I’ve used three such services over the years. They all worked well for me at a cost of about $80 to $130 annually. This sort of service can’t remove everything, if there are sites that are unresponsive to removal requests, or if the sites are not on the company’s removal list. If your name is very common, you’ll probably see a lot of false positives that you’ll have to sift through.
There are many, many sites that constantly repropagate personal data from other, major sites, and more are probably being added all the time. So getting your data removed from the major sites has a knock-on benefit.
Most of these services will tell you how to remove your data yourself, site by site, but it’s very time consuming and requires some level of organization and tracking on your part. You also have to keep checking for new entries periodically. That’s why it’s an attractive proposition to just pay a service to do it.
Be aware that there is at least one data removal service that is foreign-owned (based in Belarus), so I would recommend fully researching any service you are thinking of using, prior to handing your names, date of birth, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses over to them.
First, search the internet to see what’s publicly available about you and your family members or cohabitants. You can also check some well-known sites like Spokeo.com and Whitepages.com, or freecallerlookup.com. Are you OK with this data being publicly visible and searchable?
If you’ve bought a home or applied for remodeling permits, registered to vote, signed a public petition, held a driver license, subscribed to anything commercial, then your data is likely out there somewhere. If you get junk mail, then your data is being trafficked.
Have you ever been notified that your information was compromised in a data breach? Has your private info been compromised in data breaches that you don’t even know about? Check haveibeenpwned.com.
Do you trust every company and website that holds your name, date of birth, address, telephone number, financial data, medical data, photos, files, etc., to never fall victim to account hijacking? If criminals can find your personal information, including answers to probable security questions you use for logins, they could take over all your accounts, lock you out of them, and wreak havoc.
Subscribing to a removal service will help greatly, but you can improve on that by making sure you have opted out of marketing and data sharing everywhere you can.
- Check the privacy/marketing settings in every one of your accounts.
- Register your phone numbers at
donotcall.gov(for U.S. numbers). - Register at
optoutprescreen.com(U.S.). - Get off junk mail lists:
https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-stop-junk-mail(U.S.). - Consider placing a fraud alert or a freeze with the major credit bureaus (U.S.). (There are more than the three well-known ones, by the way.)
Some U.S. states have stricter privacy laws and consumer options for protecting your data, which also leads to even greater success with using a data removal service. California has even just passed a new law that will allegedly provide a single opt-out point for consumers to stop trafficking of their personal information by any data broker marketing Californians’ private data. This won’t be available until 2026, I’ve read.
You can check online reviews and prices for the well-known data removal services for yourself, then decide.