How do you protect your online privacy? Do you know that some companies scrape your information, and then sell it to businesses for profit? How about the rise of stalkers and scammers, online? Have you ever been afraid of what companies know about you, paranoid, and feeling unsafe in your own home?
For better or worse, technology has changed our lives forever. It has created more and more ways of connection and communication, but also, it has given ways to some people with malicious intentions to find ways to evade your privacy. This is where data removers come in.
You’ll learn more about data removers in today’s post and how you can protect your online privacy more.
What is a Data Removal Service?
In quick terms, these are services you can subscribe to in order to make sure your private information that has been collected and made available online can be erased. It helps to search for your information in databases that are sold to companies and remove your information from them. It helps to protect your privacy and to make sure that no one has access to your data online.
Why a Data Removal Software is Essential
First, let’s try to understand data brokers. Data brokers are mainly what data removal services protect you from.
Data brokers are businesses that aggregate or collect information about people on various sites, put it together, and organize it to resell it to companies that can use this information for sales, marketing, and other purposes.
There are also the data miners, people who are techy but with more malicious intent who are maybe collecting this data online, to be later used illegally, or without your permission.
Data about you can be used to recreate stolen identities, like creating social media profiles and using your information the wrong way.
This is why we look at data removal services.
A good data removal service will help you from:
Potential Scams
Scammers often target victims using personal details such as income levels, health conditions, religious or political beliefs, and even the names of relatives and acquaintances – making data broker sites heaven for these criminals.
Identity Theft
Cybercriminals need details like your name, DOB, and SSN to steal your identity. Most data brokers collect many, if not all, of the data points these criminals are after.
Increased Costs
Financial and risk assessment data brokers sell details such as browsing history and credit scores to insurance companies, banks, and other institutions. This can lead to increased insurance rates and loan denials, among other financial repercussions.
Let’s look at some of the top data removal services available on the internet today. By the end of this post, we hope you can make the best decision on which of these data removal services is best for your needs.
1. INCOGNI – Protecting your Online Privacy
Incogni’s Top Features
Incogni is a data removal service, from the creators of the highly respected online security tool, Surfshark. VPNs help mask your internet connection online so no one can know what you’re doing and helps you to avoid being tracked online. Incogni is an addition to these top security measures you can use online to protect your privacy even more.
Key Features:
- Incogni covers all types of data brokers while other services usually only cover 1 type
- Incogni is a subscription service, that can be canceled at any time
- Incogni removes information from hundreds of data brokers
- Incogni helps to get rid of spam email
- Incogni covers the US, EU, Canada, UK, and Switzerland markets
- Incogni even has a 30-day money-back guarantee if you’re testing it for the first time
What we love about Incogni Personal Data Removal Service
Incogni is the best service available for our readership because Comparitech has a worldwide audience. Rather than just recommending a service that works well for one country, such as the USA, we found this data removal service that has a wider international reach than its rivals. This service is run by a team based in the Netherlands with multilingual capabilities, so it is able to serve customers in many countries.
Incogni, apart from being developed by the team from Surfshark is proven to have a huge network of data brokers that they can easily reach to make sure your information gets removed from them. It has a great international reach and works in various countries and continents – US, UK, Canada, and Europe.
Pricing-wise, at $5.79/month, it is very competitive and almost a no-brainer with the 30-day money-back guarantee. The service is proven as well as it helps you cut down on time and effort connecting and contacting websites and databases that use your information. With their automated systems and wide reach worldwide, this job can be done much more efficiently for you, with a high success rate.
How does Incogni work?
Incogni makes a list of data brokers likely to have each customer’s information and sends removal requests to those companies. They also follow up on rejected requests and regularly re-do the opt-out process to make sure the customer’s data stays off the market.
Incogni, with its wide list of data brokers, starts to send messages to these companies immediately when your subscription begins. A proper follow-up is done as well, to make sure that your information really gets cleaned from these data broker sites.
Pricing – How much is Incogni’s Data Removal
Incogni costs $5.79/month for an annual payment or pay monthly for $11.49/month
Annual payment gives you 50% off – A big steal!
