Incogni vs DeleteMe vs Optery (2026): Which Data Removal Service Is Worth It?

Disclosure: our Optery links on this page are affiliate links, so we may earn a commission if you buy a paid Optery plan, at no extra cost to you. Our Incogni and DeleteMe links are plain links and earn us nothing. Optery is ranked where it is because of the Consumer Reports result below, and its commission did not set the order. See our affiliate disclosure.

By Lennit Herrera, founder and editor, Shielded Browsing  ·  Last updated October 3, 2026

The verdict: these three services sell the same promise and deliver it three different ways, and the right one depends on what you are actually trying to fix. Optery has the strongest independent evidence: its Ultimate plan removed 68% of tracked people-search profiles within four months in Consumer Reports’ study, the best result of any paid service, and its free tier shows you your exposure before you pay a cent. Incogni is the cheapest way to cover the most brokers, at $95.88 for the first year across 420+ brokers, and it is the only one of the three whose coverage and repeat-request claims have been checked by an outside auditor (Deloitte). DeleteMe costs the most per person, scored the weakest in the same Consumer Reports test (27% at four months), and what it sells instead is a managed case with human experts, quarterly reports and 40 custom removal requests a year. If you want results you can see, start with Optery’s free scan. If you want breadth on a budget, Incogni. If you want a person to escalate to, DeleteMe.

Prices, plan limits and site counts on this page were re-read at Incogni’s, DeleteMe’s and Optery’s own pricing pages on October 3, 2026. Help-centre and policy details were read on September 27, 2026 unless a line says otherwise. Removal-rate figures come from Consumer Reports’ published study and Deloitte’s published assurance report, not from us. We do not test these services ourselves.

On this page

• The short answer
• Side-by-side comparison
• Three different ideas of what “removal” means
• Coverage: what the site counts actually mean
• The evidence: Consumer Reports and Deloitte
• Pricing, line by line
• Custom removals and human help
• Reports and proof of removal
• Where each one works
• Who you are trusting with your data
• Refunds and cancellation
• The head-to-heads: Incogni vs DeleteMe, Optery vs Incogni, Optery vs DeleteMe
• Which one should you choose?
• What none of them can do
• How we researched this comparison
• Frequently asked questions

The short answer

• Optery — best measured results, and the only useful free tier. Paid plans from $39 a year, but the 68% figure belongs to the $249 Ultimate plan. Read our full Optery review →
• Incogni — best value for broad, automated coverage, with one flat family plan for up to five people at $191.88. No independent removal rate exists for it. Read our full Incogni review →
• DeleteMe — best if you want human handling, a case file and a phone number to call. The weakest measured removal rate of the three, and the highest per-person price.

If you want the wider field, including EasyOptOuts, which beat all three on price, our data removal services comparison covers 12 services. This page is the three-way fight most people are actually choosing between.

Side-by-side comparison

Prices are US, verified October 3, 2026. Removal rates are from Consumer Reports’ Data Defense study (published August 8, 2024), which did not include Incogni.

Three different ideas of what “removal” means

All three work from the same legal footing. US state privacy laws and the people-search sites’ own opt-out processes let you demand that a broker delete your profile, but you have to ask each one, prove it is you, and ask again when they buy fresh data and rebuild it. The services differ in who does the asking and how often.

Incogni is a request machine. You hand over your details once, and its software sends deletion requests to 420+ data brokers, then re-sends them every 60 days to people-search sites and every 90 days to private databases unless a broker has already put you on its suppression list. Incogni’s own FAQ is candid that a large part of its list is private brokers: databases you cannot search, so neither you nor Incogni can show you a before-and-after. You are buying a process, not a screenshot. A human only gets involved on the Unlimited plans, where its privacy specialists handle custom removals you point them at.

DeleteMe is a managed service. Its help centre describes “DeleteMe experts” sending opt-out requests on your behalf, a first Privacy Report within seven days, then reports on your plan’s schedule. The platform was redesigned in May 2026 with automated scanning and matching and a rule that a listing is only marked “Removed” after DeleteMe has verified it is gone. The human layer is the product: email, chat and phone support, and custom removal requests on every consumer plan.

