Just how much personal information do you give out to unknown sources on the internet?
No matter how careful we are, at some point, we voluntarily give websites access to our personal data in our daily browsing endeavors.
A simple act of scrolling past the “terms of service” and going straight to clicking “agree” could give away your email and other personal data to money-making chits. According to McAfee, there are over 4,000 active data brokers spread across the internet.
Data brokers are companies that sell your personal information. Their main business model is focused on collecting your data and selling it at a profit. Data brokering is a big industry, estimated to be worth about $200 billion.
Data brokers obtain your information through your browsing history, public sources, and commercial sources, such as your purchase history and through your consent.
The brokers’ information includes your name, address, DOB, gender, marital status, occupation, education, and phone number.
Luckily, data deletion services such as Incogni and DeleteMe can help you remove your information from various databases. Even though these platforms cover only a fraction of data brokers, they come in quite handy.
We’ll talk about the two platforms at length today. Let’s get started.
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Brief Overview of Incogni and DeleteMe
Incogni
As mentioned earlier, data brokers are always out to collect your personal data for profit and at the expense of your privacy.
For this reason, platforms such as Incogni are on a mission to help take back control of your data privacy and prevent companies from exploiting your personal information.
Surfshark, known for VPN services, founded Incogni as a distinct product to help internet users and businesses take charge of their sensitive data.
Incogni provides improved data protection against hackers and cyber attacks such as identity theft and phishing, invasion of privacy, and shadow profiles that use your online activities to influence your behavior or worldviews, such as political affiliation.
The internet is littered with your information. Every time you accept cookies on the sites you visit, you voluntarily permit data brokers to mine and potentially sell your name, address, or phone number to third parties.
Identity thieves and scammers are also interested in such information. Fortunately, data privacy platforms like Incogni can request data removal from brokers on your behalf. Incogni enables you to flush all your personal information while enforcing existing data privacy laws.
Incogni is a simple tool to use. But it’s essential to note that while the tool does not store most of your data, it takes your name and email address as it focuses on contacting data brokers on your behalf.
On your first day on the platform, you are only required to sign up and pay for a subscription. Incogni then sends your data requests to their listed data brokers, requesting the removal of data.
Data brokers start responding within the first week of sending out data removal requests. Incogni uses CCPA, GDPR, and other laws to compel brokers to take action. Most data removal requests are processed within two months.
Incogni continues to follow up on other brokers who would not have responded within two months to make sure that they remove all requested data. It is a legitimate platform that also works with consumer protection agencies to protect you as a customer.
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DeleteMe
Next time you find your name appearing in Google search results, know that at some point, data brokers posted your personal information online. DeleteMe is a free subscription service that removes your information from data broker sites.
With DeleteMe, you can remove personal data, including name, address, phone number, age, email address, and photos of your home. DeleteMe has a more comprehensive suite of features than most platforms, although the price tag is relatively higher.
Rob Shavel and Eugene Kuznetsov founded DeleteMe in 2010 after experiencing difficulties in navigating privacy issues in a contemporary, interconnected digital world. DeleteMe is based in Somerville, Massachusetts.
DeleteMe contacts data brokers or people search websites to ask them to delete your personal information on your behalf. The whole process is automated. Your job is to fill in a form and leave the rest to DeleteMe.
DeleteMe shares its first report within seven days, plus subsequent follow-up reports every 90 days, as it continues to scan for your information periodically.
The process starts with the submission of information you wish DeleteMe should help you remove from broker sites. DeleteMe experts then go on to search for the information, and you should receive a detailed report on what has been removed and what is yet to be in seven days.
The DeleteMe report includes a statement on how the platform works, the number of sites reviewed, the amount of data removed, a data broker with the most information about you, employer-provided protection, and the amount of time that DeleteMe saved you if you were to do it yourself.
It’s essential to understand that DeleteMe does not remove data from public records provided by the state, local, or federal government.
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Incogni vs DeleteMe – Features and Differences
Data broker coverage
When Incogni was launched in 2021, it primarily focused on the largest data brokers that kept people’s private information.
