Glance

Aura was originally founded as iSubscribed in 2017. It’s an all-in-one digital security and identity protection platform that helps you monitor your online presence and keep tabs on unusual activity related to your identity and finances. You get alerts for potential fraud or identity threats, as well as access a host of privacy and security features in a single subscription, such as:

• • Credit monitoring
• • Dark web scans
• • VPN
• • Antivirus
• • Parental controls

Aura also offers fraud remediation support and identity theft insurance to help users recover from potential incidents. You can manage all functions via a unified app that works across phones, tablets, and desktops.

Bonus: Check out how Aura compares to other major digital security solutions:

• • Aura vs. Incogni
• • Aura vs. LifeLock
• • Aura vs. Bark

Identity Guard at a Glance

Identity Guard is also an identity and credit protection service. It focuses more on safeguarding your personal, credit, and financial assets from evolving fraud threats. While its feature set is not as extensive as Aura’s, you still get many core protection features like:

• • Dark web monitoring
• • Credit and bank account monitoring
• • Data breach alerts
• • Identity theft insurance
• • Fraud resolution support

Interestingly, both Identity Guard and Aura are owned by the same parent company, Aura Sub LLC, after a 2019 merger. However, Identity Guard has a longer legacy as it was launched in 1996, making it one of the first major identity theft protection services in the industry.

Today, both services operate as independent brands but share a single privacy policy, which states they don’t sell your personal information to third parties but may collect and use it to provide their monitoring and alert services.

Identity Guard vs. Aura: What Service Aspects To Consider

Identity Guard and Aura share many core features, but how they deliver and prioritize those protections varies. Here’s a close look at six key areas that matter when deciding between them:

1. 1. Credit monitoring and financial tracking
2. 1. Identity theft protection
3. 1. Digital security features
4. 1. Family and child protection
5. 1. Pricing structure
6. 1. Customer support

1. Credit Monitoring and Financial Tracking

Both services offer tools to detect financial fraud by tracking changes in your credit reports and linked accounts.

Aura offers its comprehensive monitoring stack by default, regardless of the plan you choose. This means any subscription lets you:

• • Monitor your credit reports with all three major bureaus (Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion)
• • Track activity in linked bank accounts for suspicious transactions
• • Receive alerts for changes to investment and 401(k) accounts
• • Lock your Experian credit file to prevent unauthorized credit openings in your name
• • View credit scores updated monthly

Identity Guard takes a tiered approach, splitting features across three plans so users can choose a desired level of coverage:

Aura’s full financial monitoring at its base plan appeals to many users. While Identity Guard’s tiered structure is more flexible, you need an Ultra subscription to get Aura-like coverage.

2. Identity Theft Protection

Aura and Identity Guard both offer the basics you expect from identity theft protection, such as:

• • Dark web monitoring for sensitive identifiers like SSN and email
• • Breach notifications for data exposures that impact you
• • Identity theft insurance (up to $1 million per person)
• • Alerts for high-risk account or transaction activity
• • Home and auto title monitoring

Both services have dedicated fraud resolution teams consisting of U.S.-based professionals who will guide you through identity theft recovery, explaining steps, handling paperwork, and coordinating with banks or credit bureaus when needed.

The difference between Aura and Identity Guard mirrors what we saw with financial monitoring. Aura bundles ID protection tools into every plan, while Identity Guard locks advanced protections behind its highest tier, Ultra. Features like identity restoration support, white glove fraud resolution, home title checks, or broader criminal records monitoring aren’t available unless you upgrade.

If you want lightweight ID monitoring features, Identity Guard's Value plan is a cost-effective choice. If you don’t want to worry about plan limitations during an active incident, Aura might work better for you.

3. Digital Security Features

Aura’s security suite goes well beyond basic ID and financial protection. It includes tools meant to protect your devices and online activity directly, such as:

In contrast, the only digital security tools Identity Guard offers are:

• • A password manager to help secure your login credentials
• • A safe browsing extension that blocks ads and trackers

Clearly, Identity Guard stays true to its purpose and focuses on identity-centric risks, while Aura expands to broader built-in protections.

4. Family and Child Protection

The gap between Identity Guard and Aura widens with family and child protection features.