Optery is a ladder. Free Basic scans and shows you screenshots of every profile it finds, and you do the removals yourself with its guides. Core ($39 a year) is fully automated with no human assigned. Extended and Ultimate add an assigned Privacy Agent for special cases, before-and-after screenshot reports roughly every 90 days, and on Ultimate, unlimited custom removals. Optery’s pricing page labels the top two tiers “Humans + Machines” and Core “fully automated”, which is more honest than most of the category manages.

Coverage: what the site counts actually mean

Every service in this category leads with a big number, and the three numbers here are not measuring the same thing.

Incogni: 420+, verified. Deloitte’s assurance report, dated August 6, 2025, concluded that as of July 18, 2025 nothing had come to its attention to suggest Incogni covered fewer than 420 data brokers with deletion requests, received removal confirmations from fewer than 420, or failed to send recurring requests at the 60- and 90-day intervals it advertises. That is a “limited assurance” engagement under ISAE 3000, not an audit of whether your specific profile came down, but it is the only outside check on a coverage claim any of the three has. The 3,000+ “additional sites” figure is different: those are sites Incogni will attempt for you through custom removals on Unlimited plans, not sites it covers automatically.

DeleteMe: 850+, unlisted. Its help centre says it removes information from “850+ data broker sites”, then adds that “it’s not just about chasing a big number” and that the focus is the major players like Whitepages, BeenVerified and MyLife. The one list DeleteMe actually publishes, “Sites we remove from on the Standard US plan” (updated August 6, 2026), names roughly 100 domains, nearly all of them people-search sites. The Premium plan adds 15 more data broker sites and access to business data brokers. We could not find a public list that reconciles 100 with 850, so treat the headline as scope, not a promise.

Optery: 380+ to 635+, with a catch. Each tier states its own count, which we like. The catch is that those counts assume Expanded Reach is switched on. Without it, Core drops from 380+ to 150+, Extended from 560+ to 330+, and Ultimate from 635+ to 405+. Expanded Reach is a free add-on that covers brokers which “do not yet meet Optery’s rigorous removal verification standards”; enabling it means signing a limited power of attorney, and Optery’s own help page warns it “may send your personal info (e.g. full name, city and state) to data brokers that didn’t have it in the first place.” Read that page before you flip the switch. Ultimate’s “950+ sites total” adds custom removal targets to the automated list, the same way Incogni’s 3,000+ does.

One more Core-specific limit that matters more than any site count: Core supports one name and one city and state per person. A maiden name, a nickname variant or a previous address will be missed. Extended and Ultimate support unlimited names and cities.

The evidence: Consumer Reports and Deloitte

There is exactly one independent, published head-to-head test of people-search removal services. In Data Defense: Evaluating People-Search Site Removal Services (Consumer Reports with Tall Poppy, August 2024), 32 volunteers were enrolled in seven paid services or a manual opt-out control group, and their profiles on 13 people-search sites were checked at one week, one month and four months. The table below is copied from the report’s Table 2.

Four things to take from that table, in order of how much they should change your decision:

1. Optery’s 68% is the best paid result, but it is the $249 Ultimate plan. Nobody has measured Core at $39, and Core is a materially different product: fully automated, one name, one city, no agent. Optery’s own statement on the study (July 24, 2026) argues that 13 sites is a narrow sample and that participants did not enable optional features, both of which are fair, and neither of which changes the ranking.
2. DeleteMe’s 27% is the number its marketing never mentions. At $129 it was more than six times the price of EasyOptOuts for well under half the measured removals. Consumer Reports classed it a “midlevel performer” alongside IDX and Kanary. DeleteMe’s platform was rebuilt in 2026, and the study is two years old, so the figure may no longer describe the current product. It is still the only measurement that exists.
3. Incogni has no independent removal rate at all. What it has instead is Deloitte’s limited assurance that it covers the brokers it says it covers, re-sends requests on the schedule it says it does, and had processed more than 245 million requests from January 2022 to July 2025. Those are process claims. None of them tells you what share of your profiles will actually disappear. Every “Incogni wins” verdict you will read elsewhere, including the ones written by Incogni’s parent company, is ranking it on coverage and price, not measured outcomes.
4. The manual control group beat every paid service, at 70%. Across the 332 profiles tracked on the paid services, only 35% (117) were gone at four months. Counting all 379 profiles in the study, manual group included, 150 were removed, and 119 of those, almost 80%, came down in the first week. Removal is front-loaded, which is a reason to read the one-week column before the four-month one.