The data broker list was not huge, but as Incogni grew, they upped their broker coverage up to 170, including some of the biggest people search tools on the internet.
The number keeps growing, with new brokers constantly added as the tool improves.
Some of the top data brokers that Incogni covers include marketing data brokers, recruitment data brokers, risk mitigation brokers, financial information data brokers, health information brokers, and people search sites.
Incogni calculates data sensitivity depending on the type of data broker that collected the information. For instance, data brokers that collect ID numbers have a higher sensitivity percentage than brokers that only collect names and phone numbers.
On the other hand, DeleteMe can send data deletion requests to dozens of US-based data brokers.
The number of broker coverage is relatively higher than Incogni. The platform has been around since 2010 and is no stranger to hundreds of data broker sites.
Its data broker coverage stands at 750, although it may fluctuate due to inconsistencies in the number of brokers getting in and out of business.
DeleteMe covers all leading data brokers and people search websites, including 123people.com, mylife.com, Spokeo, US Search, White Pages, and PeopleFinder.com.
Data brokers operate from selected states. For this reason, DeleteMe might not automatically scan all of them. Before conducting a scan, go through the list of brokers in your area, then select the custom opt-out option via DeleteMe support.
User interface and dashboards
The Incogni user interface is minimalistic. The process of setting up an account is easy, as all you need is to sign up with an email and a password. You are required to fill out an authorization form to grant Incogni the right to request data from brokers on your behalf.
Once done with the form, the tool also requires you to provide more information to help identify the records that belong to you. The platform then presents you with a list of data brokers on their portfolio, ready to be contacted.
Once you confirm all the information, Incogni redirects you to a dashboard that displays the current status of your data. The dashboard is simple and self-explanatory, so you will easily navigate through it.
Since everything is automated, there is little to do on the Incogni dashboard. The dashboard displays statistics on how many sites Incogni contacted to remove your information and how many actually completed that request. You’ll also find a list of helpful FAQs on the dashboard.
Unlike DeleteMe, Incogni will not send you reports through email, but you can log in anytime to see the progress of the data removal process.
On the other hand, DeleteMe is a hands-free subscription service that removes your info from data brokers. Its friendly user interface promises a smooth experience, whether using its web portal or app.
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Once you pick a subscription plan and submit payment, you can enter your personal details that DeleteMe will ask you to submit. The tool uses this information to identify data items from data brokers, although some data entry steps are optional.
Through the sign-up screen, DeleteMe continues to ask you a series of straightforward questions to uncover all essential information that could be held by brokers.
You may find some questions strange or feel like they don’t apply to you, but that’s how thorough the platform is.
DeleteMe will not retrieve any personal information that you do not permit. Like Incogni, the data removal process is automatic, although DeleteMe is more thorough than Incogni.
The DeleteMe dashboard is more detailed than Incogni’s. DeleteMe’s dashboard uses graphics, reports, and statistics to present information about its attempt to remove your personal information from broker sites.
The dashboard includes your most recent report, subscription details, the number of data brokers checked, the number of records the platform reviewed for you, the actual number of brokers who have your information, and a chat comparing the data that DeleteMe found.
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Customer support
Incogni’s customer support is more of a help-yourself service. Incogni features a comprehensive information center that provides answers to multiple common questions.
You can easily search these queries to help solve the problem at hand.
Within the Incogni interface, there are helpful resources, including links to instructions on what you need to do when you get an email from a data broker.
However, if you need additional help, you can fill out a submission form on the website, which generates email support. Incogni does not offer an option to cancel a subscription directly from the website.
Therefore, if canceling a subscription is the help you are looking for, you can reach out to the Incogni team via support@incogni.com.
DeleteMe customer support is more robust than Incogni. DeleteMe has a dedicated support team that can be reached Monday to Friday between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. EST. It also offers 24/7 email support via support@joindeleteme.com.
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DeleteMe also has a live chat support option that is helpful during office hours. The best part is that you can also reach out to its responsive customer support team on the phone.
