All About Cookies is an independent, advertising-supported website. Some of the offers that appear on this site are from third-party advertisers from which All About Cookies receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site (including, for example, the order in which they appear).
All About Cookies does not include all financial or credit offers that might be available to consumers nor do we include all companies or all available products. Information is accurate as of the publishing date and has not been provided or endorsed by the advertiser.
The All About Cookies editorial team strives to provide accurate, in-depth information and reviews to help you, our reader, make online privacy decisions with confidence. Here's what you can expect from us:
- All About Cookies makes money when you click the links on our site to some of the products and offers that we mention. These partnerships do not influence our opinions or recommendations. Read more about how we make money.
- Partners are not able to review or request changes to our content except for compliance reasons.
- We aim to make sure everything on our site is up-to-date and accurate as of the publishing date, but we cannot guarantee we haven't missed something. It's your responsibility to double-check all information before making any decision. If you spot something that looks wrong, please let us know.
Best overall
Best for comprehensive coverage
We've found that the overall best identity protection service for families is Aura, with Norton LifeLock as a close runner-up. Aura offers a complete set-and-forget security suite at a good price, with features like parental controls, a password manager, data removal, and more. Comparatively, LifeLock provides the most insurance coverage and protection against child identity theft on its family plan.
Let's break down why our top-tested picks stand out for families.
Aura: Best overall
Norton LifeLock: Best for comprehensive coverage
IDShield by LegalShield: Best for reputation monitoring
How to choose the best identity theft protection service for families
FAQs
Bottom line: The best ID theft protection for families
The best identity theft protection services for families 2025
- Aura: Best overall
- Norton LifeLock: Best for comprehensive coverage
- IDShield by LegalShield: Best for reputation monitoring
Top 3 identity theft protection services for families compared
Service | ![]() Best overall
|
![]() |
![]() |
Star ratings | |||
Starting price | Starts at $25.00/mo (billed annually) | Starts at $20.83/mo for first yr (billed annually) | Starts at $29.95/mo |
# of people covered | Up to 5 adults and unlimited children | Up to 2 adults and 5 children | Up to 2 adults and 10 children |
Types of identity monitoring | Dark web, credit, SSN, home & auto title, criminal & court records, lost wallet remediation | Dark web, credit, SSN, home title, social media, phone takeover | Dark web, social media, SSN, home title, criminal & court records, public records, sex offender search & monitoring, and more |
Credit monitoring | |||
ID theft insurance | Up to $1 million per adult | Up to $3 million | Up to $3 million |
Identity restoration services | |||
Extras | Antivirus, password manager, data removal, credit lock, Safe Gaming, parental controls, AI spam call & message protection, basic VPN | Data removal, parental controls | Password manager, secure storage, PC protection, VPN (mobile) |
Details | View Aura Plans | View LifeLock Plans | View IDShield Plans |
How we tested the best identity theft protection for families
Nearly every identity theft protection solution will provide a basic set of capabilities:
- Credit monitoring
- Transaction monitoring
- Dark web monitoring
- Identity theft insurance
When looking for differentiators among the various services, the stand-out technologies all offered something that no one else did. With families, ID theft protection capabilities really focus on how kids and teens use the internet, as well as the types of family structures that might struggle to pay for services.
When considering what families need and why they need them, each of the top three offered something unique in one of the following categories:
- How adults and children use the internet: Cybercriminals target everyone, and increasingly they focus on tweens and teens, so identity theft protection needs to cover every location that can be compromised, including social media and online gaming.
- Number of caregivers in a household: Data protection should be affordable for everyone, so it is important to consider the households that are trying to get by on one caregiver's salary.
- Non-financial harm: Identity theft protection often focuses on money rather than how cybercriminals can use a victim’s digital identity to engage in social engineering online, which harms the person’s real-world reputation.
Aura: Best overall
Who it’s best for
Aura is best for families who want to take a hands-off approach to identity theft protection. Powered by AI technology, Aura is the ultimate "set-and-forget" cybersecurity suite. Members receive weekly reports via the main dashboard and emails, as well as real-time alerts about changes to your credit report. If Aura flags suspicious activity, you'll know right away. Additionally, Aura offers security features just for kids, like Safe Gaming and parental controls.