Pricing, line by line

All figures are US prices read from each provider’s pricing page on October 3, 2026. Optery’s page was also advertising the promo code FALL2026 for 20% off at checkout that day. Promotions change, so the table shows list prices.

Three pricing traps, one per service.

• Incogni’s yearly price is a first-year price. The pricing page shows $95.88 struck through from a $191.76 list price, and its checkout copy reads “Billed [price] for the first year. Then [price] annually.” Assume the renewal is the list price unless the page shows otherwise when you buy, and note that its own page metadata still advertises “from $6.49 per month”, a figure no plan on the page matches. Paying monthly costs $191.76 a year, exactly double.
• DeleteMe’s price is per person, and there is no monthly option. $129 is one person for one year, on a card, auto-renewing. Two people is $229, not $258, and four people is $329, which works out to about $82 each. The two-year terms are the only real discount: $209 for one person is $8.71 a month, cheaper than the one-year rate.
• Optery’s monthly billing is the expensive way to buy the cheap plan. Core is $39 a year or $47.88 if you pay $3.99 monthly; Ultimate is $249 or $299.88. And the plan you have heard about, the one with the 68% result, is the $249 one, not the $39 one.

Per-person maths for households. Incogni Family covers up to five people for a flat $191.88 in the first year, about $38 a person if you fill every seat, and Family Unlimited covers five for $275.88 with custom removals for each member. DeleteMe’s four-person plan is $329, about $82 each, or $499 for two years, about $62 per person per year. Optery has no flat family price. Instead, linked accounts earn a discount on every paid plan: 20% off for two paid plans, 25% for three and 30% for four or more, per Optery’s family-plan help article, and not combinable with promo codes. Five people on Core is 5 x $39 x 0.70 = $136.50 a year, under Incogni Family’s $191.88, and five on Extended is 5 x $149 x 0.70 = $520.80. Two people on Core is 2 x $39 x 0.80 = $62.40. Two caveats stop that from being a clean win for Optery: the 68% result was measured on Ultimate, not Core, and Core allows one name and one city per person. Five people on Ultimate would be 5 x $249 x 0.70 = $871.50, far above anything Incogni or DeleteMe charges.

Custom removals and human help

A custom removal is you finding your own profile on a site the service does not cover automatically, and asking them to deal with it. It is the feature that separates “software that sends forms” from “a service that handles your case”, and the three price it very differently.

DeleteMe includes it on every consumer plan: 40 requests a year on Standard, 60 on Premium. Its help centre says it will verify the listing, submit the opt-out, track it until it is gone, and keep monitoring afterwards. It also says plainly that “not every site allows third-party removals”, that some will require you to act directly, and that “no service can remove you from 100% of sites”. Support is by email, chat and phone.

Incogni gates it behind Unlimited ($179.88 first year, or $275.88 for the family version). There, custom requests are unlimited, its privacy specialists work sites and search results outside the Standard list, and you get live phone support. On Standard there is no way to point Incogni at a site it missed.

Optery gates it behind Ultimate ($249), where it is unlimited across 950+ sites, but only after your first 30 days. Extended gets an assigned Privacy Agent for “special circumstances” but no custom requests. Core gets no human at all.

If custom removals are the reason you are buying, DeleteMe Standard at $129 is the cheapest way to get them with a person attached. If you need them unlimited, Incogni Unlimited at $179.88 undercuts Optery Ultimate at $249, though Optery’s Ultimate is the plan with the measured 68%.

Reports and proof of removal

This is where Optery earns its price. Its exposure reports and removals reports carry live screenshots of each profile it found and, on Extended and Ultimate, a before-and-after report about every 90 days. Even the free tier shows you the screenshots. You do not have to take “removed” on trust.

DeleteMe’s first Privacy Report arrives within seven days and, on Standard, quarterly after that (bi-monthly on Premium). Its help centre is careful to say the first report “is not an indication that we’ve removed your information” but a status update on what is being done, broken down site by site with found / in progress / completed states. Since the 2026 redesign, DeleteMe says it verifies a listing is gone before marking it removed.

