New Zealand Latest NewsLinks from Around the Web

PC World - 8 Nov (PC World)

At a glanceExpert`s Rating Pros Highly automated and effective data removal Extremely easy to use Transparent removal tracking and progress Strong privacy standards Cons Verification of data removals is limited Ultimate plans are expensive Our Verdict Incogni’s automated data removal service expertly leverages privacy laws to compel data brokers to delete your personal information across hundreds of sites. The service is easy to use, secure, and effective at large-scale data deletion, though users must extend some level of faith in its confirmation process and pay a premium for the full feature set. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today 1 month$15.98/month12 months$95 ($7.99.mo)See all plans & pricing at Incogni Incogni in brief: Data removal sites: 420+, plus an additional 2,000+ custom removals Data removed information: Yes, for every site Identity monitoring: No Free version available: No Cost: $15.98 per month, or $95 for one year Most people are unaware of just how much of their data is out on the web available for anyone to buy and sell. Most of this is done by data-aggregator and data-broker websites which hoover up as much info as possible about as many people as possible. They then match this data to each individual to create personal profiles that are then packaged and sold online. There are so many of these data-broker sites now that it’s nearly impossible to remove your data from each on your own. As a result, a number of personal data-removal services have cropped up to help customers with this process. Incogni, from the famous VPN Surfshark, is probably the most famous and popular data-removal service—at the time of this writing it has processed over 245 million removal requests It makes the entire process of removing your data from these sites easy and effective. All requests are automated and the service even continually sends new requests to make sure your data never reappears in the future. What are Incogni’s features and services? Incogni is a personal data-removal service that delivers in an easy and automated format. Using its database of more than 420 data-broker websites, it sends removal requests on your behalf and requests that your data be added to suppression lists so it doesn’t reappear, and follows up every 60 to 90 days for as long as you’re subscribed. The service takes advantage of privacy laws in both the U.S. and EU to force data brokers into compliance. It leverages these legal frameworks in a really clever way too—the removal of your personal data is not only a request, but actually a compulsory legal requirement. All of the removal requests and their progress can be found under the Dashboard in your Incogni account on its website. Each request is shown as “In progress” or “Completed” based on whether the data broker has processed and confirmed the removal. Incogni shows detailed information relating to each removal request including when it was processed and completed, plus what data was removed. Sam Singleton You can click on the drop-down next to each request to see more detailed information including the data removed and a summary of the data-broker site itself. Each request comes with a unique ID and shows the last time it was updated and the average resolution time for the request as well. Incogni will follow-up with additional removal requests periodically to ensure your data doesn’t reappear on that site in the future. If you opt for the Ultimate or Family Ultimate plans, you’ll also gain access to Incogni’s Custom Removals feature. With this tool you can manually add your own data broker or public search sites not covered by the service’s automatic removals. When I reached out to Incogni about this tool, a representative assured me that each individual Custom Removal request is personally handled by an Incogni agent. As far as I know, there is no other service on the market that gives its customers the same individualized attention. That alone should be applauded. Incogni’s Custom removals are easy to set up and each request receives individualized attention. Incogni Custom removals can also cover sites outside of data brokers and traditional public search sites. This includes business and company information sites, legal resources, limited court record sites, and more. Not everything can be removed, but Incogni will give it a try if it can. As you are allowing Incogni to handle a lot of highly personal data, you want to make sure your data is in safe hands. According to its privacy policy, Incogni only shares your personal data to process a removal request with each data broker. It does not sell, nor ever has sold, the personal data of customers. It complies with all personal rights according to U.S. and EU data protection laws. Customer data is only retained for a maximum of 12 months after you cancel the service. Finally, Incogni underwent a third-party security audit by Deloitte in August 2025 and the firm gave it a successful third-party assurance rating. These all lead me to believe that Incogni is doing its part to maintain the integrity of the vast user data it’s privy to. How much does Incogni cost? Incogni offers four subscription tiers: Standard, Unlimited, Family, and Family Unlimited. Each tier is offered in either a monthly plan or annual plan. The Standard and Family plans are nearly identical, as are the Unlimited and Family Unlimited. Opting for the “family” versions of each provides the same service for up to five members on a single plan. The Standard plan is offered for $15.98 per month or $95 annually (at $7.99 per month), which is a 50 percent discount. With the Standard plan you get access to automated removal requests for over 420 data broker sites, up to three different emails, phone numbers, and addresses per person, plus recurring removals as long as your subscription lasts. The Ultimate plan is $29.98 per month or $179 annually (at $14.99 per month). If you opt for the Ultimate plan, you’ll get everything from the Standard plan plus unlimited custom removal requests for over 2,000 additional sites, plus live phone support. While the monthly price does seem expensive, the annual plans are much more affordable. Additionally, while data brokers have between 30 and 45 days to respond to a removal request, Incogni will continue to finish up any outstanding removals even if your subscription runs out. Incogni also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee on all plans, which is even more incentive to give it a try if you’re curious. Incogni: Getting started You can add up to three emails, addresses, and phone numbers to your Incogni profile. Incogni Getting started with Incogni is pretty straightforward. After sign-up you can create your account and begin entering your personal data. This includes emails, addresses, phone numbers, and names or aliases you may be associated with, plus your birth date. The service allows each user to enter up to three emails, phone numbers, and home addresses—each email needs to be verified though. I would recommend that everyone take advantage of this and fill up these extra data points, even if you haven’t used these old addresses or numbers in a long time. Old data has a funny way of following you around years or even decades later. After you enter in this information, Incogni will ask you to grant it the power to make requests on your behalf and away you go. Incogni will take over at this point and begin automatically sending out removal requests to known data-broker sites. You can see each request and its progress on the dashboard. The number of