The best data broker removal services

Updated on: May 23, 2024

If you’re reading this, you’re probably well aware of how your personal information is collected and used online.

Odds are, you’ve also experienced firsthand how time-consuming and tedious removing it yourself can be. Fortunately, there are companies that remove information from sites on behalf of the user. These services can save you a lot of time and work in the background to protect your privacy. However, not all of them operate the same way and some work a little better than others. 

Down below, we list our top 5 picks for the best personal data deletion services available on the market today.

Here are the top 5 companies with the best data removal services:

• Incogni: great value at $0.04 per data broker and the widest range of brokers.
• Kanary: good value but does not offer weekly progress reports.
• OneRep: offers only people search site (PSS) removal. Does not offer a 30-day, money-back guarantee.
• DeleteMe: offers only PSS removal. The priciest option.
• Optery: mainly PSS removal. Few scans per year (once every 90 days).

If you’re looking for an affordable and effective solution, each one on this list is a viable option.

The table below covers the basic, individual plans for data broker removal only.

The best data removal services

* We calculated the value based on the cheapest monthly price divided by the number of data brokers covered to help you compare the offering. Please note that your data may not be removed from every broker covered by the removal service as some may not have your data.

**Types of data brokers covered:

• Incogni: Marketing, Recruitment, Risk mitigation, People search.
• Kanary: People search, Marketing, Financial, Recruitment
• Onerep: People search
• DeleteMe: People search
• Optery: People search, Marketing

Incogni

Incogni is a comprehensive data removal service that covers a wide range of data brokers (PSS, marketing, recruitment, and risk mitigation) and offers flexible billing plans at an affordable price with a 30-day money-back guarantee. With an Incogni account, you get access to a dashboard to track your online information removal progress and weekly progress reports to keep you updated. Records are monitored monthly. 

By default, Incogni will send data removal requests to all the data brokers in their network for all their customers (there are no tiers). Moreover, this approach allows them to collect only the bare minimum of information about their subscribers as scanning online databases for records before making a request requires the collection of more personal information.

Kanary

Kanary is a data protection service that sends opt-out requests within 24 hours after sign-up, followed by monthly online privacy scans. The information on their search results is very transparent and clear, including the list of “harmful sites” and whether deletion requests will be sent automatically or require your approval (which is the case for social media sites).

Kanary’s basic plan is the most expensive among the data removal services listed in this article. It’s $14.99 per month billed yearly and will remove your information automatically from around 210 data brokers (out of the 327 sites it tracks). An extra person can be added to the plan for $7.49/mo. There’s a 30-day money-back guarantee, and you can also test it for free for 14 days (no credit card required), during which Kanary will perform up to 3 free data removals.

Kanary vs Incogni

In short: Kanary is more than twice as expensive as Incogni on a basic plan. With similar numbers of data brokers covered, Incogni represents almost twice the per-broker value. Both Incogni and Kanary cover 4 out of 5 data-broker types, setting them apart from the pack. Incogni ultimately wins out on value.

While Kanary currently covers more data brokers, the majority of these are people search sites, with only a handful of other broker types. Incogni covers all the biggest people search sites but also removes your information from other data broker types, offering you protection from a wider range of threats—a bigger umbrella, so to speak. 

With Kanary, you’ll have some protection from:

• Spam 
• Robocalls
• Scams
• Identity theft. 

You’ll have little to no protection from:

• Increased insurance rates
• Targeted advertising
• Loss of job opportunities
• Difficulty securing housing.

Another major difference between the two services comes down to documentation. Kanary lacks an in-depth privacy policy and a document granting them the right to demand data brokers remove your data. Incogni has both of those vital documents. Our privacy policy covers all of the details regarding how we handle data (TL;DR: we only use it to provide the service) and our authorization form allows us to deal with non-compliant data brokers with the full force of the law when push comes to shove. 

OneRep

One of the main strengths of OneRep is the feature that allows you to submit unlimited aliases, addresses, and phone numbers so long as they pertain to the same person. However, the major downside is that they’ll remove personal info from people search search sites only. They do not remove your digital footprint from marketing, financial, risk mitigation, or recruitment companies.

OneRep will run a free scan and offers a 5-day trial to encourage you to sign up, but it’s also the only data removal service listed here that does not offer a 30-day money-back guarantee. Their basic subscription is $8.33 (billed yearly) and covers 199 data brokers (people search sites only). After the initial scan, it performs monthly privacy scans and sends monthly reports.

OneRep vs Incogni

In short: Incogni is more affordable at $6.49 per month vs OneRep’s $8.33. Unlike Incogni, OneRep offers family and team plans at an additional cost. Incogni covers 169 data brokers across 4 categories (including people search sites) while OneRep covers only 193 people search sites.

Both OneRep and Incogni are online data removal services that rely on automatic opt-out processes to scan for and remove sensitive personal information from websites and data brokers’ databases. Both also offer yearly and monthly billing cycles, with the annual plan being the more affordable option long-term.

Compared to Incogni, OneRep has a longer list of data brokers (199 vs 159) but covers only people search sites and no other types of data brokers. Incogni also opts their customers out from marketing and recruitment data brokers, who often don’t have searchable sites or an official opt-out procedure. Moreover, Incogni’s subscription is cheaper than even OneRep’s most affordable plan. That said, the OneRep family plan is generous and reasonably priced, while Incogni’s family plan isn’t available yet (it’ll be released shortly).

Both companies monitor records monthly, but Incogni sends reports weekly rather than monthly. Incogni offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, while OneRep offers a five-day free trial (credit card details must be provided) and can return the money on request, but there is no guarantee.

Most importantly, OneRep has been accused of sharing data with people search sites (the CEO also owns a data broker business), and people’s trust in it has been eroded. Following the accusations, Mozilla ended its partnership with OneRep (OneRep was to deliver its new web-wiping service).

