Aura Digital Safety App Review | Identity Theft Protection

Last Updated May 2, 2022//Travis Sickle, CFP®, EA®

Originally Posted Apr 19, 2022//Travis Sickle, CFP®, EA®

The Aura digital safety app is so much more than just an app. It protects your digital identity and devices and some parts you probably didn't realize need protecting. I have updated this post a few times, added more videos on Aura and each time I'm more impressed and feel that much more at ease with my digital footprint.

Full Video Transcript: Aura Digital Safety App Review | Identity Theft Protection

00:00:00:01 - 00:00:33:17
Unknown
Keeping your digital life and your identity protected has become increasingly more difficult. We have so many different types of devices now. We have tablets, we have phones, we have laptops, computers. The list goes on. We also have a ton of different types of accounts, like bank accounts, credit cards, debit cards, investment accounts, and retirement plans. So in this video, I'm going to do a review of Aura that provides identity theft and online protection, and Aura provides an all in one digital security for the entire family.

00:00:33:18 - 00:01:00:06
Unknown
There's a lot to understand about the importance of identity theft and the shocking statistics behind them but have already done that video. So I'll leave a link in the description at the bottom. But if you haven't watched that video already, I can share from personal experience. Actually, multiple personal experiences of identity theft, and it is a huge hassle and a huge headache and I have also helped other individuals working through their own identity theft.

00:01:00:12 - 00:01:38:17
Unknown
And in locking down their own accounts. So I'm going to start this video by going through a brief overview of Aura, the signup process, the setup process, but ultimately why I chose Aura as a replacement to my previous protection provider. So now let's start with a brief overview. If you take a look at Aura's website at Aura.com and scroll down just a little bit, you're going to see that they really have a robust suite of areas that they provide identity theft and online protection with their financial fraud protection, identity theft protection, online and device security and family protection.

00:01:38:17 - 00:02:02:07
Unknown
So now let's go through each one of these sections so you can get a better understanding of how the proactive protection that covers the whole family can help you. Aura's financial fraud and credit protection is linked with Experian and they're going to monitor your credit activity. And what's really neat about this is you can see your credit score both online and if you download the app on your smartphone, you can also see your credit score there as well.

00:02:02:11 - 00:02:27:29
Unknown
And it's being monitored the entire time. And next, their identity theft protection doesn't just monitor your identity online and all of your different accounts that you might have. It also provides something that I've not seen anywhere else before that I want to talk a little bit more about, but just the service of identity protection. And the way that they go about making sure that your identity is protected is something that's very unique that I have not seen elsewhere.

00:02:28:03 - 00:02:53:14
Unknown
But let's talk a little bit more about this, because this this one piece alone might be totally worth the price of the service just to eliminate the amount of time that it takes to protect your identity online. But I'll talk about this in just a couple of minutes so you can see for yourself exactly what this covers, because this is what you experience when you're in the app and you don't quite understand that just from going to their website.

00:02:53:21 - 00:03:15:07
Unknown
So to share that in just a minute. And as I mentioned in the beginning of this video, we have a lot of devices, including family members with multiple devices, tablets and phones, laptops and computers. You can cover and manage all of them seamlessly. It was a really easy process to do this. So I'm going to again show you that through the setup process.

00:03:15:08 - 00:03:45:28
Unknown
Now, when it comes to notifications, you can actually set a dollar limit on the limit that you want the notifications to trigger. So, for example, if you have transactions that you only want to see that are over $100 or over $500, you can do that across all of your accounts. So if you're thinking about this, you might be thinking, Oh, well, I have this at my financial institution, but what this is doing is setting it up across all of your accounts, all in one view.

00:03:46:03 - 00:04:12:28
Unknown
So you can manage all of them together and don't have to do it on each individual app, because if you're like me, you have a ton of different accounts and a ton of different institutions. So this helps aggregate and making sure that they are secure. And in addition to that, they're proactive online and device security where every or a plan comes with intelligence safety tools like a VPN, antivirus password manager and more.