Pros and Cons of Incogni
Incogni Pros
Fully automated
From follow-up emails that demand even more data to complicated forms, data brokers often make you jump through hoops to get your personal information off their databases. Incogni automates all this process for you – the entire process is automated and makes removing your data off the market effortless
Significant time saver
It would take the average person 304 hours to manually complete all the individual data removal requests needed to secure their privacy. Incogni does this automatically, plus sends regular, repeated removal requests, saving you even more time on top!
Covers all broker types
Incogni doesn’t only remove your data from certain kinds of data brokers. Risk mitigation, recruitment, people search, financial information, and marketing data brokers – Incogni removes your personal information from them all.
Currently available for US, UK, Canada, Switzerland, EU Residents
Incogni Cons
The only CON we see is that currently Incogni is limited to a few countries/continents but they are continuously working out on expanding their service, which is good news!
2. PRIVACY BEE
Next to Incogni, we recommend you look at Privacybee, another legitimate data removal software. It also has a wide network of data brokers they can reach immediately once you get a package with them.
Key Features of PrivacyBee:
- Privacybee removes people’s search entries
- Privacybeen regularly re-checks
- Privacybee works with 200 data brokers
- Privacybee also has a global coverage
Why Privacybee is good:
Helping remove your private information from 200 data broker databases is amazing and definitely a wide reach.
Privacy Bee removes you from people search sites – one of the easiest ways data brokers get your information online. This is good news because people search sites can easily be leveraged by anyone willing to pay to find out information about you – whether for stalking or to acquire data useful for phishing or identity theft.
Pros of Privacy Bee:
- – 24/7 vulnerability tracking
- – mass opt-out and marketing exclusion
- – Works with more data brokers that the other options in this list
- – Tracker blocker
- – Vulnerability scanner
- – Security breach advice
Cons of Privacy Bee:
- Pricing can set you behind at $197 for a yearly subscription.
3. DeleteMe – Online Privacy Software
DeleteMe is last on our list. Deleteme Data Removal is connected to 38 well-known US data brokers and people finder sites. This is less than Privacybee, but nevertheless, works well to give you results.
Key Features of Deleteme:
– Deleteme works with US data brokers
– Deleteme Discounts for multi-user accounts
– Deleteme Rescans every three months
What we like about Deleteme?
Deleteme is a big value for money for those located in the US. Your privacy is protected and your private information is removed from US Data brokers.
Pros of Deleteme
- Repeated checks to remove you from data brokers
- Removes search engine entries
- On-call privacy advisors
Cons of Deleteme
- Deleteme only operates in the USA, and with prices more expensive than Incogni.
Deleteme Pricing
A yearly subscription costs $129 for a single user, with discounts provided to consumers who opt for a multi-user plan. This is pretty expensive compared to Incogni, which is the biggest con.
Anybody who signs up for DeleteMe will receive an initial removal report after seven days. Following that the service will remove your data from data broker databases four times in total.
Why is online privacy important?
Invasion of your privacy and improper collection and use of information about you can be used and exploited in different ways. Apart from marketing purposes, people and businesses who have malicious intentions can use your private information to create fake profiles or even affect your eligibility for loans, jobs, and insurance. Scams and phishing are just some of the ways your information can be used in wrong and hurtful ways to your and your reputation and you have the right and responsibility to protect your online privacy.
Like the popular adage, there are two sides to every coin, sadly this is the part where technology fails us. This is why data removers become very essential.
How to Protect your Online Privacy
It can be very hard to live without social media and putting your information out there. Nowadays, most communications in our daily lives are done over the internet. You can build friendships, be a part of important initiatives, advance your career, and network online.
This is where personal data removal services like Incogni come in. A trusted service that will handle contacting data brokers, following them up, and making sure your information gets erased and you get opted out from these data collection services gets you really far when it comes to protecting your privacy online.
Final Thoughts on Online Privacy and Protecting Yourself
Protecting your online privacy is nothing to joke about. It’s a big need as the times get more and more advanced and as our lives and private information get easily exposed online with various risks for you. Ways to genuinely protect yourself are available online, so make sure to take the first steps.