Incogni Review: How Good is This Data Removal Service?

In today’s world, protecting yourself and your data with the right tool is more crucial than ever. Data removal services are one of the best ways to remove personal data from data brokers. You would be surprised to know how many websites have your data. Having a VPN with a stealth antivirus, password manager, and data removal service can help you stay protected and remove your data.

One such service is Incogni. The data removal service went online in January 2022 and rebranded in 2024. Surfshark’s new service, Incogni, is a digital privacy tool that helps you fight for your right to be forgotten and for the world’s data brokers to stop using your personal information to profit. This tool can accelerate and automate your data removal requests and ensure brokers adhere to data rights regulations and protocols.

But is it enough to use?

This article will explain Incogni, its workings, and how to use it to protect your data from data brokers. So stay tuned and keep reading to learn everything you need to know about Surfshark’s new data protection feature.

Incogni quick overview

Incogni pros and cons

Incogni: What is it, and what does it do?

Incogni is the newest additional data protection feature by Surfshark. It automates removing data from the dark databases of the internet’s data brokers, which is a huge blessing.

Without Incogni, if you want to do it, you would need to sweep the internet to find out who has your personal information. Then, you’d have to contact them all, one by one, requesting them to erase your data.

That is tedious, time-consuming, long, and mostly useless. So, instead, Incogni helps you with an algorithm that determines where your data is most likely to be. Then, as it locates the target, Surfshark’s legal team joins the process to speed things up, ensuring that everything happens faster.

Users can now add more emails and addresses to their account, meaning that we can delete more data – they can add 3 emails and addresses (USA residents can add phone numbers as well).

Incogni’s handling of data removal requests

According to WebFX, the number of data brokers collecting user data around the globe was beyond 4,000 in 2019. It’s a massive universe if you want to find out who’s included you in their database, which is also vast. Doing this by hand is like finding a needle in a haystack four thousand times over.

Let’s say you find the culprits, just to be wildly optimistic and for argument’s sake. The next step would be to write your removal request so it’s water-tight. But do you know the legalese for this? Do you know the laws and regulations that support your side of the story?

And then, you’d need to start to haggle until you get your way. In other words, the process is hellish, and Surfshark estimates that any average user trying this process by hand would need about 66 years each time. Incogni saves you all that trouble. It’s not just practical — it makes an impossible process easy.

Incogni’s process starts when you sign up for it. Then, it sends out legal removal requests in bulk to you instead. It’s all automated. You won’t know what’s happening unless you go to the Incogni dashboard to see how things are going. The dashboard tells you how many data brokers were contacted, which ones acknowledged the request and did something about it, and which are still pending.

To accomplish this purpose, Incogni covers a wide range of data broker types, including,

• Marketing data brokers
• Financial information data brokers;
• Recruitment data brokers
• Risk mitigation data brokers

In addition, it includes over 60 people searching websites, protecting your personal information from exposure to strangers. This unique aspect of data security protects you from various online threats, such as phishing attacks, scams, online frauds, stalking, harassment, bullying, identity theft, etc.

The drawbacks

Incogni is an excellent data removal service, but everything comes with flaws, so does Incogni. The service will send multiple requests on your behalf, but it does not tell you accurately that the broker has your data. Instead, it guesses that the brokers in question have your information.

So, there’s every chance that at least one request will reach a data broker with nothing to do with your information.

You must know that Incogni doesn’t determine if a data broker removed you from the database. Instead, it sends an official request but can’t check the database to see if the broker complied. For that to happen, the data broker must publish the database.

The good news is that, according to Surfshark and the Incogni team, the companies on their list have cooperated honestly so far.

Also, the data removal service offers no free trial or version. Instead, you need to subscribe to it, and if you are unsatisfied with its service, you can ask for a refund within 30 days.

Data brokers collaborating with Incogni

Incogni currently sends requests to about 190 data brokers, and it’s working on expanding the list with new companies. Incogni’s team is on the record explaining that whenever an unknown data broker joins the list, it gets requests automatically, so the process doesn’t have to start all over each time.

Surfshark claims that it chose these data brokers because they are the high-scale players in their markets (financial, marketing, and health, primarily)

Here are some of the leading companies involved:

• Rich Media
• AccuData
• DecaData
• InfoPay
• Yello
• Censia

The precise number of data brokers getting requests on your behalf depends on several factors, such as your physical location, local data laws, and personal preferences.