What we liked
We like that Aura includes features for kids in the family plans. Aura Parental Controls offers robust screen time monitoring and content filtering, and parents can set the specs based on their child's age. ProtectMe by Kidas, which is Aura's Safe Gaming software, monitors communication on common games and gaming communication apps like Discord, ensuring your kids are safer online.
We also like that Aura is super user-friendly. Once you populate your vault with the personal information you want monitored — from your Social Security numbers to your email address to gamer handles — Aura works right away, scanning the dark web for data breaches that have leaked your data. The dashboard is intuitive, and overall, the service doesn't take much to get going.
Additionally, Aura offers a terrific price for a complete security suite that includes identity and credit monitoring as well as up to $1 million in identity theft coverage for each adult.
What we didn’t like
Aura doesn't offer social media monitoring, which we think is essential these days. LifeLock offers social media monitoring in addition to protection against cyberbullying. However, we think Aura's plans are well worth the price for the cutting-edge software that you get.
Aura pros and cons
- Robust tools for children's security, including parental controls and Safe Gaming
- Provides extra security features like antivirus, password manager, and more
- Has specialists available for identity theft recovery
- No social media account monitoring
- No location tracking or conversation monitoring
Norton LifeLock: Best for comprehensive coverage
Who it’s best for
At the Standard level, LifeLock is solid and provides more insurance than other service providers. However, its real value comes with its higher-tier identity theft protection plans. At its mid-tier level, the Advantage subscription gives you two protection features that other services don’t: phone takeover monitoring and alerts for Buy Now Pay Later scams. The Ultimate Plus plan comes with additional monitoring and alerts for more types of identity theft, comprehensive credit monitoring services, and more.
For parents, the biggest value here comes from the insurance to their child's identity. Children get up to $25,000 reimbursement for stolen funds on family plans.
What we liked
Norton Family, Norton Security's parental controls, offers robust protection for children. The parental control software blocks up to 47 content categories, which is more than double competitors. Plus, it includes real-time alerts for inappropriate content and location tracking.
Norton is a long-established name in the personal digital protection world, thanks to its antivirus software. It’s been around since 1990, and its services have continued to evolve with the times. LifeLock even has apps for iOS and Android.
LifeLock has considered almost every potential risk. Some of LifeLock’s key benefits at the Advantage tier are:
- Financial and criminal alerts for credit cards, bank accounts, Buy Now Pay Later scams, and crimes in your name
- Monthly credit score updates
- Credit lock with TransUnion
- Unique features, like phone takeover and fictitious identity monitoring
Some of LifeLock’s key benefits at the Ultimate Plus tier are:
- Monitoring and alerts for home titles, checking and savings plan applications, 401K and investment accounts, and bank account takeover
- Unlimited access to your Equifax credit report and score
- Annual credit reports from all three bureaus
- Unique features, like file-sharing network searches and monitoring your social media accounts
And for its identity restoration services, every LifeLock tier comes with varying amounts of fund reimbursement for lawyers and identity theft experts, stolen funds, and personal expenses.
What we didn’t like
Considering LifeLock is one of the pricier options, we expected the customer service to be a bit better. While you can get live chat and phone support, the representatives aren’t always the most knowledgeable. LifeLock also has a competitive price, but it renews at a higher rate after the first year, regardless of which plan you choose.
LifeLock pros and cons
- Up to $3 million in insurance for identity theft
- Dark web and social media monitoring
- 24/7 customer support
- Family plan is limited to 5 children
- Prices increase after the first year
IDShield by LegalShield: Best for reputation monitoring
Who it’s best for
IDShield offers a few unique reputation management tools that other services lack. For families, reputation monitoring becomes important for several reasons. You want to protect your reputation for both personal and professional reasons. You also want to protect your kids’ reputations for social and academic reasons. Today, your digital profile is part of how companies and other parents determine your trustworthiness.
IDShield has really strong reputation management capabilities, and it also offers some unique proactive security options that other services lack.
What we liked
All IDShield plans come with the same identity protection, SSN protection, and credit protection features. The only difference is the number of major credit bureaus that your plan monitors.
