Anyone can find your home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, employment information, property value, and marital status, among many other personal information, by simply looking up your name on data broker sites. This threatens your safety and exposes you to identity theft and fraud, which can cause significant financial losses.
Want to remove your personal information from these websites? Apps like DeleteMe promise to find and remove your personal information from data broker’s websites–but how effective is DeleteMe at doing what it says it will do?
In this article, we review DeleteMe, exploring its product features and service offerings. We also share the pros and cons of DeleteMe and provide you with alternatives.
DeleteMe is a data removal service that removes your personal information from search engines and data broker sites. It uses data removal experts to search through data broker websites for your personal information and sends a request to broker sites that host your information for sale for deletion from their database.
How does DeleteMe work? DeleteMe first collects your information, such as name, gender, date of birth, home address, contact details, identification documents, and employer information.
It then combines manual and automatic processes to search through broker websites for your information and sends requests to each website to delete your information.
However, while DeleteMe claims to remove your personal information from broker sites, it primarily focuses on specific sites, which means that any of your information hosted on other broker sites not included in DeleteMe’s list may not be found by DeleteMe.
Now that we know a little about DeleteMe, let’s explore its features in more detail.
Annual pricing
Two-years pricing
DeleteMe has a 3.5/5 rating on G2. For some users, DeleteMe is a responsive platform that offers a great service, but a few other users have grievances about how the data they share with DeleteMe is protected and used, as they get even more spam emails from DeleteMe once they start using the app.
Also, DeleteMe users share that it is too expensive for the service it offers, and some say that they dislike the fact that they have to give out so much data to DeleteMe before they can remove the same data from data brokers' websites.
Here’s a user review from G2:
“It is costly, so everyone cannot afford it, you have to give all information first to remove your information, and the Cleanup report takes many days to receive.”
DeleteMe works using both manual processes involving humans and automatic processes to remove user data from data broker websites. However, its process is limited as using human experts to remove user data from websites causes delays and increases the risk of unwanted data exposure and privacy infringement.
Here are some of the best data privacy platforms for you if you’re looking to switch from DeleteMe or you’re simply looking for a good privacy app to try out:
Cloaked is a privacy-first platform that offers complete invisibility online, giving you optimal security while browsing the internet, shopping online, signing up for newsletters, or performing any other activity online. It creates virtual identities for users that mask details that can be used to identify them online, such as real working phone numbers and email addresses, so that you never have to give out your true email addresses or phone numbers again. You get access to phone numbers with two-way routing that you can use and cloak your personal phone number.
The Cloaked app also offers a password manager, a prominent feature DeleteMe lacks. This password manager integrates with both your browser and your mobile device, syncing perfectly, which means you can set complex and strong passwords to safeguard your online accounts without worrying about whether you will remember these passwords.
Also, Cloaked has an Identities feature, which can be used to create pseudo identities with working email addresses and phone numbers for your online accounts, and an AutoCloak feature that automatically changes passwords on your several online accounts in one click and at the same time. This is particularly useful in case of a compromise.
Key Features:
While DeleteMe is a retroactive privacy action, Cloaked protects your privacy proactively. Cloaked has robust features for user data privacy, ensuring that your private information never gets exposed again. From masked email addresses and phone numbers, which automatically create quasi-identities for users, to dedicated inboxes that protect users from email spam, Cloaked completely revolutionizes online privacy.
Cloaked also serves as a password manager app that creates unique passwords for users and manages users’ online accounts, identifying and changing weak and overused passwords to multiple accounts at once.
Try the best app for online data privacy
Incogni is a data removal platform that uses an automated process to remove user data from data broker sites. It covers all types of broker websites, from people search sites to recruitment and marketing data brokers.
Unlike DeleteMe, Incogni does not use human experts in its data removal process or offer custom data removal to its users.
Key Features:
Optery is a user data removal service that uses a US patent search technology to search for user data on multiple broker sites at the same time. It also has a dashboard that shows users the progress of their data removal progress, displaying completed removals, those in progress, and those that are still pending.
Optery, however, only has about 300 data broker websites that it scans for your information, while DeleteMe has a list of over 750 data broker websites.
Key Features:
Onerep is an AI-powered data removal service that uses fully automated processes to remove user data from broker sites. This data removal platform also allows users to enter their nicknames and aliases as part of the search information for a more in-depth search.
While Onerep is AI-powered, DeleteMe uses a mix of manual and automatic processes to remove user data from broker websites.
Key Features:
Kanary is a data removal service that supports collaboration between their team and users, allowing users to be involved in the data removal process. It also has a personalized dashboard that displays data removal progress and status.
Kanary gives you a progress report in 48 hours, while DeleteMe takes about 7 days. Also, Kanary scans broker sites for your information every month, while DeleteMe scans every 3 months.
Key Features:
Here are answers to some frequently asked questions on DeleteMe:
DeleteMe is not free, and for the service it offers, it is one of the more expensive user data removal services. If you want something with more robust functionality at an affordable price point, then you should try Cloaked, which starts at $15/mo and has a 14-day trial period.
Cloaked has more features included than DeleteMe particularly for proactive privacy management. Cloaked has a password manager that generates strong passwords for users’ online accounts. It also offers users invisibility online through quasi-emails and phone numbers that support anonymous texts and calls.
DeleteMe takes seven days to complete your data removal process and send you a report.
DeleteMe claims not to sell your information, but it shares your information with third-party apps that provide services such as customer support, analytics, and email delivery, among others.
DeleteMe can be a good option for removing your data online, but it comes at a cost that is too expensive for just removing your personal information from data broker sites–a process that is not even automated and is done only once in three months. But with Cloaked, you don’t even have to worry about your information getting exposed.
Cloaked offers several features for managing your online identities, such as an AutoCloak feature that automatically changes your passwords on several websites at once. It also has a feature for proxy identities by creating disposable emails and unlimited phone numbers for users that can be used everywhere online instead of using their true email addresses and contact details.
Want to stay completely secure online?