Look, identity theft isn’t some rare edge case anymore. Americans have about a one-in-four chance of getting their identity stolen, and fraud losses jumped roughly 14% last year. In this video I cut through the marketing clutter and compare Aura vs LifeLock the way I think it should be done: real testing with my actual data (plus my review team’s), so we can see what these services catch when your Social Security number is floating around on some message board in Eastern Europe. I break the comparison into five practical categories: credit bureau monitoring, alert speed, dark web scanning, data broker removal, and what you actually get included vs. what you get nickel-and-dimed for. In my testing, Aura found 18 dark web alerts for my data while LifeLock found 8—and LifeLock missed leaked Gmail credentials that Aura picked up quickly. Aura also includes three-bureau monitoring on every plan (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion), while LifeLock reserves that for Ultimate Plus. Add in automatic data broker removal (140+ sites), a full security suite included (VPN, password manager, antivirus), and support that doesn’t end every call with an upsell pitch, and Aura is my pick for 2026 for most people.