If you leave your data floating around on the web, you could fall victim to identity theft or serious privacy infringements. But removing all your data manually can take hours, if not days. That’s where a good data removal service comes in. These are your five best options:
- DeleteMe: the best data removal service overall
- Incogni: the best data removal service for bargain hunters
- Onerep: a transparent data removal service
- Kanary: remove personal information from the internet continuously
- PrivacyBee: a very comprehensive data removal service
Of the above, DeleteMe is your best best. The service will delete your data from 580+ data brokers and update you with quarterly reports to make sure websites aren’t reacquiring your data.
Check out the complete article below to learn all about the best data removal services.
The amount of data we willingly and unwillingly hand over is astounding: anything from our name, email, address, SSN, birth date, and much more, is circulating on the web. In case of a data breach or irresponsible/malicious use, our data can easily fall into the wrong hands.
Fortunately, you can easily take back control of your data by using the best data removal services available for you. In this article, I’ll discuss the five best data removal services on the market.
Short on time? Get straight to work, or rather, straight to delegating your data removal to DeleteMe. The latter is the best personal information removal service, according to my research. It will contact 580+ data broker sites on your behalf to have your data removed.
The Five Best Data Removal Services
Below, we’ll discuss the five best companies to remove personal information from the internet. These services will clear your data from the web without any issues and without any intervention or effort from you.
1. DeleteMe: The best data removal service
Pros
- 580+ data brokers
- Available in 12 countries worldwide
- Quarterly data reports
Cons
- Not the cheapest option – although it offers great value
DeleteMe is, according to my research, the best company to remove personal information from the internet. Its outstanding database of 580+ data brokers is unmatched by many other removal services.
DeleteMe will request the following types of information to be deleted:
- Name
- Age
- Address
- Photos
- Past Address
- Phone
- Relatives
- Social Media
- Occupation
- Marital Status
- Property Value
DeleteMe scores high on transparency and availability
Something we really like about DeleteMe is the fact they give all their users quarterly reports. These are meant to prove to customers that the data brokers involved haven’t gotten their hands on your data again after deleting it.
Speaking of commitment, DeleteMe seems to have big plans to make easy data removal accessible worldwide. They are currently available in 12 countries: the United States, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Singapore, and the United Kingdom.
One of DeleteMe’s few downsides is that it’s not among the cheapest options: its most affordable subscription is 65% more expensive than our best budget option, Incogni.
I do have to admit you get a lot of bang for your buck with DeleteMe, thanks to the huge number of data broker websites they cover, their international availability and their quarterly reports. They also offer a full refund if you cancel before your first privacy report and partial refunds if you cancel after that.
Standard protection for one person is $10.75 a month or $129 a year. Two people are $19.08 a month, billed as $229 a year — or $14.54 a month for two people for two years, billed as $349 for every two years.
You can check also check out our extensive DeleteMe review.
2. Incogni: The best data removal service for bargain hunters
Pros
- Among the cheapest data removal services
- Large coverage: US, EU, Canada, and Switzerland
- Covers six types of data brokers
Cons
- 180+ data brokers is on the low side
Incogni is an outstanding service to remove personal information from the internet. This powerful data removal tool, owned by leading VPN Surfshark, can remove your data from the servers of over 180 data brokers, and the list is still growing.
We like that Incogni makes sure to contact data brokers in many different sectors, including:
- People search sites
- Marketing
- Recruitment
- Risk mitigation
- Financial
- Health information
Different types of data and data breaches present different risks. For instance, marketing data might result in harassment by companies that want to sell you something, whereas health-related data might actually affect insurance prices. As such, it’s great that Incogni data removal covers the full spectrum.
Data removal requests based on EU, US, and Canadian law
Incogni has a strong position when requesting to delete your data, as they base their requests on legislation like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).
The only disadvantage is that since these laws only cover the European Union, Switzerland, the United States, and Canada, Incogni can only help people who live in these regions.
Incogni offers a very user-friendly and easy-to-use interface. The company is very transparent and shows you exactly how many requests they’ve sent, how many are in progress, and how many have been completed.
Last but most certainly not least, Incogni is very reasonably priced compared to their competition. They are currently offering a 50% discount on annual memberships. Incogni even offers a 30-day money-back guarantee!
Annual subscriptions are $6.49 per month, billed at $77.88 a year. Monthly subscriptions start at $12.99 month to month. Check out our Incogni review for more details about this service.