00:04:13:04 - 00:04:36:09
Unknown
And this is to protect all of your devices but it's more than just protection. It's also peace of mind because Aura provides 24/7 customer support and included with every digital security plan. It comes with a $1 million in identity theft insurance. Next let's go through or a sign up process which by the way was really easy to do.

00:04:36:09 - 00:04:53:01
Unknown
So all I need to do is provide my name, click continue and then put in my address, then provide a phone number which I just put in my cell phone number. Then I put in my birthday and my Social Security number click continue. And once I chose a plan, I just had to put my credit card information in.

00:04:53:01 - 00:05:09:00
Unknown
Then you just had to create a password and confirm that password. And there we go. I was all set. Now I'm going to take you through the setup process of Aura, and it was just as easy as a signup process. So let's go ahead and go through it together so you can see what it looks like So the first thing I needed to do was link my financial institutions.

00:05:09:00 - 00:05:29:00
Unknown
So just go ahead and click on that plus link that says Link financial accounts, and then use play to link all of your online accounts. And you can search for whatever financial decision you have. And all you need to do is put in your credentials, your username and your password. And then once I connected my online accounts, then I went ahead and installed the app on my computer and then also on my smartphone.

00:05:29:09 - 00:05:51:17
Unknown
So it was pretty easy to do when you're in the portal online. I downloaded it first that you can see here through my Windows computer, and then I did it on my iPhone so you could do it on your smartphone. But they also have app for iOS, Mac OS, Chrome, Firefox and Edge. And here's the app that is on my desktop.

00:05:51:17 - 00:06:17:21
Unknown
This is my computer. So you can see that it's fully protected I could manually run a scan if I wanted to, but it's doing it automatically, just as you would expect for antivirus or malware. And it seems to be searching for both and also it's giving me a rundown on my online security. And you can see that it is also making sure or telling me that my location is unsecure but it will make this computer secure.

00:06:17:21 - 00:06:35:11
Unknown
So I'm not going to really worry about that. And then there are some settings that you could take a look at. And I start this on launch. I started to minimize it, so I don't want it to harass me while I'm just on my computer service notifications. I have that set to yes. And automatically secure unsecured Wi-Fi networks.

00:06:35:17 - 00:06:58:21
Unknown
So as I was showing you before with the all automatically secure, unsecure Wi-Fi networks, and it's showing that my current network is unsecured, but luckily my computer is secure. So when you're on the go, this is hugely beneficial, especially if you have other devices like smartphones or tablets. And it was the same experience when I downloaded it on my smartphone, which I'll bring up on the screen for you.

00:06:58:29 - 00:07:18:26
Unknown
And I just went through it and I searched for the Aura app on my iPhone and just went ahead and installed it. And once you do that, you just have to put in your username, which is your email address and your password and it logs you right in and you're going to get a rundown of all of the same features that you would see on the desktop version.

00:07:18:26 - 00:07:41:24
Unknown
So you can see all the alerts and you can see all of your financial institutions, all the transactions It's really nice because it's all in one place, but it's not just aggregating it all in one place. It's also making sure that those accounts are protected. Now I want to talk about something that I was pointing out at the beginning of the video that I said I was pleasantly surprised about, about Aura is their identity protection section.

00:07:41:24 - 00:08:11:29
Unknown
When I logged in, I was not expecting this. So in this section for identity theft, I saw this section called Data Brokers. And at first I didn't know what it was, but I scroll down and I realized that this is actually opting us out proactively from all of these different groups. So, for example, if you look at the do not call dot gov, that's the telemarketing list to remove your name from all those telemarketers spam calls that you probably get and they're proactively requesting you to be opted out.

00:08:12:04 - 00:08:31:03
Unknown
And you can see here I was already opted out of one. And that's the DMA choice, the junk mailers. And maybe you've seen Val PAC and we get a lot of Val PAC here, but there's just so many different areas that they are proactively making sure that they're up to date and getting you off those lists so there's less of a chance of your identity getting stolen.

