Digital privacy is a subject of growing concern. Your personal information is highly desirable to both legal and illegal entities. They can learn a lot from the cookies that follow your internet activities. Any details you disclose publicly on your social media profiles are likewise accessible to anyone. Your online activities are monitored each time you visit a website.

Table of Contents:

1. Data Brokers. 
2. How does Incogni work?
3. Affordable Alternative to Other Current Data Removal Tools
4. How To Get Started?
5. Incogni Walkthrough
6. Verdict

1. Data Brokers

Companies known as “data brokers” scour the internet for relevant information about individuals and then combine that information with data from other sources. Data brokers build audience segments by combining information like names, phone numbers, and email addresses; these segments are then sold to businesses. They are interested in a person’s browsing and purchasing history, but they may also target more effectively based on age, gender, and income.

These data brokers frequently operate inside the law or in close compliance with it, especially in nations where data policies are not strictly enforced. Your data is sold by data brokers to other businesses for a variety of commercial uses such as marketing and advertising, health insurance, and people search sites. 

How can I request that the brokers remove my data?

To completely avoid data broker listings is difficult. You can still choose not to have your data collected by contacting each data broker site separately and asking them to delete your information, but this takes time. The free collection and exchange of personal information by data brokers make it nearly impossible to determine which businesses ultimately receive our personal information.

Data brokers cannot keep the data that is provided in the data removal request. Privacy rules, such as the EU and UK GDPR, CCPA, and PIPEDA, ban data brokers from maintaining and using the data provided in data removal requests for any other reason beyond the processing of the request. Companies that persist and lie about complying may pay large and significant fines for breaking these laws. One of the newest and best solutions from well-known VPN providers Surfshark is called Incogni, and it is used to remove your data from businesses that deal with data brokers and avoid situations like these. 

2. How does Incogni Work?

Surfshark’s Incogni serves as your privacy proxy by infrequently issuing formal requests for data removal to a large number of brokers of personal information and reporting their responses without actively verifying your data was actually deleted. Incogni deals with most data broker types, including marketing, recruitment, risk mitigation, and others.  

It sends removal requests to the businesses that are most likely to have your information and keeps a growing backlog of the biggest data brokers in the world. This implies that there may be false-positive scenarios in which we ask businesses who don’t hold your data to delete their data.

3 Affordable Alternatives to Other Current Data Removal Tools

The company provided monthly and yearly subscription choices. Without tiers or other complex plans that can mislead clients, the pricing is rather simple. They have a 30-day money-back guarantee.  If you choose to pay for the entire year as opposed to each month separately, you receive a 50% discount on the Incogni subscription, lowering the cost to just $5.79 per month and overall, $69.48 for one-time billing. A monthly plan option is also available for $11.49 which is billed monthly which ramps up to $137.88 if paid monthly for a year. 

Currently, Incogni is available to the US, UK, EU, and selected European countries. They can only legally act on behalf of residents covered by the GDPR, UK GDPR, CCPA, PIPEDA, and similar laws.

4. How To Get Started?

Registration is available on their website which will require your email address and password. Using your main email when registering for services gives higher chances for data brokers to locate and easily remove it from their systems. 

After selecting continue, a prompt to confirm your email address will be sent to your email. Once confirmed, the personal information collected by Incogni will be used to find matching records on data broker systems. 

Lastly, read the authorization form and double-check all inputted information to get started. Companies need a mechanism to confirm that the request is real because you won’t be personally making the removal requests.

5. Incogni Walkthrough

This easy approach to the information gathered by data brokers will appeal to people who are concerned with their privacy. Incogni doesn’t keep a database with all your information and uses the Internet to track down users. As an alternative, it serves as a go-between for you and data brokers. 

Given that there may be several people with the same first and last name, state, or country, having a name, surname, and address that match your profile isn’t always enough. Incogni added further details like a phone number and birthdate to make inquiries more precise and reduce the number of items that match the same profile information.

It’s also possible to get information about each data broker. They provide information about each company through their descriptions that show their category and data sensitivity levels illustrated with a ‘skull scale’ from 1 to 5 where the higher the number, the more sensitive the information.

Information processes about your data will be marked into 4 stages Completed, In Progress, Rejected, and Not Started depicting the status of your data being reported to the company. If the data broker openly ‘rejects’ processing the request, Incogni continues contacting you to guarantee your data is erased. If necessary, data protection agencies are contacted to learn the basis for the rejection and, if practical, to explore options for reconsidering the choice.

Pros	Cons
User-friendly streamlined dashboard	Basic customer support (Email & Twitter)
Affordable pricing	Does not cover people search sites
Fully automated	No global availability
Tracks and sends data removal requests
Does not cover people’s search sites

6.Verdict

Since maintaining online privacy and security calls for constant work, Incognito is one of the good current data deletion tools that cover the job for both heavy internet users and those who value their privacy. 

A good decline in the volume of spam and target-specific content has been mentioned by many users alike.  While it may require effort and time, Incogni believes privacy and security are always worthwhile. It may make sense to use the system for a one-time clean-up and sending of data request removal emails yet Incogni would consistently contact the data brokers to make sure they did not regain access to your data. For those living within its availability, Incogni is positioned as an effective data removal tool covered under the protection protocols. 

This service performs precisely what it sets out to achieve and gives a wonderful user experience. Setting it up is really simple, and receiving emails from data hubs informing the user that their data has been deleted at Incogni’s request is genuinely empowering.