* We calculated the value based on the cheapest monthly price divided by the number of data brokers covered. Not every broker listed by OneRep will necessarily hold your data. This value metric comes out to $0.04/broker on the Individual plan.

DeleteMe

DeleteMe lists an impressive +750 data brokers. However, a quick look at the domains listed on their page reveals that most of them are duplicated (ex., Peopleswiz.com, peoplewhiz.com, peoplewhiz.net, peopleswhizr.com, etc.), and the overwhelming majority is not included in the basic plan but requires custom removal requests. Ultimately, the number of data brokers in their basic plan is around 75. 

With this number of data brokers and the low frequency of their scans and reports, the price tag looks disproportionately high compared to other data deletion services. In fact, it scores the lowest on our value metric. As there’s no monthly billing cycle, you’ll have to pay a year in advance, and a full refund is only possible before your first data privacy report is sent.

DeleteMe vs Incogni

Incogni is more affordable, at $6.49 per month, compared to DeleteMe at $10.75. However, DeleteMe has plans for two users (at an extra cost). DeleteMe removes data from 75 people search websites, vs the 203 data brokers, including people search sites, covered by Incogni.  See the full DeleteMe review here.

The quality and value of a personal information removal service can be assessed based on several factors:

Optery

Optery is a personal data deletion service that provides a free scan of your online footprint before you commit to their services. However, that’s only because most of their data brokers are people search sites that make such scans possible. Marketing and other data brokers don’t have publicly accessible databases.  

Optery’s basic plan gives access to 110 data brokers and monthly monitoring. Optery offers good value for money, a transparent privacy policy, and a friendly website. However, compared to other data removal services, it has a relatively reduced reach (almost exclusively people search sites), and no reports are sent as part of its basic plan. It’s a steep $14.99 for the extended plan, which buys 200+ data brokers and quarterly reports. A 30-day money-back guarantee covers all plans.

Optery VS Incogni

In short: Incogni and Optery are fairly evenly matched in price, with Incogni costing slightly more than Optery but offering an almost identical cost per data broker covered. On the basic plan, Incogni covers more data brokers than Optery. More importantly, Incogni covers a much wider range of data brokers.

The differences between Optery and Incogni come into sharper relief once you take a closer look at the lists of data brokers that these data removal services cover. Optery focuses almost exclusively on people search sites, while Incogni has a mix of broker types. This leads to other differences between the two services.

Optery, for example, sends its customers exposure reports as well as before and after screenshots for successful removals. This is only possible with people search sites (other data brokers don’t make their profiles discoverable or searchable online), so Incogni—with its more varied data broker list—can’t do this.

Questions to ask when choosing a data removal service provider

1) How many data broker sites does the company cover?

There are thousands of data brokers around the world. These companies are responsible for collecting and distributing your personal information far and wide on the internet, jeopardizing both your privacy and security.

Before you panic! Not all of these companies have your data. But, for the average internet user, there will be dozens or hundreds that do.

If you want to remove your personal information from the internet, you’ll have to opt out from as many data brokers as possible.

2) What types of data brokers does the company cover?

Numbers alone aren’t everything, however. For one thing, many of these data brokers form networks. Removing your data from one may automatically remove your data from many others.

Equally important to the volume are the types of data broker sites the removal service covers. Most focus only on people search sites. While you definitely do want to remove your data from these brokers, they aren’t the worst out there.

Here are the 5 data broker types and how they can affect your life:

• People search sites provide access to private data like your phone numbers, home address, marital status, family members, and social media accounts to total strangers on the internet. This can lead to instances of discrimination, online harassment, and fraud.
• Marketing data brokers collect private information such as your email accounts, political affiliations, search history, websites you visit, past purchases, and online accounts and sell them to marketing companies. They’re responsible for spam, robocalls, and the targeted ads you see online.
• Financial data brokers have some of the most sensitive information such as your Social Security number, assets, banks you use, and more. Having this type of personal information online puts you at high risk of fraud and identity theft.
• Recruitment data brokers compile personal profiles that include background information such as employment history, education history, and business contacts. Recruiters can use this information to process your applications.
• Risk mitigation brokers sell financial and health information to investors, financial institutions, and insurance companies. This data can affect your insurance rates and ability to get approved for credit cards and loans.

In the wrong hands, any of the personal information these data aggregators deal in can expose you to serious threats such as online phishing, scams, doxxing, identity fraud, and even bodily harm. 

And while you may think this only happens as a result of data breaches (which are common), some data brokers have been known to intentionally sell your personal information to scammers.

3) What is the data removal service cost vs value?

At a glance, many of the companies offering to remove your personal information from the internet may appear to be reasonably priced. However, what might not be immediately clear is the value of their service.

An easy way to assess this is to compare the monthly cost to the number of data broker websites the company deals with. At the same price point, a company dealing with 100 data brokers offers more value than one that deals with 30.

4) Does the company provide an automated data removal service?

All it takes is a single click for your personal information to end up on data broker databases. Yet removing that information is a time-consuming process.

Researchers at Incogni have estimated that it can take hundreds of hours to send out data removal requests manually, just once.

The main point of a data removal service is to manage the entire data removal process on your behalf and save you time. This is why the best data removal services have a fully automated process. Ideally, you should be able to sit back and trust the company to remove your personal data with little to no involvement from your side.

5) What does the company do after sending out data removal requests?

The two biggest issues with data removal are that personal data is re-added to broker databases semi-regularly and many data brokers reject removal requests.

While some opt-out services just send out removal requests and call it a day, a good service will follow up. Similarly, the sites that had and deleted your personal information should be monitored regularly to ensure the records don’t respawn over time.

FAQ