Incogni sends monthly progress reports and a dashboard of requests sent, in progress and completed. Because much of its list is private brokers whose databases you cannot search, a large share of “completed” will always be a broker’s confirmation rather than something you can see. That is inherent to the job Incogni has chosen, not a flaw in its reporting, but it is why we would not buy Incogni to fix a specific Spokeo listing that is bothering you.

Where each one works

• Incogni: residents of the US (including Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands), Canada, the EU, Switzerland, the UK, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, on one plan.
• DeleteMe: the US plans are “U.S. residents only”. Separate consumer plans exist for Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, the Republic of Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Singapore and the United Kingdom (help centre, updated September 14, 2026). You pick a country at sign-up, so a person with exposure in two countries needs two subscriptions.
• Optery: the US, Canada (our Optery review notes Quebec is excluded), Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. No EU or UK coverage.

For anyone in the EU or UK, the choice is Incogni or DeleteMe’s country plan. For Australia or Canada, all three are options. For South Africa or New Zealand, Optery is the only one of the three.

Who you are trusting with your data

To remove your data, each of these companies needs a copy of it: full name, past names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, date of birth, and on some plans a limited power of attorney. So who they are, and what their policies allow, is not a footnote.

Incogni is operated by Incogni Inc. of Mission Viejo, California, with Surfshark B.V. in Amsterdam as its EU representative. Its own FAQ says it “is owned by Surfshark” and “is today part of one group together with NordVPN”, which means the company behind our Surfshark review and NordVPN review is the same group. Its privacy policy (last updated September 8, 2026) keeps service data for up to 24 months after you stop using the service, or until you ask for deletion, and says that in a merger, acquisition or sale of the business it “may share personal data with the involved third parties (e.g., the buyer, their agents, and advisors) to help complete the transaction.” Deloitte’s report also tested, and found nothing to contradict, Incogni’s assertion that no income was derived from the sale of customer data.

DeleteMe is built by Abine, Inc., headquartered in Boston, and its own About page says it was created in 2010. On July 30, 2026 it acquired Permission Slip, the consumer privacy app built by Consumer Reports, which is worth knowing when you read Consumer Reports’ 2024 study: the study predates the deal by two years, and the deal does not change its numbers. Consumer Reports flagged in that study that DeleteMe’s privacy policy then in force allowed it to “sell, transfer, or otherwise share some or all of our business or assets, including your personal information” in a business transaction or bankruptcy. DeleteMe’s current policy lives at privacy.joindeleteme.com, a script-driven page that would not load for us on October 3, 2026, so we have not read the current wording and cannot tell you whether that clause is still there. Read the policy shown at checkout before you hand over your details.

Optery is Optery, Inc. of San Francisco. Its privacy policy (effective May 17, 2026) is the clearest of the three on the merger question: “If involved in a merger or acquisition, you will receive 30 days written notice via email with the option to delete your account before any data transfer.” Consumer Reports raised the transfer clause as a concern in 2024; the 30-day delete window is the answer to it. Optery’s help centre is also unusually frank that Expanded Reach can send your name, city and state to brokers that did not previously hold them, which is the kind of trade-off the other two do not spell out.

Refunds and cancellation

• Incogni: 30-day money-back on every plan; contact its 24/7 support within 30 days of signing up for a full refund. Auto-renewal can be switched off in account settings.
• DeleteMe: no fixed window. A full refund, “no questions asked”, if you cancel before your first Privacy Report (which arrives within seven days), and a pro-rated refund for unused time after that. Subscriptions auto-renew; a card is required at sign-up.
• Optery: 30-day money-back on paid plans, and a free tier that never asks for a card, so you can see your exposure report before deciding whether to pay at all.

DeleteMe’s pro-rated refund is the most generous of the three on paper, because it runs for the whole term rather than 30 days. Optery’s free tier is the most generous in practice, because it answers the question “do I even have a problem?” for nothing.

The head-to-heads

Incogni vs DeleteMe

This is the pairing most people search for, and the two products barely overlap. Incogni is automated, cheaper ($95.88 first year against $129, and $191.88 for five people against $329 for four), covers more brokers on paper, works across the EU and UK on one plan, and has Deloitte’s assurance that it does what it says. DeleteMe has humans, custom removals on the base plan, phone support, a quarterly report you can hand to someone, and a measured removal rate that, at 27%, is the reason we would not buy it for results alone. Pick Incogni for breadth and price, and for the private-broker end of the industry that no screenshot service shows you. Pick DeleteMe if you have a specific, stubborn exposure problem and want a named team on it. Neither has a useful free tier.