Identity Guard offers some child-focused monitoring as part of its bundled Family plans, including SSN monitoring for kids and social media monitoring to flag potential misuse of your child’s information. These tools help you spot early signs of fraud, but don't support parental controls or device-level protections.

Aura’s Kids and Family plans are built with today’s threats in mind:

• • Parental controls to filter inappropriate web content and monitor online activity
• • Screen-time limits and usage reports to help set boundaries
• • Safe gaming alerts for cyberbullying and suspicious interactions in chat and voice channels
• • Child SSN monitoring with a 3-bureau credit freeze
• • Geo alerts if a registered sex offender is detected near your child's frequented locations, like home or school

5. Pricing Structure

Identity Guard uses a tiered pricing structure for individuals and families. Here’s what the costs look like with annual billing:

*Covers five adults and unlimited kids

Aura currently offers four plans based on the number of people and devices covered. Here’s an overview:

Identity Guard’s lower entry price gives it an edge over Aura, but the latter offers more value for money at higher tiers. Here’s how one Reddit user puts it:

“After using Aura for the past few months, I have to say it’s well worth it. You get so much more than just identity theft protection. I love the approach of offering 3-bureau monitoring with all plans, even the cheapest subscription plan is covered by this. I also think it's a good value when you consider the VPN and antivirus solution together.”

Both services offer a 60-day money-back guarantee on their annual plans. Identity Guard doesn’t offer a free trial, while Aura offers a 14-day free trial on all its plans.

6. Customer Support

Both services provide 24/7 support over phone and email. Aura also offers live chat and a help center for quick questions and real-time assistance.

Aura customers often highlight positive experiences, with many praising the proactive, hands-on guidance from its staff. Reviewers often vouch for its fraud remediation experts, who offer valuable assistance with fraud recovery.

Identity Guard has also received generally great feedback, with many praising agents for being patient and helpful. However, some users have had difficulties obtaining refunds or resolving billing and account-related issues.

Aura vs. Identity Guard: User Ratings and Summary

Both Aura and Identity Guard have received thousands of customer reviews across major public platforms. On Trustpilot, Identity Guard has about 4,400+ reviews and a TrustScore of 3.6/5, while Aura has 900+ reviews with a notably higher TrustScore of 4.3/5.

Here’s a quick comparison summary of Identity Guard vs. Aura:

Your choice depends on your needs and budget:

1. 1. Aura is the better fit if you want comprehensive digital projection tools by default.
2. 1. Identity Guard can be a great budget option for basic identity monitoring.

A recurring theme we noticed across reviews is how Aura receives more consistent updates and operational attention, while Identity Guard feels less actively maintained. Here’s what a user had to say:

“Identity Guard is fine, and is actually owned by Aura. The product is not as well-maintained as Aura itself, so if you are considering Identity Guard vs. Aura, I'd just go with Aura.”

Important: Where Identity Guard and Aura Fall Short

Both Aura and Identity Guard share a critical gap: they cannot safeguard you against identity theft risks coming from the cellular network, i.e., your mobile carrier. Your personal data is frequently collected, stored, and shared at the network level, leaving you vulnerable to data breaches and insider misuse.

Most major mobile networks operate on an outdated trust-based architecture where sensitive details, such as call logs, texts, metadata, and location history, can easily be intercepted. If you look at the recent data breach timeline, millions of subscribers suffered from compromised private records after breaches involving major carriers like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T.

SIM hijacking has been a bigger menace for identity protection. A SIM swap attack exploits the vulnerabilities in your carrier's ID verification and account transfer processes, allowing an attacker to take over your number and, by extension, your identity and bank accounts.

Switch to a privacy-native carrier like Cape to strengthen your identity protections and prevent SIM swap attacks.

How Cape Addresses Network-Level Identity Risks

Cape is a privacy-first mobile carrier built on the core belief that your data belongs to you and you alone. We provide premium, nationwide, and unlimited call, text, and 4G/5G data, just like any other cell phone service provider. What makes us different is that our service is designed from the ground up to protect your privacy and security.