Geographical availability
Incogni claims to have the wildest geographical coverage. It is available in 50 states in the USA, Canada, the UK, Norway, the Isle of Man, Iceland, and Liechtenstein. The European Union is included too.
Incogni may not help everyone, regardless of their location, as it is only authorized to legally remove data on behalf of users covered by UK, GDPR, CCPA, PIPEDA, or similar laws. However, Incogni continually advocates for broader privacy laws and adds more locations.
DeleteMe considers itself the number one Privacy Information Removal service It started in the USA in 2010 but has since expanded to cover other countries.
DeleteMe now serves Belgium, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Singapore, Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands.
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Incogni vs DeleteMe – Pricing Comparison
Incogni pricing
Incogni features annual and monthly subscription plans available for USA, Canada, European Union, Switzerland, Norway, United Kingdom, Iceland, and Liechtenstein residents.
You can save up to 50% with its annual plan, while its monthly plan goes for $12.99. You can cancel any plan at any time. Incogni also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee in case you are not satisfied.
Incogni’s payment modes are encrypted and secure. An annual subscription allows Incogni to remove data from brokers continually.
DeleteMe pricing
DeleteMe offers various plans for individuals, families, or businesses. All plans guarantee effective data removal from the top broker sites and put you in charge of your information all year round.
A standard plan that serves one person goes for $10.75 per month; a plan for two people will cost you $19.08, while a package for a family will cost you $27.42 per month.
You can contact the DeleteMe team for custom rates If you wish to remove your data from brokers for the business.
A standard DeleteMe subscription can help you remove sensitive information from more than 30 data brokers. However, you save more when you choose multi-person and family plans.
The best part of the multi-person plan is that you are not restricted by the number of people you can add to the plan.
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Incogni vs DeleteMe – User Experiences
DeleteMe is ahead of Incogni in terms of the effectiveness of data removal. While Ignito is cheaper, it does not collect anything beyond personal information. Additionally, they may send requests that may or may not be available to the data brokers in question.
DeleteMe is about $50 more than Incogni. It feels more like a premium service but offers a more hands-on experience than Incogni. DeleteMe offers more comprehensive results and equally requires more personal information before searching for your data.
Incogni is ahead of DeleteMe in terms of ease of use. Incogni is easy to set up, with a neatly organized dashboard and responsive customer support. Incogni also does not require much of your personal information to remove data from data brokers on your behalf.
But that does not make DeleteMe more complicated. It is easy to set up and use DeleteMe, and the process of submitting personal information is straightforward.
Remember, DeleteMe does everything for you, so you don’t have to worry about how you’ll delete all the information you submitted.
Customer satisfaction is one of the greatest differentiators of various tools and software. DeleteMe and Incogni stand out to be the most preferred data privacy management services that help users protect their personal information and stay safe online.
DeleteMe shares on its website that it has removed over 100 million data from broker sites. The site is also filled with testimonials from happy customers who hail the tool’s excellent and trustworthy services.
Incogni also has excellent ratings on various feedback forums. The platform is becoming more popular each day, and some users prefer it for its fair rates and its 30-day money-back guarantee policy.
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Conclusion
That’s it for today.
I hope this review helps you make an informed decision on what tool to help you remove essential information from stubborn data brokers. You realize that both tools have an excellent reputation among users.
Both Incogni and DeleteMe comply with the necessary rules and regulations. Hence, they are legitimate choices.
The two will assist you in submitting formal data removal requests from data brokers operating within the EU and using the GDPR to secure your personal information.
The platforms have succeeded in visibility. Their systems have dashboards where you can easily log into your account or track the progress of your data removal process. However, DeleteMe’s dashboard is more expensive-looking as it has additional features.
Besides the above similarities plus more available, the two also have multiple characteristics that set them apart from each other. If you are looking for a data privacy management tool that has been in business for a long time, then DeleteMe is a clear winner for this category.
DeleteMe is only available in the US so it might not be an excellent option for anyone who wishes to access it outside the US. In contrast, Incogni is available in the US, UK, and Europe, meaning you can still use it at home and abroad.