What do data brokers know about me?

The data brokers of the world are in business to make a buck. The value of the information they sell about an individual depends on the completeness of the profile they can put together. So they use every available resource and sweep several sources, such as the apps you use, public records, social media profiles, etc., to build your profile. Then, the profile goes to the buyer, for instance, digital marketers.

These are the essential pieces of information they want to have about you:

• Full name
• Phone numbers
• Home and email addresses
• Marital status
• Age and gender
• Religion
• Ethnicity
• Hobbies
• Education
• Political affiliation
• Occupation
• Search and purchase history

Incogni pricing plans

Incogni offers two plans: yearly and monthly. The monthly plan is $14.98. The yearly one gets you a hefty 50% discount, paying $7.49 monthly.

The service recently introduced another plan. Now, you cannot only secure yourself but also your friends and family, as Incogni has a ‘Friends and Family Plan.’ The monthly cost is $32.98. For a yearly plan, it costs $16.49/month

Within the CCPA protocol, data brokers must answer a data removal request within 45 days. And you shouldn’t expect the data brokers to move too quickly. In other words, if you choose the monthly plan, a single month won’t be long enough to complete even the second step in the process before your subscription runs out.

Nonetheless, there’s good news for short-term subscribers too. Those requests will be completed anyway, even if your subscription expires. Yet, you’ll have to subscribe again if you want a new request to go out on your behalf.

Getting started with Incogni

You can start sending data requests with Incogni by following these steps:

1. Get an Incogni account

Point your browser toward Incogni’s website and click “Sign up” or “Get started.” Next, enter your email and create a strong password, then click “Continue” to start with the setup.

First, you will have to verify your email address. Incogni recommends that you use the email address you use for your online services. This will increase the effectiveness of the data removal process.

2. Complete the sign-up

After verifying the email address, you’ll start the registration process. Here, you’ll provide more personal information, including your name and address. Keep clicking the “Next” button to move to the following page.

3. Sign the Authorization form

Then, you’ll come across an “Authorization form” that you’ll have to sign to empower Incogni to function on your behalf. Enter your digital signature and click the “Next” button to proceed.

4. Subscribe

After you’ve done everything, it’s time to arrive at the Incogni subscription page. Pick the deal you want and follow through with the billing process. Then click on “Start data removal” so the magic can start. You’ll get a confirmation email soon after that.

Incogni availability

Incogni is a relatively new product, so it’s unavailable worldwide. However, you can take advantage of it if you live in the US, UK, Canada, Switzerland, or one of the countries in the European Union today.

Why do I have to sign an “Authorization form”?

Incogni works within the legal framework provided by GDPR and CCPA. Both have provisions for requesting that personal information be deleted from specific databases.

The legal concept behind this is the data’s owner’s “right to be forgotten.” That’s why owners can officially appeal to ask for their data to be permanently deleted.

However, the request is valid only when the data owner or a legally appointed person sends it personally. Therefore, Incogni cannot help you with the data brokers unless you give it the legal authority to act on your behalf. Your official consent legally validates Incogni’s request.

Otherwise, the request is fake as far as the law is concerned.

Signing the authorization form allows Incogni to contact data brokers and send data deletion requests. It also allows Incogni to escalate requests to local data protection authorities if the data broker refuses to play fair. This authorization becomes void once every request is processed and confirmed.

Is Incgoni worth using? Verdict

There is a lot of personal information drifting around the digital ether. Maybe you had no clue until now, but it’s all out there. The world’s data brokers know where you are, who you are, your marital situation, your shopping habits, and many more things.

While your digital rights in many countries empower you to prevent this from happening to you, the process is exceedingly cumbersome. For most people, it’s impossible even to try it if only because they’re unaware of what is going on. And those who do know will rarely have the time, resources, and expertise to do it themselves. That’s why Incogni is so valuable.

Incongi turns a practically impossible process into a piece of cake for an affordable fee. While Incogni might not be as good as Surfshark in its field, it is a handy new tool. So, no, it’s not the whole solution, but digital security has never had silver bullets. Nevertheless, it’s an excellent first step that we recommend wholeheartedly to any internet user who values privacy and the right to be forgotten.

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