3. Onerep: A transparent data removal service
Pros
- Very transparent about their data brokers
- Able to remove financial information such as income and credit score
- Affordable family plans: $15 for six people
Cons
- Only available in the US
- Only 199 data sites
Onerep is one of the most popular and one of the best companies to remove personal information from the internet. We especially like how transparent this provider is about the data collectors they contact.
They’ve got a complete list on their web page of all of the 199 people search sites they can get your data removed from. This way, you could actually search a sample of these sites to check for yourself how effective Onerep is. Some of the biggest sites they contact include:
- addressbook.com
- addresses.com
- advancedbackgroundchecks.com
- floridaresidentsdirectory.com
- freebackgroundcheck.org
- inmatessearcher.com
- neighbor.report
- ohioresidentdatabase.com
- peoplesearch123.com
- phonebooks.com
Onerep will delete different types of information, including financial data, like your credit score, income, property and home information, age, location and family.
Somewhat lacking in broker and country coverage, but very affordable family plans
As far as disadvantages go, I can’t say that Onerep isn’t transparent, but I’d have liked their website to be a bit more complete. For instance, it could do with some information about how their removal process works. Also, I couldn’t find any information about where they operate their site.
I reached out to Onerep and found out they only operate within the US, unfortunately. Moreover, Onerep’s list of data brokers isn’t as impressive as some others on this list, such as DeleteMe’s broker list.
Onerep claims to be a fully automated data removal service, although they do offer manual, custom removal requests of hard-to-remove data at an additional price as well. According to Onerep, automation has made their service very affordable.
We have to agree with the above, as their family plan especially is quite affordable at only $15 a month for six people or $8.33 a month for individual plans. Onerep also offers a 5-day money-back guarantee.
4. Kanary: Remove personal information from the internet continuously
Pros
- Clear deletion timeframes and high final removal rate: 95 to 100%
- Friendly and helpful customer service
- Offers a limited free version
Cons
- Only available in the US
- Some unclear and conflicting information
Are you looking for the best data broker removal service to chase down repeat offenders, i.e. data brokers that keep storing your data? Then Kanary might be for you.
After three months, Kanary will mainly focus on data brokers that reacquired your data after deletion. They will continue sending you monthly reports so you can verify that Kanary keeps your information out of data brokers’ hands.
Kanary claims to remove your data from 350-400 websites, which is impressive, to say the least. According to Kanary, the data removal service will achieve a 95 to 100% removal rate after 46 to 90 days. In fact, after just one month, the service claims to achieve a 60% success rate.
As far as disadvantages go, it’s unfortunate that Kanary doesn’t provide more information about the data brokers and websites they remove user data from. In fact, the number of 1,000 websites they claim on Google didn’t appear anywhere else on their site.
In general, Kanary leaves out some important information on its website. From looking at their website, it’s unclear where they operate, for instance.
Kanary is one of the pricier options, but it offers a free version, great customer service
I inquired with Kanary regarding their data brokers and the country/countries they cover. When Kanary got back to me, they were very professional and helpful. Therefore, it seems they offer great customer service.
Kanary informed me they currently have 350-400 brokers in their database, while in the past, they covered up to 20,000 sites. Again, on Google, you’ll find they cover 1,000 sites, so it would be nice to have some more clarity and uniformity here.
Kanary also informed us they are currently only available in the US. However, they’re looking to expand to Canada and the UK very soon.
Kanary is definitely on the pricier side, with even its annually-billed plan setting you back $14.99 a month. The good news, however, is that they offer a 30-day money-back guarantee on their paid plan.
Lastly, Kanary is one of the few data removal tools that offer both a free trial and a free version.
5. PrivacyBee: A very comprehensive data removal service
Pros
- Offers much more than just data deletion
- 440+ data brokers
- Handy browser extension
Cons
- The most expensive option on this list
- Only available in the US
- No money-back guarantee
Privacy is among the best companies to remove personal information from the internet, but it does much more than that.
Apart from deleting your data from 440+ data brokers and people search sites, PrivacyBee allows you to select which companies are allowed to store your data, easily get out of marketing databases with its marketing exclusion feature, mark email contacts as “trusted” or “negative”, and much more.
Some of the many data brokers that PrivacyBee will contact on your behalf include:
- Arrests.us
- ZabaSearch
- PeopleLooker
- US Search
- AllAreaCodes
- BeenVerified
- PeopleSmart
- CheckPeople
- TruthFinder
- Exact Data
A pricey but comprehensive privacy tool
We mainly recommend PrivacyBee to those who take their privacy extremely seriously, as its subscription fee of $197 a year is pretty steep. Apart from its costly subscription, other PrivacyBee disadvantages include the fact it’s only available in the US and the lack of a money-back guarantee.