We do this through several different features:

1. Minimal Data Collection

Cape eliminates the risk of your sensitive data falling into the wrong hands by not even asking for it. When you make your Cape account, we don’t ask for your name, address, or SSN. We only collect the information that’s necessary to provide the service, and we retain it for the least amount of time possible.

2. SIM Swap Protection

During account creation, you receive a unique 24-word phrase that generates a private key tied to your phone number. This pass phrase is required to move your number to a new device or carrier. Nobody else, not even us at Cape, has access to the phrase, meaning there’s absolutely no way for bad actors to transfer your number to their device, effectively nullifying the possibility of SIM swapping.

3. Disappearing Call Logs

Your phone stores an incredible amount of data, which can be accessed through call and text records. Most mobile carriers store your call and text metadata for years, which can easily fall into the wrong hands.

Cape is built to forget, meaning we delete Call Data Records (CDRs) after just one day, ensuring nobody can see who you texted or called, track where the communication took place, or access the sensitive information within CDRs.

4. Identifier Rotation

All SIM cards are accompanied by International Mobile Subscriber IDs (IMSI). These function as unique identifiers devices use to register with cellular networks. Traditional telcos assign fixed IMSIs to user accounts, meaning the carriers, advertisers, hackers, and other bad actors can exploit them to identify and track your device.

Cape patches this security hole by allowing you to automatically rotate your IMSI every 24 hours. In practice, this means you appear as a different subscriber every day, making it much more difficult for anyone to identify your device or track your movements.

5. Last-Mile Encrypted Texting

Most people receive One-Time Passwords (OTPs) through unencrypted SMS messages, leaving their most sensitive data and accounts vulnerable to a variety of threats.

Cape allows you to route all SMS/MMS messages through the Cape app, ensuring that every message you receive is middle-to-end encrypted. The messages are then securely decrypted within the Cape app, ensuring only you can see and read their contents.

Note: This feature is only available on iPhone. Android coming soon.

6. Secondary Numbers

Are you tired of spam messages from brands, phone call surveys, and scammers trying to trick you into sharing sensitive information over the phone? The reason why most people are exposed to these nuisances is that we are often required to share our phone numbers with retailers, websites, apps, and service providers.

While messages and phone calls can be annoying, what’s worse is that your number can easily become a target for data brokers and bad actors. That’s why many people turn to VoIP numbers as secondary lines. VoIPs are a decent option, but they don’t fully solve the issue—they are not encrypted, you can’t use them for 2FA, and they’re an additional cost each month.

When you sign up for Cape, you get two free additional SMS/MMS lines that are middle-to-end encrypted. This allows you to use Secondary Numbers for online shopping, signing up for services and discounts, and receiving secure OTPs, while your primary phone number is reserved for friends and family.

7. Network Lock

Traditional cellular networks were designed for interoperability, not security. Outdated and legacy network protocols like SS7 have vulnerabilities that allow attackers to hack in and track your location, intercept your calls and texts, and steal sensitive information.

Cape’s Network Lock uses a proprietary signaling proxy to verify that your device’s physical location matches the network it’s trying to attach to. If anything looks suspicious, like a mismatched location, we block the connection.

8. Encrypted Voicemail

Voicemails can reveal more than you think, from personal messages to authentication codes, yet most voicemail systems are outdated and unencrypted.

Cape encrypts your voicemails so that only you can access them.

9. Secure Global Roaming

To access phone service while traveling abroad, your phone typically needs to connect to local telecom providers. The trouble is, there’s no guarantee all networks are secure, and not every government treats privacy the same.

Cape doesn’t leave anything to chance. We let you route traffic through our US-based mobile core, so you can safely use international data roaming without exposing your identity or sharing sensitive data or communications with foreign carriers.

10. Private Payment

When you pay for your Cape subscription, we don’t collect your name or billing address. The card information that we do collect is never stored in Cape’s systems—that data is tokenized and stored with Stripe, meaning your Cape account cannot be linked to your payment information.

With Cape, you get up to 15 GB per month of international roaming, included in your monthly plan.

Create Your Cape Account Today

You can get started immediately by visiting cape.co/get-cape.

Cape has also partnered with Proton for a unique deal that shields your online activity. Cape subscribers can now get Proton Unlimited or Proton VPN Plus for only $1 for six months.