Your credentials may already be circulating from a breach you don't know
about. Active monitoring alerts you the moment your information shows up
somewhere it shouldn't, so you can act before it's used against you. Four
genuinely different picks, depending on what matters most to you.
Just want to check if you've already been exposed, without a full subscription? See our
Breach Monitoring page for a narrower, faster option.
Best for all-in-one coverage
Aura
Identity monitoring, VPN, antivirus, and a password manager in one app
- ✓ Bundles identity monitoring with a VPN, antivirus, and password manager — one subscription instead of stitching several tools together
- ✓ Consistently rated among the highest for all-in-one protection in independent reviews
- ✓ Family plans cover monitoring for both adults and children under one account
- ✓ $1M identity theft insurance included on paid plans
Get Aura →
Best for brand trust & existing Norton users
LifeLock
The most established name in identity protection, backed by Norton
- ✓ Decades in the identity protection space — the name most people already recognize
- ✓ Integrates directly with Norton's antivirus and security suite if you're already a Norton customer
- ✓ Insurance coverage scales up to $3 million on the top tier — three times the $1M industry baseline, LifeLock's clearest differentiator
- ✓ Wide network of monitoring across credit bureaus, court records, and the dark web
Get LifeLock →
Best for budget-conscious monitoring
Identity Guard
AI-driven monitoring at a lower price point than most competitors
- ✓ Uses AI-powered monitoring (built on IBM Watson technology) to scan for threats across a wide range of sources
- ✓ Generally priced below Aura and LifeLock for comparable core monitoring features
- ✓ Dark web and credit monitoring included even on lower-tier plans
- ✓ Straightforward plan structure — easy to know exactly what you're getting
Get Identity Guard →
Best if restoration support matters most
IDShield
Licensed private investigators personally handle your recovery if theft happens
- ✓ If theft occurs, a dedicated licensed private investigator walks you through recovery personally — not just a call center
- ✓ Up to $3 million in identity fraud protection coverage
- ✓ PrivacyCheck feature searches data broker sites for your exposed personal info and helps get it removed
- ✓ Family plans cover up to 8 members, including children
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Worth knowing: two of these companies have been breached themselves
We're not going to leave this out. In March 2026, an Aura employee was phished by phone, giving an attacker roughly an hour of account access. About 900,000 records were taken — but almost all of it came from a legacy marketing list from a 2021 acquisition, not the database behind Aura's actual monitoring product. No Social Security numbers, passwords, or financial data were involved.
LifeLock (Norton) has its own history here too, including a December 2022 credential-stuffing breach that compromised customer password manager accounts specifically — a more sensitive target than a marketing list.
We're telling you this because it's closer to an argument for monitoring than against it: no vendor in this space, including the ones protecting you, is immune to what they protect against. Both companies detected their incidents, disclosed them, and responded quickly — that response is worth weighing alongside features and price, not treated as disqualifying.
Worth knowing: two of these four are actually the same company
Identity Guard is owned by Aura. They're run as genuinely separate products with different pricing, features, and positioning — Identity Guard skips the bundled VPN/antivirus/password manager to stay cheaper — so this isn't a reason to rule either one out. But it's worth knowing you're choosing between two Aura-family products, not two fully independent companies, if a rock-bottom price from Identity Guard and a fuller toolkit from Aura are both on your shortlist.
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