Then again, PrivacyBee does really offer a lot. We especially like how PrivacyBee is proactive in protecting your data, with its vulnerability scans, for instance. After all, by the time your data gets removed from a broker’s servers, the damage might already be done.
We also like PrivacyBee’s efforts to not make privacy more complicated than it has to be. For instance, the personal data deletion service offers a handy browser extension that lets you adjust websites’ and companies’ data permissions on the go.
If you’re looking for a budget personal information removal tool, this isn’t it. In this case, you’re better off with something like Incogni. However, if you mean business when it comes to privacy and want to leave no stone unturned, PrivacyBee might be for you.
Privacy Bee Premium comes in at a flat $197 per year.
How to Remove Your Personal Information From the Internet
Perhaps our best data removal services make removing your personal information look easy. However, thoroughly deleting yourself from the internet is quite the task.
Wondering how to scrub yourself from the internet all by yourself? You’ll have to follow these steps:
- Get a hold of all your old emails to unsubscribe from mailing lists, newsletters, and marketing campaigns.
- Delete all of the messaging and social media accounts you’re no longer using.
- Removing information from your shopping and e-commerce accounts, such as Amazon, eBay, UberEats, and Booking.com.
- Submit data deletion requests for personally identifiable information and right-to-be-forgotten requests to Google for the information you want deleted.
- Check if your information has been breached on a website like haveibeenpwned.com.
- Go through internet archives, such as the Wayback Machine, to see if your information has been saved from old web pages.
- Contact companies, data brokers, and people search sites and request them to remove your data.
Get help from the best data removal service
As you can see, removing your personal information from the internet is anything but easy. That’s why it’s a good idea to get help from a service that specializes in removing personal data.
Data removal services can specifically help you with step 7: requesting sites and companies to delete your data. This is one of the most tedious and important parts of getting your data removed from the internet. Therefore, it makes sense to use a service that will save you tons of time and contact all these data collectors on your behalf.
In our opinion, DeleteMe is the best data removal service you can use. This personal information removal tool will delete your information from over 500 data brokers.
You’ll also get quarterly reports with DeleteMe so you can verify those data brokers aren’t just getting their hands on your data again right after they delete it.
How We Chose the Best Data Removal Service
Just like removing your data manually, selecting the best companies to remove personal information from the internet wasn’t easy.
We studied every personal information removal tool on this list carefully and considered other up-and-comers and strong contenders, such as Aura, HelloPrivacy, Optery, and Norton Privacy Monitor.
In the end, we chose the data removal tools on this list because they performed best in the following important categories:
- Price
- Number of data brokers covered
- Different types of data brokers the service covers
- Types of information the service can remove
- Countries covered by the service
- Provided data reports and transparency of the service
- Removal success rates, when publicly available
- Ease-of-use
- Money-back guarantee
- Does the service offer a free version?
Conclusion: The Best Data Removal Service
In this article, we discussed the best data removal services right now. We’ve given you a selection of handy tools that can get your information removed from hundreds of data brokers and people search sites, so your details will be protected from identity theft, criminals, and curious peekers who have no business looking at your data.
The best service to remove personal information from the internet is DeleteMe. This service will delete more than 10 types of information from 580+ data brokers’ servers, is available in 12 countries across five continents, provides quarterly data reports, and offers outstanding value.
Do you want more information about how to keep your data safe and stay anonymous online? Check out the articles below.
- How to Browse the Internet Anonymously: Tips to Stay Private
- How to Delete Yourself From the Internet
- How to Hide or Change Your IP Address
- Browser Fingerprinting: What it is and How to Prevent it
- Incognito Mode: What is It? Does It Make You Anonymous?
Do you have a specific question about the best data removal services or about personal information removal tools in general? Check out our FAQ below to see if we’ve already answered your question. If we haven’t, you can leave us a comment below and we’ll get back to you soon.
To most people, data removal services can definitely prove useful. A good data removal service will contact hundreds of websites on your behalf to have your data removed. Think of all the time you’ll save this way. Our favorite data removal tool is DeleteMe. You can read our DeleteMe review to find out if this tool might be worth your time and money.
There are many different data removal services around and they all have different price tags. If you’re looking for an excellent data removal service that’s very affordable ($6.49 a month), we recommend Incogni. Check out our Incogni review for more information.
Often, you’ll have to refer to certain privacy laws when you’re trying to get a company to delete your data. For instance, under the GDPR, internet users have a “right to be forgotten” and you can use this right to get Google to make your data unavailable to people with a EU IP address.
