Aura: Protect Yourself (By Giving Everything to Us)

Aura is an online safety platform that boasts a variety of services, including a VPN,

parental controls, identity fraud protection, spam blockers, credit reporting, encrypted online storage, and more. In recent years, Aura has announced its new AI feature ‘Aura Intelligence’ that aims to provide “ a predictive, personalized, and autonomous online safety experience” (Aura & AI, Aura, n.d.). Aura started as a basic online data protection service that focused on having a user-friendly interface. It has since expanded to become an all-in-one service for any online security/privacy protection need (Aura, n.d.).

Through marketing tactics and the abstraction of labor, Aura is built and constantly expanding its services by utilizing its customers' data, all while exploiting families worried about their children’s safety. Currently, the company’s marketing efforts focus on the dangers children face online and how Aura is the best way to protect your family. For parents looking to buy, the company’s website welcomes them gently, with gradients of blue, white, and lilac (Aura, n.d.). The edges of all the elements on the screen are rounded, and a soft blur covers the areas of the website you are not directly looking at (Aura, n.d.). From a design perspective, these choices help present Aura as a peaceful, safe, yet modern entity that can protect individuals and their families from any harm that they may find online. Some renditions of the company logo even include the tagline ‘Your Digital Halo’(MetLife, n.d.). Aura can collect and analyze a vast array of data from its users without suspicion, as Aura must have access to sensitive customer information to function properly. But what else are they doing with all that data? And how effective are their services? Customers must dig through Aura’s extensive privacy policy to answer just some of these questions, and the company does not make this information easy to digest. Before discussing these issues, we must first establish what Aura does.

Aura Sub LLC is the most recent iteration of the firm, but it started operations in 2017

under the name iSubscribed. Founder and CEO Hari Ravichandran describes his own experience with identity theft and how it led to the formation of Aura; “There was a significant need to bring together solutions to the myriad of challenges that we face in our digital lives — from identity protection and data privacy to antivirus and Wi-Fi protection” (Ravichandran, 2021). The goal was always to provide as many online security solutions as possible in one easy-to-use platform. iSubscribed has merged with or acquired multiple other companies in the field, and each one has expanded the services the company provides (About Us - Aura digital security, Aura, n.d.)

Hari Ravichandran is also the CEO and founder of Jump Ventures, described as “a scalability infusion firm that strategically invests in bringing disruptive ideas to market” (Home, Jump Ventures, 2022). By tracking Aura’s history, it’s clear that Ravichandran’s scaling strategies are being used to expand Aura into the practices of other online security firms. The first change happened in 2018 when iSubscribed, WndrCo, and General Catalyst acquired Intersections Inc. and Identity Guard. (About us - Aura digital security, Aura, n.d.). iSubscribed next combined with WndrCo and General Catalyst to form WC SACD under the Intrusta brand in 2019. At this stage, the platform introduced the anti-virus software, VPN, and digital identity protection services (About us - Aura digital security, Aura, n.d.). By 2020, ‘Aura’ was officially launched following the merger between Intrusta and Identity Guard brands. The same year, Aura acquired competitors Pango, FigLeaf, and PrivacyMate (About us - Aura digital security, Aura, n.d.). However, in 2024, Aura split off into Aura and Point Wild, a new iteration of the Pango brand. They quickly followed the 2020 acquisitions by gobbling up Circle Media Labs to introduce their parental control features in 2021(About us - Aura digital security, Aura, n.d.). So far, that is the most recent acquisition, but Aura is not done collaborating with other firms.

In 2022, MetLife became the exclusive employer distributor for Aura (MetLife, n.d.), and in 2025 a partnership with Common Sense Media was announced (Common sense media and aura announce multi-year partnership to protect kids from online harms and promote mental wellbeing, Aura, n.d.). This partnership launched on November 18th, 2025, but the focus on online wellness is nothing new. When Aura became exclusively involved with MetLife, it also introduced joint services to remedy the ‘mental health crisis’ through AI tools (MetLife, n.d.). While Aura includes adult online wellness features, the company targets parents more aggressively. The MetLife website contains the following text in reference to its collaboration with Aura:

Aura’s AI provides parents a clearer picture of a child’s digital behaviors – without

compromising privacy. By analyzing language patterns, emotional language, and online

interactions across apps, platforms and websites, Aura’s intelligent technology detects

signs of stress, procrastination or mood shifts. It delivers easy-to-digest insights on

everything from late night activity to evolving social dynamics, helping parents guide

healthier digital habits (MetLife, n.d.)

