Your personal information is being sold right now. Not on some shadowy dark web forum, but on legitimate websites that anyone can access with a credit card. Your home address, phone number, email and even your relatives names are packaged into convenient profiles and sold for less than a dollar.
These are called data brokers and they’re the reason your phone won’t stop ringing with spam calls. They’re how scammers find your phone number for SIM swapping attacks. They’re why your inbox is flooded with phishing attempts that somehow know your real name and location.
As someone who runs multiple tech platforms and has been covering cybersecurity topics for over three years. I’ve tested dozens of privacy tools. But when I discovered my full profile on 142 different data broker sites. I realized manual deletion wasn’t sustainable. That’s when I stopped doing it myself and hired an automated agent to handle it for me.
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What Are Data Brokers and Why Should You Care
Data brokers are companies that collect, aggregate, and sell personal information. Sites like Whitepages, PeopleFinders, Spokeo and BeenVerified. They scrape public records, social media profiles and purchased datasets to build detailed profiles about individuals.
These profiles include your current and previous addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, age, relatives’ names, property ownership records and estimated income levels. Some even include photos pulled from social media accounts you forgot existed.
The problem isn’t just privacy invasion. This information fuels real security threats. Based on my research into cybersecurity incidents over the past several years, hackers consistently use these databases to research targets before launching social engineering attacks. Scammers use them to craft convincing phishing emails that reference accurate personal details. Identity thieves use them to answer security questions and bypass authentication systems.
Every piece of information sitting on these broker sites is ammunition for someone trying to compromise your accounts, steal your identity or scam your family members.
Why Manual Deletion Doesn’t Work
When I first discovered my full profile on multiple data broker sites. I tried the obvious solution. I started the removal process manually. Each site has a different opt-out procedure. Some require you to fill out web forms. Others want you to email specific addresses. A few demand notarized identity verification or certified mail with signature confirmation.
The process for a single site takes anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes. You need to locate the opt-out page. which many sites deliberately hide. You submit your information and wait for a confirmation email. Some sites make you create an account before you can delete your profile, which feels deliberately ironic.
But here’s the real problem. There are over 180 major data brokers operating in the United States and European Union. If you’re efficient and dedicated. You might be able to complete removals for all of them in 50 to 70 hours of focused work spread across several weeks.
Then three months later, they add you back. Public records get updated. Property transactions become searchable. Court filings get indexed. Within 90 days, you’re back in their databases and the entire cycle resets.
Manual deletion isn’t a solution. It’s a part-time job with no end date.
How Incogni Solves the Problem
Incogni is an automated data removal service built by Surfshark. The company behind one of the most trusted VPN services. Having tested Surfshark’s VPN service extensively for security reviews on my platform. I was familiar with their commitment to privacy infrastructure. The system functions like a legal department that works around the clock on your behalf.
The setup takes about five minutes. You provide your name, current address, previous addresses and email. The system immediately begins scanning data broker databases to identify where your information appears.
When Incogni finds a match, it automatically generates and sends a legally compliant removal request tailored to that specific broker’s requirements. These requests invoke GDPR and CCPA privacy regulations. which carry significant penalties for non-compliance. Brokers are legally required to respond within 30 days under CCPA rules and even faster under GDPR.
The automation doesn’t stop after the initial requests. Incogni monitors responses, sends follow-up demands when brokers delay and rescans databases monthly to catch re-additions. When a broker adds your information back. The system detects it within days and immediately fires another removal request.
You don’t lift a finger after the initial setup. The automated agent handles everything while you focus on actually living your life.
My Results After 30 Days
I activated Incogni in mid-October 2024 and documented the entire process for this review. The dashboard showed activity immediately. Within 24 hours, the system identified my profile on 34 different broker sites. By the end of the first week, that number climbed to 142 confirmed listings.
The progress tracker became oddly satisfying to check. Each broker gets a status indicator showing whether removal is pending, in progress or complete. By day seven, I saw my first batch of deletion confirmations. Whitepages removed my listing. PeopleFinders confirmed erasure. Spokeo deleted my profile.
By day 30, the results were clear. Forty-two brokers had confirmed complete removal of my data. Another 73 were marked as in progress, meaning Incogni was actively working through their compliance processes. The remaining sites were in various stages of legal review.
