Reclaiming Your Privacy: How to Erase Your Data from the Internet

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29 Aug, 2025

Incogni: Protecting Your Personal Data from Data Brokers

Your personal data is a valuable commodity in the digital age, constantly being collected, exchanged, and sold by data brokers and people-search sites. In an environment often described as a "Wild West" due to limited legal and regulatory oversight, regaining control of your information might seem like a daunting task, but that's not true.

To address this challenge, specialized data removal services are offered to help you deal with data brokers and compel them to remove your personal information, and even stop collecting data about you entirely. The Incogni service is one of the most prominent of these solutions, launched in 2021 by Surfshark, a company known for providing Virtual Private Network (VPN) services. Incogni simplifies the process of reducing the amount of information these brokers collect about you, مما يساهم في حماية خصوصيتك الرقمية بشكل فعال. You can visit this link for more information on data privacy laws in the United States.

How Incogni Works

Incogni is easy to set up and use, requiring little technical expertise and taking only a few minutes. While mobile apps are not currently available, they are under development and expected to be launched soon for iOS and Android.

Setup Steps:

Create an Account: You start by creating your account online and choosing the plan that suits you. You will need to provide some basic information such as your first and last name and email address. For best results, it is recommended to provide additional information such as your middle name, date of birth, home addresses, and other email addresses associated with your identity.
Use the Dashboard: The dashboard provides an overview of removal requests, including the number of requests sent, those in progress, and the total number of completed requests. When you first sign up, a number of requests are automatically sent to data brokers. You can track monthly progress via the available charts. Requests may be sent to the same data brokers repeatedly, as removal may not be permanent; there is nothing to prevent data brokers from re-acquiring your data from other parties.
Incogni's Expanded Dashboard: In addition to the charts, Incogni provides an estimate of "time saved" if you were to submit each removal request manually, along with an activity log detailing which data brokers have completed removal requests and when.
Suppression List: You will also notice what is called a "Suppression List". The company explains that "data brokers have added your information to their suppression list, meaning they will never re-collect any personal information that can be linked to you." However, not all data brokers operate a suppression list, or they may not add you to it easily, which is why data removal requests may need to be repeated continuously.
Custom Removal: This feature gives you access to Incogni's specialized team that handles custom removal requests submitted by clients. For example, if you find a website containing your information that is not included in Incogni's standard removal system, you can send the link to the company, and they will try to remove it for you. However, this service requires upgrading to the Incogni Unlimited plan.
Monthly Reports: To stay up-to-date on the progress of your data removal journey, Incogni sends monthly reports summarizing the progress of data removal requests, including the number of completed requests and those still in process.

Benefits and Coverage

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Incogni is an effective data removal service, relying on automation supported by a human team specializing in data removal and privacy. The service focuses on disrupting the flow of consumer data – including Personally Identifiable Information (PII) – that falls into the hands of data brokers, often without the consent of its owners, and is then displayed online or sold to other organizations.

By combining automation and human oversight, Incogni targets over 420 public and private data brokers, and over 1000 unique registered domains in response to custom data removal requests from clients. Incogni reported completing over 90 million data removal requests last year, and projections indicate continued company growth, with over 245 million data removal requests processed – a figure confirmed by a recent review from Deloitte. Many new customers in the United States joined due to concerns surrounding the lack of adequate privacy laws and current political tensions.

Data removal requests are sent automatically to data brokers once you register for the service. You are provided with access to a dashboard that shows the number of data brokers contacted, the number of requests processed, and the number of completed requests. Requests are re-sent automatically every 60 to 90 days.

Incogni covers all 50 US states and adheres to a growing set of state-level privacy laws, as the United States has seen increased legislative activity in data protection. In the absence of a comprehensive federal privacy law like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe, the United States experiences what can be described as a "Wild West" in data privacy, but this situation is rapidly changing with the enactment of laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and similar laws in Virginia, Colorado, and Utah, in addition to 18 other states that enacted comprehensive privacy laws by March 2025, covering over 50% of the US population. Incogni can also handle data removal requests in the European Union, the United Kingdom, Northern Ireland, Canada, the Isle of Man, Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein, leveraging laws such as the GDPR in Europe and the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) in Canada, providing broad protection for your personal data. (Source: Didomi, updated March 2025)

In addition to reducing your exposure to personal information and your digital footprint, the service also aims to help reduce the spam emails and robocalls you receive. Many customers have reported a decrease in these annoying incidents since subscribing to Incogni.

Incogni Cost

Incogni is one of the most affordable options available, with one-year plans starting from $7.19 per month. The company currently offers a 55% discount on annual plans for ZDNET readers using the code ZDNET. However, if you wish to use the service for custom data removal requests, you will need to subscribe to the Unlimited plan, which costs $13.49 per month. There are cheaper solutions for custom removal requests, such as those offered by DeleteMe.