The service claims to protect privacy, but the information it gathers is inherently invasive. Aura can even capture raw content from a child’s phone and deliver it to parents in the event of an immediate emergency (FAQs - How Does Aura Protect My Child’s Privacy, Aura, n.d.). But it is up to Aura to determine which information is serious enough to disregard privacy. To convince families to grant Aura that level of access to their children’s information, they first have to demonstrate that there are threats that need to be protected from. The news section of Aura’s website, includes featured headlines like “Aura Report: Kids Are Turning to AI Chatbots for Sex and Romance” and “Overconnected Kids: Digital Stress, Addiction-Like Behaviors & AI’s Powerful Grip Report” (Press, Aura, n.d.). With an emphasis on children’s online safety, Aura presents a convincing case for why it should get access to your most sensitive data, but it may not be as effective as it claims.

One of the main features advertised by Aura is their ‘Digital Parenthood Tools’. Some of

the main features are giving parents the ability to instantly shut off the internet from their child’s phone, getting a detailed report of screen time and app usage, and blocking any app or website of their choosing (Raise kids who thrive online and off, Aura, n.d.). While that sounds like robust control over a child’s online activity, many reviews claimed that a child can easily uninstall the app to disable the features. (Cross, n.d.) The parent will be notified of the deletion, but there will be a timeframe during which the phone will have no controls in place. The privacy policy also includes a clause stating that Aura “does not monitor for all content or your child’s behavior in real time. Alerts and insights may not be 100% accurate or timely”(Aura Parental Controls Privacy Notice: Aura - digital security. Aura, n.d.). Aura does not specify what about the insight may be incorrect, or if they notify you when a mistake occurs.

Effectiveness aside, there is a conversation to be had about what level of information and control a parent should have over their child’s device. Aura claims that its parental resources will not compromise a child’s privacy, but it also offers in-depth information about how children interact online (Aura Parental Controls Privacy Notice: Aura - digital security. Aura, n.d.). It knows the intimate details of children's conversations with AI chatbots, finding that 36% of conversations are sexual or romantic in nature (Press: Facts & figures. Press: Facts & Figures. Aura, n.d.). While this is a concerning statistic, it comes from Aura’s own clinical research team, which is incentivized to find harmful links between these services and children’s mental health.

Currently, parents can enroll their children in a research study in which they will use Aura’s parental control services for free and receive monetary compensation. The study,

sponsored by Aura, aims to research the connection between children’s digital habits and their emotional well-being. Through longer monthly surveys and shorter daily surveys, Aura will seek out connections between children’s online habits and their mental health (TECHWISE family Digital Mental Health Study by Aura, Aura, n.d.). Families will be compensated up to 300$ per child who completes the study, and up to 250$ for referring others who enroll (TECHWISE family Digital Mental Health Study by Aura, Aura, n.d.). Outside of the paid study, the privacy policy section on parental controls states that Aura is authorized to use any users' (and their children’s) data to improve its services and teach its machine learning algorithms (Aura Parental Controls Privacy Notice: Aura - digital security. Aura.n.d.). This use is completely uncompensated, even profitable for Aura, since the data comes from users who are paying for the services. Rather than simply being a ‘virtual halo’, Aura’s services offer many opportunities for the company to generate profit outside of the subscription fee. While some of Aura’s features are useful, Aura is far from the benevolent entity it claims to be. This use of emotional manipulation allows Aura to gain access to sensitive customer information and then use it to make an additional profit.

Aura Sub LLC and Surveillance Capitalism

There are many lenses through which Aura can be analysed, but the chapter ‘Free Labor’ by Tiziana Terranova is one of the most applicable. As a product, Aura is entirely relegated to the digital realm. There is no physical object included with a subscription, nor a guarantee that Aura will remain the same as when a user first signs up. Terranova describes a similar concept when describing websites.

The commodity does not disappear as such; it rather becomes increasingly ephemeral, its duration becomes compressed, and it becomes more of a process than a finished product. The role of continuous, creative, innovative labor as the ground of market value is crucial to the digital economy. The process of valorization (the production of monetary value) happens by foregrounding the quality of the labor that literally animates the commodity (Terranova, 2013, pp. 47).

The employees of Aura become the commodity as they create the quality of the service.

However, the user is also the commodity, as they provide the data that the employees utilise.

