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The internet is a dangerous place. If it seems like scammers, hackers, and spammers are lurking around every corner, that’s because they are. Malicious individuals are always looking to take advantage of as many people as they can target. Of course, in order for them to target you, first they need to find you.
In many cases, it all starts with a data broker or people search site. These companies exist solely to gather and sell your personal information to anyone willing to pay, and they are truly a blight on society. The info they sell can include your name, email addresses, phone numbers, physical mailing addresses for your home and office, and even your social security number. It’s a massive problem, but there’s a way for you to take charge and stop these awful data brokers in their tracks.
Why should you care if these companies have your info?
In most cases, data brokers find your info by searching public records. So, if this info is already available to the public, why should you care that they have it?
The answer to that question is simple. While it’s true that your personal information can be found in any number of public records, it’s also true that scammers, hackers, spammers, and other people with malicious intent don’t typically search for individual public records. That would take way too much time and effort. Instead, they go to a data broker and purchase contact info for hundreds or thousands of people at once. That lets them cast a much larger net when sending out spam or searching for targets to scam and hack.
If there are data brokers out there that have your personal info, that means it’s available for scammers and spammers to purchase. Of course, if you have your info deleted from data brokers’ databases, your exposure is dramatically limited.
How to delete your personal info from the web with Incogni
If you have nothing but time on your hands, you can absolutely have your info removed from data brokers and people search sites on your own. When you send removal requests, data brokers are required to comply with them.
Unfortunately, there’s a huge problem with trying to handle things on your own: It takes forever.
There are hundreds of data brokers and people search sites out there, and the odds are fairly good that many of them have your personal information for sale. Sadly, they also all have different requirements and procedures you must adhere to when making removal requests.
First, you’ll have to find each site where your personal data is available for sale. Then, you’ll need to dig through the site to find its unique removal request procedure. It’s often a multi-step process that involves proving you are who you claim to be, which takes time and effort. Then and only then will your personal data removal request be processed.
Here’s the kicker: after all that effort, the data broker only has to remove your personal information for a certain period of time. After a few years, your personal info will probably be made available for sale again on the very same websites you went through the trouble of having it removed from.
It doesn’t sound fair, and truth be told, it isn’t fair. Thankfully, however, there’s a much easier way to have your personal data automatically removed from data broker websites now and forever. If you use a service like Incogni, you can sit back and relax while everything happens in the background.
Here’s how it works: once you sign up for Incogni, you can provide up to three phone numbers, three email addresses, and three physical addresses. Incogni then scours the web and identifies sites that have your personal information for sale. Incogni monitors more than 200 different data brokers and people search sites. Imagine how long it would take for you to do that yourself.
Every time Incogni finds your info, it submits a removal request on your behalf. The service also provides a dashboard where you can see the status of each request, so you’ll know once your personal info has been removed.
Here’s my favorite part: remember before, when I mentioned that your info might pop up again on a data broker site even after it’s removed? Well, since Incogni constantly monitors all these data brokers and people search sites, this is no longer an issue. If your personal info appears again one year, two years, or even ten years after being removed, Incogni will submit another removal request for you as long as your account is still active.
How much does Incogni cost?
If you ask me, a service like Incogni is worth its weight in gold. Anything that protects you from potential scams, phishing, whaling, spam, unwanted marketing, and more is absolutely vital in this day and age. Thankfully, Incogni is very affordable when you consider how important the service is that it provides.
- Individual plan (monthly): $14.98
- Family & Friends plan (monthly): $32.98
- Individual plan (annual):
$179.76$89.88 ($7.49/mo) - Family & Friends plan (annual):
$395.76$197.88 ($16.49/mo)
The individual plan covers one person, as the name suggests. If you want to cover your entire household, you can take advantage of the Family & Friends plan that covers up to five people. That’s the Incogni plan that I personally chose, and I’ve been loving the service so far. Within a few weeks of when I first signed up, my family and I noticed a huge decrease in robocalls, spam mail, scam attempts, email spam, phishing, and more.
