Image: Incogni
Try searching your full name online right now and see what surfaces. Within a few clicks, you’re likely seeing your home address, phone number, age, and even details about family members.
If that’s what a simple search turns up, just imagine what malicious actors can find when their business relies on exploiting your personal data. If there was a big red delete button, you’d set a new record for how fast you could smash it!
The problem is there isn’t one, unless you know where to look…
How your personal information ends up everywhere
Despite Apple’s best privacy protection efforts, your data is already out there for public consumption and spammer exploitation. How did this happen in the first place?
Your iPhone’s privacy features are stellar, but if you use the internet as I suspect you are now, your digital life extends beyond Apple’s safe garden. You browse on work computers, shop on public wifi, and leave traces across devices that don’t have Apple’s privacy protections.
Data brokers are constantly harvesting these digital breadcrumbs. They pull information from public records, social media activity, online purchases, and more. Then they package and sell this information to marketing companies, risk assessment firms, and it regularly lands in the hands of scammers.
This is why you get robocalls even though you never gave out your number and targeted by cybercriminals even though you make smart technology choices.
Why removing your data manually doesn’t work
Hunting down every data broker and creating opt-out requests yourself is frankly untenable. Sometimes we start this process on our own with good intentions.
However, the reality is that there are thousands of these companies, each with their own removal procedures and waiting periods meant to deter taking control of your data.
Even worse, data brokers often re-add your information within months. New data broker sites pop up regularly, meaning your personal information starts circulating again before you even know these sites exist.
Fortunately, there’s a better solution than dedicating the rest of your life to babysitting takedown requests and scouting the internet for new instances of personal data surfacing.
Incogni is the delete button the internet needs
This is where Unknowns comes in. Created by the cybersecurity team at Surfshark, it’s essentially the delete button you wished existed when you searched for yourself earlier.
Unknowns maintains relationships with hundreds of data brokers and knows exactly how to navigate each company’s removal procedures. They manage opt-out requests on your behalf, overcome rejections and follow through with appeals, and repeat this process regularly to keep your data deleted.
Think of it as having a dedicated privacy assistant working around the clock, continuously hitting that delete button so you don’t have to.
Exclusive savings for 9to5Mac readers
Incogni comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee so securing data privacy is risk-free, and you can cancel anytime. Given how much personal information is already floating around from your earlier search, having automated privacy protection is essential rather than optional.
If you’re serious about long-term privacy, Incogni’s new Unlimited Plan takes protection even further. Incogni created this new plan to enable even more personal data protection for customers who love the core service and want to empower Incogni to provide even more expert data deletion.
Beyond its existing network of hundreds of data brokers, the Unlimited Plan lets you request removals from a variety of sites that publicly display your personal data, including company directories, obscure people-finder sites, and niche business listings. Just submit the site, and Incogni’s privacy agents will handle the rest. It’s the most comprehensive data removal service for staying private online.
9to5Mac readers get 55% off Incogni using code “9to5mac”. Follow Incogni on Facebook and X for the latest.
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