Aura does not foreground the labor as Terranova suggests. Aura tries to maintain the image of a sleek, almost magical service, but what customers are buying is actually the labor of the Aura employees and other customers' data. Terranova claims that there is “a new kind of

exploitation-that which concerns the immaterial commons of cultural and technical production. Such exploitation must be conceptualized differently than the one concerning waged work” (Terranova, 2013, pp. 53). In the case of Aura, the exploitation is hidden behind the very service the company provides. They discreetly use customers as research tools to create more evidence proving the internet is damaging to children’s mental health. This is not to say that there is no need for research in this area, rather that Aura has interests besides children’s wellbeing.

When customers use Aura, their data becomes company property, generating revenue as Aura continues to develop its services (Terranova, 2013). This framework means that the

company is incentivized to stir fear in potential customers to get them to subscribe and continue expanding its data collection efforts. This fear-mongering convinces parents to allow a corporation to know every keystroke of what their child is doing online. When the information is given to parents in the form of an anonymous text alert, the invasion of privacy feels less apparent. As stated previously, in some emergency circumstances the raw content of children’s text messages will be given to parents for immediate intervention (Aura Parental Controls Privacy Notice: Aura - digital security. Aura. n.d.). Aura can use the data collected from children in crisis to train their models, perform clinical research, and optimize its services (Aura Parental Controls Privacy Notice: Aura - digital security. Aura. n.d.). Labeled as a protector, Aura makes children being surveilled by their parents improve the service that is surveilling them.

The sanitized Aura interface hides the free labor beneath the surface. This concept is

described in relation to AI in Kate Crawford’s Atlas of AI. She writes:

We engage only with the facades that obscure their inner workings, designed to hide the

various combinations of machine and human labor in each interaction. We aren't

informed whether we are receiving a response from the system itself or from a human

operator paid to respond on its behalf (Crawford, 2020, pp. 68).

This kind of obscurity prevents customers from understanding how their data is collected,

analysed, and stored. The company’s explanation of how its services work is that Aura is

‘powered by AI’(Aura & AI, Aura, 2025). There is no other information about how their AI

works or how much human intervention is involved in their AI services. Customers have no way of knowing whether parental controls are managed by AI or a real person who can see everything a child is doing on their phone.

This sort of asymmetry of information, one in which the company knows everything and

the customer nothing, is a key feature of data relations (Couldry & Mejias, 2024). Data relations are defined as “relations between people and corporations or governments focused on entirely maximizing data extraction” (Couldry & Mejias, 2024, pp.71). By having the flow of information unbalanced so that customers are largely unaware of what corporations are doing with their information, there are less opportunities for customers to feel violated by what the corporation is doing. Aura uses it’s data relations with customers to personalize their user experience (Couldry & Mejias, 2024). By personalising the service to a customer’s needs, like specified features for family or business uses, customers are convinced that the app is telling them any information they may need to know (Couldry & Mejias, 2024). The all encompassing services that Aura advertises means that customers are likely not looking at secondary sources to confirm the information given to them by Aura. For example, Aura advertises a ‘safe-browsing’ service that gives ratings to websites based on the associated security risks. Hidden in the legal terms and conditions, though, Aura states that ratings are not endorsements and do not guarantee that the sites are trustworthy (Aura licsence and terms of service, Aura, n.d.). If a customer is told by Aura that a website has received a high rating, their trust in the service dissuades them from looking into other resources to confirm the rating. In this way, Aura’s data relations with its customers contributes to their exploitation through marketing and the abstraction of labor.

Conclusion

Considering Aura’s promise to keep its customers safe, there is no reason to believe that

the information it is giving users may be incorrect. The typical consumer is not reading the entire privacy policy and the terms and conditions to find caveats like the one found in the safe browsing section. Aura’s use of assuring language builds trust, while simultaniously brushing over how the service actually determines how threats are detected. The simple explanation of ‘powered by AI’ does little to de-mystify the process. This advertising tactic also aides in abstracting the labor that goes into making Aura function. By attributing their services to AI, the human component of making an AI model function is obscured.

The focus on children’s online safety creates the feeling that danger is imminent. Aura

claims that there are predators and scams hiding around every corner of the internet. By using parent’s protective instincts as a point of traction, Aura is undoubtedly using emotional

manipulation to reel in new customers. The more users Aura gets, the more data they have to analyze, and the more they can invest in new features to roll out. The cycle continues, making the company increasingly attractive for the number of services it offers. The modern day requires new kinds of privacy services, but Aura protects your privacy from others by taking all your information for itself.

Work Cited

Aura Sub LLC.pdf

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