Kanary Review

Kanary is one of several data removal services on the market. Founded by data analyst Rachel Vrabec, it advertises automated removals from data brokers, Google search results, and social media sites. We tried Kanary out for ourselves to get an inside look into how it works, how well it delivers on its promises, and how it stacks up against similar services. 

Below, we’ve compiled everything you need to know to help you decide if Kanary is the right data removal service for you.

Mariam Volobueva

Kanary overview

To get started, we looked at Kanary’s basic features, such as the number of data brokers the service covers, the plans you can choose from, and the price for a standard 1-year subscription. 

How Kanary works

Data broker coverage

According to the list of data brokers it’s “monitoring and removing member information from,” Kanary currently covers 310 data brokers. However, it only sends removal requests on your behalf for 209 of them and provides templates and opt-out guides for the remaining 101. 

Kanary makes the bold claim of achieving 95–100% removal success by day 46–90. This may sound pretty optimistic, but is likely true—this is how they seem to do it: 

Kanary provides useful information on the expected removal outcomes for each data broker. As of April 11, 2024, 77 of the data brokers listed are expected not to remove your data, 5 to only partially remove your data, and Kanary is still evaluating 16. They don’t send removal requests on your behalf to any data brokers that aren’t expected to comply with removal requests, but provide guides instead if you want to try it yourself.

It’s also worth noting that most of the data brokers Kanary covers, whether they send requests on your behalf or provide you with guides, are people search sites. These are websites with public databases containing personal records that are available for a small price or for free. However, there only appear to be a handful of other data broker types—marketing data brokers being the second most common after people search sites, and a couple of recruitment data brokers.  

It’s worth noting that, aside from data brokers, Kanary also claims to remove information from Google’s search results and some social media. It appears that this part of their service requires your active participation, which might somewhat defeat the purpose of a data removal service for many users. It’s also likely that removal from Google search results is a byproduct of removal from people search sites. Once your records are taken off people search sites, the information should no longer come up in the search results. 

Price and value

Kanary offers both monthly and annual subscriptions so you don’t have to make a long-term commitment right off the bat. You can even try their 14-day free trial, which includes 3 automated removals.

They also offer a pretty fair family plan with a set price for each person you include in the package. You can add up to 10 family members, which is more seats than most data removal companies provide. If you have a very large family, Kanary might be worth considering just for this. 

Finally, they offer an enterprise plan for companies that want to protect their employees’ personal information. 

You can view the prices for each of these plans in the table below:

While Kanary does offer plenty of options, the prices aren’t as attractive. A yearly subscription for an individual works out to $179.88. If you’d rather pay monthly, it reaches a steep $203.88 a year. If you go for the family plan, however, it’s much more affordable. 

Privacy and security 

When it comes to their privacy and security, it’s a bit hit-and-miss. Kanary has a dedicated page where they briefly explain, in plain English, how they handle and protect your data. They do say “We only store the information we need to complete removals. Once you decide you no longer need Kanary, we delete all of your information.” However, they don’t actually have an in-depth privacy policy and terms of service that explain what exactly they do with your data or outline your rights as a user. 

This raises some flags for us. Although they claim to never sell your personal information, there seems to be no real legal backing to the statement. They appear to contradict this statement on the same page, stating that they “occasionally share the aggregated statistics about site responsiveness with privacy researchers, advocates, and regulators.” Although it’s implied that they only share this data for benign purposes, there are too many potential loopholes for our comfort. 

Transparency 

Transparency is another area in which Kanary seems to excel. You can visit their “how it works” page for a pretty thorough breakdown of what to expect from the service, along with the timeline. Although there’s no “real” privacy policy, their “privacy and security” page also seems to be written to make it as clear and understandable for the average reader as possible. 

On a refreshing note, the team behind Kanary appears to be very involved and accessible. They’re active on Reddit, with the founder sometimes replying directly to people’s questions there. You can even book a meeting with the CEO if you want. 

All that being said, the lack of a substantial privacy policy really detracts from Kanary’s overall transparency. 

Kanary pros and cons 

Kanary vs Optery

Kanary costs more than Optery, but covers more categories of data brokers. Kanary is priced at $14.99 per month and covers over 300 data brokers across three categories. Optery starts at $3.25 but with a service limited to 100 data brokers in one category.

Kanary vs Onerep

OneRep is more pocket-friendly compared to Kanary. OneRep starts at $8.33 per month, while Kanary costs $14.99. Both OneRep and Kanary offer family plans, with OneRep allowing up to 6 users on one subscription and Kanary up to 11 (with each user coming at an additional cost).

Kanary vs Deleteme

Kanary is pricier than DeleteMe. A monthly subscription to Kanary costs $14.99, while DeleteMe is priced at $10.75. Both services offer family plans—Kanary allows up to 11 users (each at an extra cost), while DeleteMe allows up to 4 users (all included in the price).

Final verdict on Kanary

Although not without its flaws, Kanary seems to provide a pretty solid data removal service. They provide robust, if narrow, data broker coverage, removing your personal information from 209 people search sites. You can also select from a variety of subscription plans, although the prices for the individual plans run a little on the expensive side. 

However, there are two main issues you should consider: the lack of a substantial privacy policy and the lack of a legal document allowing them to advocate on your behalf. The latter simply limits their ability to push data brokers to remove your data, but the former could be risky. 

Kanary FAQ