Have you used any services/tools to remove your presence from data brokers? If so, which?

2026-03-20 07:32 UTC

I was watching a video yesterday which had a sponsor for deleteme which claims to go through data brokers to delete your info. I thought that might be a good idea, especially for those with radical politics. However it’s fairly expensive (~200$) and also I mistrust sponsored links by default. Have you used them? Have you used something else? What do you recommend people do to deal with the hundreds of data brokers which harvest your info? The point is not to disappear entirely, but pershaps to make it less easy for an employer, payment processor or whatever to blackllist you based on GenAI assessments etc.

Replies (5)

@Libb@piefed.social 2026-03-20 07:54

That's just my 2 cents: I would not trust a private corporation to deal with my already poorly handled, if not outright abused, data by other private corporations. But I'm also not a US citizen, if that makes a difference.

Open ##1724492
@troed@fedia.io 2026-03-20 07:37

As a Swede these services always sound a bit weird. Here anyone can call the tax authority and ask for the equivalent of your social security number (thus it's not used as a secret identifier anywhere). Your home address is also public information, as is the amount of money you declare on your taxes and what cars you own. We get by just fine. I guess the difference is that it's illegal for companies/employers to misuses that data for advertising and improper background checks - rather than putting it on the persons themselves to "go hide". ... but to your question: I think all those services are scams. If the information got out there once it will again, and the services themselves could very well just lie about the work they do for you. You have no way of actually verifying.

Open ##1724495
@shaytan@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-03-20 10:08

There are a bunch of services trying to cover this, Incogni, deleteme as you said, optery, kanary, privacy bee, etc. Incogni's supposedly fairly good but I haven't used it myself. None of them are a silver bullet, their theoretical success rate is somewhere around the 60-70% mark. I would recommend you dig into "data poisoning" too. The idea is to flood your online profile with contradictory information, (fake a dresses, wrong age, alternate names) so your profile becomes unreliable and less valuable. Some services like Data Bee do that to some degree. Nowadays it kinda works but smart systems can filter this data by comparing your online profiles in different places and saying "this age matches in 4 places, this name too" etc, so that's hard But i'd try some cheap platform, and pair that with manually deleting as much of your data manually from any app, individual accounts etc, even if that takes a bunch of time

Open ##1724497
@Zomg@piefed.world 2026-03-20 09:33

What's to stop a broker from reacquiring your information? Sounds like an exhausting process.

Open ##1724498
@konim@sopuli.xyz 2026-03-20 08:31

The best way is unfortunately to do it yourself. This [guide](https://ssd.eff.org/module/how-to-manage-your-digital-footprint) and this [guide](https://www.github.com/yaelwrites/Big-Ass-Data-Broker-Opt-Out-List) which it references (along with a helpful framework and other helpful websites) were what I found most helpful. It does take a bunch of time though which sucks, I haven't finished it but I'm working on it over time. You can also supplement with this paid [site](https://easyoptouts.com/) which is only $20 and I remember reading an article that they had the best results of the ones the writer studied. It was still like 60% removal though which is why the manual way is more effective than any site.

Open ##1780346