Do Opt-Out Services Work for Keeping Your Info Private

Privacy Bee, OneRep, Incogni, and Delete-Me

C. L. Beard
ILLUMINATION’S MIRROR
4 min readAug 28, 2023

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Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Opt-out services are designed to help individuals remove their personal information from data broker websites and other sources. The effectiveness of opt-out services can vary depending on the specific service and the context in which it is used. Here are some key points:

Overall, opt-out services can be effective in helping individuals protect their privacy, but their effectiveness can vary depending on the specific service and the context in which it is used. It is important to carefully consider the benefits and drawbacks of opt-in and opt-out approaches and to choose a service that meets your specific needs.

Privacy Bee,

Privacy Bee is a data protection service that helps users remove personal information from data brokers and websites, as well as assists in proactive data protection. To use Privacy Bee, users need to provide some personal information, which the service uses to find sources of their information on the internet. Privacy Bee also offers the option to protect family members by providing their names and email addresses. It is important to note that Privacy Bee requires a yearly subscription to access its full range of features. It is worth mentioning that Privacy Bee is known for covering a wide range of data brokers and offering bonus privacy features.

Incogni

Incogni is a data removal service that helps individuals remove their personal information from data brokers and companies that are likely holding it. It is a subscription-based service that automates data removal requests on behalf of its users. Incogni has an exhaustive list of data broker databases and can save individuals the hundreds of hours of work required to get their information out of them.

The service provides a user-friendly data removal tool that helps users get their data back to where it belongs — private. Incogni is owned by Surfshark, a VPN provider, and acts as a proxy between users and the companies collecting their data. Incogni is a low-maintenance and easy-to-use service that requires users to input their email address, create a password, and verify their phone number and birth date. The process is automated, and users do not have much to do afterward.

Incogni costs $6.49/month on a 1-year plan or $12.99/month, which is lower than most similar privacy assurance services. This is lowest cost provider of these services.

Overall, Incogni is a privacy tool that helps individuals take back control of their data privacy by automating data removal requests on their behalf.

OneRep

OneRep is a privacy platform that helps individuals remove their personal information from data broker websites. The service is fully automated and removes unauthorized personal information from the internet. OneRep works by scanning the internet for personal information and removing it from data brokers, data scrapers, and data aggregators. According to a review, OneRep is a tool that can help individuals protect their privacy and prevent identity theft.

OneRep is a subscription-based service that offers different pricing plans depending on the number of people you want to protect and the duration of the subscription.

This one I put here because it is a newer startup but they have received complaints through the Better Business Bureau in the past. So maybe choose a different application for this.

Delete Me

DeleteMe is a service that assists in removing personal information from publicly available people search database websites, which gather information from existing public records. They remove personal information such as name, age, address, phone number, email address, and photos of your home from leading data broker sites. DeleteMe experts find and remove personal information from search engines every 3 months. However, according to a YouTube video, DeleteMe does not completely erase online data. If you are concerned about your privacy, you can use DeleteMe to remove your personal information from data broker sites, but it may not completely erase your online data.

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C. L. Beard
ILLUMINATION’S MIRROR

I am a writer living on the Salish Sea. I also publish my own AI newsletter https://brainscriblr.beehiiv.com/, come check it out.