requests will balloon quickly. Just on my first day alone Incogni had sent out 585 requests, and each time I reloaded the page more and more were marked as completed. I received a few emails such as this directly from data brokers confirming my data was removed.Sam Singleton Once the requests begin, you may receive some emails from data brokers themselves verifying that they have removed your data from their sites. For me personally, I only received two or three over the course of a few weeks. The vast majority of these verification emails are sent directly to Incogni so you won’t be spammed. How are Incogni’s results over time? From day one Incogni was showing results. This honestly surprised me as data brokers have a month or more to respond to data removal requests. Additionally, Incogni itself shows the “Average resolution time” for each data broker under the Requests tab and most of them have averages in the two to three week range. Still, after just 24 hours I already had multiple pages of completed removals. Flash forward to a month later and I now have 743 requests sent, 662 removals completed, and 81 still in progress. The Incogni Dashboard shows a graph displaying requests, time saved, and suppression list entries. Sam Singleton A neat little addition that Incogni includes on the dashboard is the amount of “Time saved” which is based on an estimate of how long it would take to submit each request manually. In just this short amount of time it claims to have saved me over 496 hours—which amounts to an insane amount of overtime I’d have had to put in just to do this myself. Another useful thing that Incogni does is request not only that your data be removed, but also a request to suppress your data. This means that a data broker has agreed to never re-collect any of your personal information in the future. As of the time of writing, I have 102 suppression list entries, meaning that I’ll never have to worry about those sites collecting my data again. This is, at least, in theory. While I can dig into the requests page and see which brokers are suppressing my data, I would need to individually reach out to each to confirm this. Something that I, and most other people don’t have the time to do. It should be noted that while Incogni does not verify that your data has been removed on private data broker sites, it does verify removals on public search sites. In fact, this is the inherent problem with Incogni’s service: As most removal confirmations are sent to Incogni, you have to trust that the data it claims it removed has actually been removed. Of course, Incogni isn’t the only personal data-removal service that has this problem—it’s inherent to the entire industry. To Incogni’s credit, they do this on purpose so that you aren’t spammed with hundreds, or even thousands, of removal confirmation emails. Out of curiosity, I visited a few public search sites at random from the list of those confirmed to be removed by Incogni just to check if my data was truly wiped. All except one, Spokeo, had indeed removed any trace of me from their website. Spokeo still had a profile on me, but due to it being behind a paywall I wasn’t able to verify what data it had. This isn’t exactly an issue with Incogni’s service, rather these public search sites that don’t agree to suppression often re-add profiles over time. Incogni tries to keep these recurrences to a minimum by periodically resubmitting new removal requests. And indeed, a new pending request by Incogni was already underway for Spokeo when I checked. Incogni occassionally asks you to verify records it found that may be associated with you in order to further enhance its services. Sam Singleton At the top of the Incogni Dashboard, I occasionally found a red banner indicating that Incogni found additional records that might belong to me. When I clicked on the banner, it took me to a “Verify your record” screen where I was asked to double-check some possible aliases that Incogni had identified as potential matches. Most of these were only tangentially related to me—same first name, similar ages, etc. Some of them were obviously not me with completely different info that left me baffled as to why they would be potential matches. When I questioned Incogni about this they said that the record verification tool is constantly learning and improving upon itself. As it’s still relatively new, it may produce results that seem puzzling. They assured me that over time—and with enough user input—the tool would become much more precise. So for now, users have an incentive to sort through the head-scratchers in order to improve the algorithm and receive more accurate results in the future. What data does Incogni remove? Incogni checks for personal data on both public search sites as well as private data brokers. As mentioned previously, this list currently totals over 420 sites. The type of information that Incogni sends removal requests for include any current or former names, physical addresses, email addresses, and phone numbers associated with you. The more information you provide to Incogni, the more effective it is at removing all of your data. This is why it’s always a good idea to fill in all available physical address, email, and phone number slots allowed on your profile in Incogni. For public search sites, Incogni checks for your information first, then sends a removal request. Once the removal has been confirmed, Incogni verifies the removal and provides you with all of the information removed. As for private data brokers, the process is a little trickier. These companies have the ability to stock up a lot more data on an individual user and generally keep their practices (and clients) hidden. Consequently, it’s next to impossible for Incogni to verify your data with these sites. Instead, it takes a shotgun approach by sending out mass removal requests to all the private data brokers it tracks, requesting that your data be removed. It doesn’t check that your data has been removed; it just marks the status as “Completed” when the broker confirms the removal. While this might seem unreliable, most of these data brokers are located in the U.S. or EU where there are massive fines for mishandling removal requests thanks to laws such as the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act). Therefore, it’s safe to assume that these removal confirmation responses that Incogni receives are true. Is Incogni worth it? Yes, Incogni is absolutely worth using for anyone who values their privacy. Keeping personal info off the internet is an important step in combating identity theft, scammers, harassment, and more. Incogni automates the entire process making it dead simple to use—it’s as easy as just setting and forgetting. It can be hard to justify another monthly (or yearly) subscription in today’s world, but the payoff in privacy with Incogni can be huge. I do wish that there was a way to see removal confirmations from each site rather than just trusting Incogni that it received them on your behalf. Still, that’s a minor gripe and if you put in the legwork you can probably verify this yourself. Overall, the service works quickly and efficiently to remove and suppress data brokers from collecting and selling your personal information. When it comes to data-removal services, Incogni is the one to beat. Editor’s note: Because online services are often iterative, gaining new features and performance improvements over time, this review is subject to change in order to accurately reflect the current state of the service. Any changes to text or our final review verdict will be noted at the top of this article. Read...

Computing