The latest estimates are estimated that there are 16.4 billion Google searches per day worldwide. A large part of that search is for people’s names. Of those names, many are probably famous people, like Lionel Messi, Sabrina Carpenter, or any number of politicians who do something bad. But most keyword searches are legal. Maybe you too. Definitely me, based on the flood of spam calls I get.
DeleteMe was founded in 2010 and claims to be one of the oldest companies in data deletion. Services like DeleteMe and its competitor Incogni work by contacting data brokers on your behalf and getting them to release your personal information, including your current and past email addresses, your phone numbers, and your email address. In theory, this process removes you from annoying marketing lists and makes it harder for randos to find you. I’ve used DeleteMe since January, and while it’s not a silver bullet for ensuring the complete absence of unwanted communications from strangers and scammers, it seems to have helped with the number of unsolicited marketing calls I receive. It also helped clean up personal information from my Google results, so you’re more likely to read an old article I wrote than see where I live.
DeleteMe by Martin Cizmar
I also used Incogni, where I managed my elderly mother’s account. He got the same results, as expected, says DeleteMe CEO Jason Dalrymple. Services like DeleteMe and others “all do the same thing,” he says. “We are bound by the same rules and restrictions on obeying the law. It’s a cat and mouse game.”
That’s because the extent to which data brokers are required to cooperate with data removal companies’ requests is legally murky, given that there is no comprehensive federal law in the US that governs how private companies can use personal data. Instead, most regulations are at the state level, where protections vary (I live in Missouri, where I feel lucky to have running water). Some states, such as California, have additional protections, while most states do not. Regardless of where you live, data brokers won’t just delete your information if they ask for it. They may ask for additional verification of your identity before complying and confirm that the request is accepted, they may reject the request, and they may ignore the request altogether—all actions that require communication and follow-up with the clearing service.
With DeleteMe and Incogni, you can track progress using a dashboard that provides an at-a-glance update on how many deletion requests have been made and completed. A few more clicks will show you specifics for each vendor, although most of these will be unfamiliar to the average user. The main difference I noticed between DeleteMe and Incogni is that the former’s dashboard doesn’t update as often as the latter and it doesn’t show as much as it’s affected by many vendors.
I prefer Incogni’s dashboard because it’s satisfying and reassuring to log in every few days and see the company crawl the web and mock vendors, rating each one based on their speed and general compliance. There are continuous status updates for thousands of websites. On the other hand, DeleteMe creates a report every few months showing progress on a small number of sites. Dalrymple says his company’s surgical approach is a feature, not a bug.