But the dashboard metrics weren’t the most noticeable change. The real difference was silence.
My spam call volume dropped by roughly 90 percent in the first month. I went from receiving 10 to 15 robocalls daily to maybe one per week. My email inbox. Which had been drowning in phishing attempts and loan scam offers, became manageable again.
When I searched my name on Google, the top results were no longer data broker profiles listing my exact address and phone number. Instead, I found my professional profiles and published work. That shift felt significant.
Incogni vs DeleteMe: The Comparison
The main competitor in this space is DeleteMe, which has been around longer and uses a hybrid approach combining human operators with automation. After researching both services extensively and testing Incogni for 30 days, here’s what I found.
DeleteMe costs approximately $129 per year for individual coverage. Incogni runs about $77 annually with standard pricing, making it nearly 40 percent cheaper. The speed difference comes down to automation intensity. DeleteMe relies more heavily on human agents who manually process requests during business hours. They handle maybe 20 to 30 removals per week per agent.
Incogni’s automated system processes hundreds of requests simultaneously. It doesn’t need breaks. It doesn’t have capacity limits. It works 24/7 which means your data gets removed faster and stays removed more consistently.
For pure efficiency and cost effectiveness. The automation advantage is clear. DeleteMe might appeal to users who want more white-glove service or direct human contact. But for straightforward data removal at scale, Incogni delivers better value.
We recently wrote about locking your digital doors with YubiKeys, but a lock doesn't help if the thief already has the blueprints to your house.
Protecting Your Family
I didn’t just buy this service for myself. I immediately set up accounts for my parents using the Family Plan option.
Elderly parents are prime targets for scam operations. The grandparent scam works because criminals can find phone numbers, verify family relationships through data brokers and craft convincing emergency scenarios. Removing their information from these databases eliminates the ammunition scammers need.
My parents were skeptical at first. They didn’t understand why publicly available information posed any danger. Then I showed them their full profiles on Whitepages. Complete names. Current address. Previous addresses going back 30 years. Estimated home value. Names of all their children. Possible associates and neighbors.
That demonstration changed their perspective immediately. Within two weeks of activating Incogni for their accounts, their spam call volume dropped dramatically. My mother who had been receiving five to six scam calls daily, went down to maybe one per week.
The Family Plan costs roughly $20 per month for coverage of up to four people. That works out to $5 per person for continuous automated data removal. The return on investment isn’t measured in dollars saved but in hours reclaimed from dealing with spam and peace of mind knowing your family isn’t sitting in a scammer’s database.
Privacy as a Subscription
The biggest mindset shift I had to make was understanding that privacy isn’t a one-time purchase. Privacy is a subscription service.
Data brokers don’t give up. If you stop monitoring and removing your information, they add you back within 90 days. Public records don’t disappear. New data gets aggregated constantly from property transactions, court filings, voter registrations and business licenses.
The only way to maintain privacy is continuous monitoring and removal. That’s exactly what Incogni provides. You’re not fighting quarterly battles with opt-out forms and verification emails. You’re running an automated defense system that operates at machine speed.
The cost is negligible compared to the risks. Every day your information sits on broker sites, you remain vulnerable to SIM swapping attacks, identity theft, and targeted social engineering. Every spam call represents a potential attack vector. Every leaked phone number increases your exposure to scams.
Sum up on Incogni Review after using 30 days
After 30 days of hands-on testing and documentation, the results speak for themselves. My spam calls dropped by 90 percent. My data broker listings went from 142 confirmed matches to 42 complete removals with another 73 in progress. My Google search results no longer expose my home address to anyone with internet access.
The peace of mind alone justifies the cost. I’m no longer constantly wondering who has access to my personal information or how it might be used against me. I’m not spending hours every quarter trying to manually opt out of databases that will just re-add me in a few months.
As someone who has reviewed and tested numerous privacy tools over the years, the automated agent approach stands out for its effectiveness. It’s faster than doing it yourself. It’s cheaper than hiring a privacy attorney. It’s more consistent than relying on human operators who work limited hours.
If you’re tired of spam calls, worried about identity theft. Or simply want to reclaim some control over your personal information, Incogni solves the problem. The system runs continuously in the background while you focus on everything else in your life.
Privacy shouldn’t require constant manual effort. With the right automation, it doesn’t have to.