IDShield is the most expensive of the top three identity theft protection tools, but it also provides some of the most unique services:
- Public records monitoring: Monitors 34 different personally identifiable information (PII) elements, including all personal and professional licenses, registrations, property data, Social Security data repositories, phones, aliases, and criminal records.
- Social media monitoring: Monitors content feed reputation risks like vulgar, harmful, threatening, discriminatory, or sexual language as well as drug and alcohol references
- Parental control tools: Sets up schedules for when your kids can browse the internet with content and web filters to limit what they can view.
All the IDShield Family plans also cover up to 15 devices, so there’s extensive coverage for you and your loved ones. Beyond accessing the website, IDShield also has apps for iOS and Android that both have ratings above 4.5 stars.
What we didn’t like
While IDShield has several unique features, all of those come with an expensive price tag attached. Unless you’re specifically concerned about your reputation, specifically social media monitoring, you can get most of the other services from other providers. With the 1 Credit Bureau monitoring option clocking in at $29.95/mo, IDShield’s lowest tier is more expensive than other services’ most costly tiers.
IDShield pros and cons
- Has parental control tools such as content filters
- Monitors social media for harmful content
- Provides coverage for up to 10 children
- No 24/7 customer support
- No credit report monitoring
How to choose the best identity theft protection service for families
With so many different technologies available, choosing just one requires a lot of thought and comparison. While the three top technologies for families in this guide are a good starting point, you want to make sure that you understand your unique family’s needs.
When you’re evaluating a service, you might want to ask yourself:
- How much do its family plans cost?
- How many adults and how many children are included in each family plan?
- Is there protection against child identity theft?
- What level of protection does it provide for children, and how does it define “child”?
- Does it alert users to data breaches in multiple areas, including social media and gaming?
- Does it monitor credit reports from all three bureaus: Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax?
- How often does it provide credit score updates?
- Does it assist with identity recovery for all family members?
- Does it provide identity theft insurance? If so, how much? (Up to $1 million is most common.)
- Does it offer apps for multiple standard device types and operating systems?
- Does its privacy policy state that it doesn’t sell data?
FAQs
How can I protect my family from identity theft?
The best way to protect your family from identity theft is to put privacy protections in place, like using password managers to create strong and unique passwords and using a VPN.
Does LifeLock have a family plan?
LifeLock has both a family plan for two adults and a family plan for two adults and five children available at each of its three tiers:
- Standard
- Advantage
- Ultimate Plus
Which ID theft service has the cheapest family plans?
Identity Guard has the cheapest family plans:
- Value: $14.99/mo billed annually or $14.99/mo billed monthly
- Total: $29.99/mo billed annually or $29.99/mo billed monthly
- Ultra: $39.99/mo billed annually or $39.99/mo billed monthly
Bottom line: The best ID theft protection for families
The best identity theft protection service for families is Aura, which offers identity and online protection for the whole family at a good price point. When you’re a cybercrime victim, you can feel as though you’ve lost control of everything.
If you’re still trying to figure out which of the services mentioned in this article are right for your family, then you can read this identity theft protection and credit monitoring guide for more information.
3 best ID theft protection services for families 2025
Starting price for families | Best for | Learn more | |
![]() |
Starts at $25.00/mo (billed annually) | Best overall | View Aura Plans |
![]() |
Starts at $20.83/mo for first yr (billed annually) | Best for comprehensive coverage | View LifeLock Plans |
![]() |
Starts at $29.95/mo | Best for reputation monitoring | Get IDShield |
/images/2023/06/01/incogni-review.png)
/images/2023/05/18/deleteme_review-1.jpg)
/images/2024/02/22/best_identity_theft_protection_with_fraud_detection.jpg)
/images/2023/10/12/best_identity_theft_protection_with_dark_web_monitoring.jpg)
/images/2023/07/27/best_identity_theft_protection_for_families.jpg)
/images/2023/07/07/best-identity-theft-protection-service.png)
/images/2023/06/28/the_best_identity_theft_protection_with_credit_reporting.jpg)
/images/2023/05/25/best-identity-theft-protection-for-seniors.png)