00:08:31:04 - 00:08:50:23
Unknown
So, so far, we've seen an easy signup process with Aura, an easy setup process with Aura. And now I want to talk about why I switched from my previous provider over to Aura so one of the first things that I look at are reviews. So you're watching this review video, but you're probably also looking or going to look at the reviews.

00:08:51:04 - 00:09:11:15
Unknown
So if you look at the apps or they get a 4.5 out of five stars, and then on Trustpilot, they have 4.7 out of five stars. So pretty good reviews, but one of the biggest reasons that I made the switch is that I really wanted that all-encompassing digital online solution across multiple devices and across multiple accounts.

00:09:12:00 - 00:09:34:22
Unknown
And that's not what I was getting with my previous provider. It was really just an installation on each individual device and felt very independent, not a suite of tools And during the installation on my previous provider, it was very difficult to do. But after that it was constantly trying to upsell me on different things that were unrelated to identity theft and online protection.

00:09:35:00 - 00:09:56:12
Unknown
So it really didn't make a whole lot of sense, and it was really just frustrating for me. Aura delivers on what they say they're going to do. Their website says it's going to be simple. It's going to be an all-encompassing solution, and that's exactly the experience that I've had. So if you want a better experience, go to Oracle come forward, slash Travis and save up to 50% link in the description at the bottom.

The Identity Theft Challenge

Keeping your digital life and your identity protected has become increasingly more difficult. We have so many different types of devices now. We have tablets, phones, laptops, and computers. The list goes on.

We also have a ton of different types of accounts, like bank accounts, credit cards, debit cards, investment accounts, and retirement plans. Yes, your 401k, 403(b), SEP, SIMPLE, IRA or Roth IRA are all at risk of theft. I didn't think this was possible either with the high level of security required of financial institutions.

It doesn't make sense how your retirement plan could be at risk because you don't hand out your retirement plan account number in the same way you do with your credit or debit cards, but it happens.

Why I'm Reviewing Aura

I'm reviewing Aura, because it's a paid video but NOT a paid post. I did sign up for Aura and so far intend to keep it. I did drop by a previous protection provider that is a very well-known company specifically because they kept trying to upsell me in the app. Not an experience that I'm having with Aura, thankfully.

Identity Theft Statistics

Every 7 seconds there is a victim of identity theft. Identity theft has been on the rise. According to the Consumer Sentinel Network, Data Book 2020, the number of identity theft and fraud reports has risen from 335,519 in 2001 to over 4.7 million in 2020.

The report breaks down types of fraud, methods, and amounts lost. It's not surprising the top payment methods for fraud are credit and debit cards. However, I was very shocked by the fraud report by contact method. The number one spot was phone calls. You might be thinking, no, this is not surprising given all those robocalls everyone receives.

But, it is surprising when you realize that phone call fraud amounts to a staggering loss of $436 million and texts $86 million. So, seriously, stop picking up those robocalls!

The Aura Signup Process

The video does a much better job of explaining the signup process. In fact, I signed up in the video to show you all the screenshots and steps involved. It was super easy. You can signup using my affiliate link here.

The Aura Setup Process

Again, this was really easy to do. I suggest watching the video walk-through since you can follow along with the visuals. I installed the computer app first, which consisted of malware and antivirus protection. Then I connected a few of my accounts for identity and fraud protection and finally I installed the app on my iPhone.

The Aura Review after a few weeks

It's seamless. It's simple. It just works.

Again, I'm not being paid to do this follow-up. I just decided to write this post along with this video. I have not had any issues with the Aura app or identity theft service. No annoying pop-ups trying to upsell me.

I did tweak my account transaction alerts since I originally set it too low. I was getting alerts every day but it was a simple tweak.

All in all, I recommend Aura and would love to hear what you think.