Optery vs Incogni

Optery wins on evidence and visibility: a 68% independent result on Ultimate, screenshots on every tier, and a free scan. Incogni wins on price for equivalent breadth ($95.88 against Optery Extended at $149 or Ultimate at $249), on European availability, on a simple flat family plan (Optery’s family discount can undercut it on Core, but Core is the untested tier), and on the private brokers Optery’s screenshot model cannot reach. The honest framing is that Optery proves it removed the profile you can see, and Incogni asserts it asked the brokers you cannot see. If you are in the US and want proof, Optery; if you want the widest net for the least money, or you live in Europe, Incogni. Run Optery’s free scan first either way; it costs nothing and tells you how big the problem is.

Optery vs DeleteMe

On the only independent measurement, this is not close: 68% against 27% at four months, with Optery’s $249 Ultimate against DeleteMe’s $129 Standard. Optery is also cheaper at the bottom ($39 Core, untested) and free at the very bottom. What DeleteMe offers that Optery does not is coverage in the UK and most of Western Europe, custom removals from $129 rather than $249, a phone line, and a full-term pro-rated refund. Optery, for its part, discounts linked family accounts by 20% to 30%, while DeleteMe sells fixed 2- and 4-person bundles. For a US individual who wants results, Optery. For someone outside Optery’s five countries, or who wants a person on the phone, DeleteMe is the human-handled option and Incogni the automated one.

Which one should you choose?

• You want to know if you even have a problem: Optery Free Basic. No card, screenshots of what it finds, and you can opt out by hand from there using its guides.
• You want the best evidence-backed result and are in the US: Optery Ultimate at $249, or Extended at $149 if you do not need custom removals. Do not buy Core expecting the 68%.
• You want the most brokers for the least money: Incogni Standard at $95.88 for the first year. Diarise the renewal.
• You are covering a household: two ways to read it. For a flat, simple price, Incogni Family covers up to five people for $191.88 in the first year. For the cheapest list price, Optery Core with the family discount comes to $136.50 for five (30% off), but nobody has measured Core, and it allows one name and one city per person. DeleteMe at $82 a head for four people is the most expensive route.
• You have a specific listing, a harassment situation or a name that trips automation: DeleteMe Standard at $129, for the custom requests, the phone line and the case file. Or Incogni Unlimited at $179.88 if you want unlimited custom requests and are happy without a quarterly report.
• You live in the EU or UK: Incogni, or DeleteMe’s country plan. Optery does not cover you.
• You are in California: read about the state’s free Delete Request and Opt-out Platform (DROP) before paying anyone; it changes the maths for people-search removals.

What none of them can do

All three remove you from data brokers and people-search sites. None of them can delete a Google result whose source is not a broker, scrub a news article, take down your own social media posts, or claw back data that was in a breach and is already circulating. DeleteMe’s own FAQ puts the Google point well: Google “does not have the file containing your personal information, nor can it delete the file”; only the source site can. Optery’s Ultimate tier includes a tool for asking Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and Yahoo to drop outdated cached copies, which is useful after a source is gone, but it is not a way to remove live pages.

Removal is also never finished. Consumer Reports notes that information sometimes “gets removed but then reappears weeks or months later”, although the study itself did not test for reappearance. That is why every plan here re-checks on a schedule, and the manual control group, having done the work by hand in week one, still saw information “on some of the 13 people-search sites at the one-week, one-month, and four-month intervals” without exception. Budget for the year, not the first month, and pair removal with the basics in our guide to staying anonymous online and a password manager for the accounts brokers scrape.

How we researched this comparison

We compared the three services against their own pricing pages, help centres and published policies (prices on October 3, 2026; help-centre and policy text on September 27), and against the two independent documents that exist: Consumer Reports’ Data Defense study (August 8, 2024) and Deloitte’s ISAE 3000 limited assurance report on Incogni (August 6, 2025). DeleteMe’s pricing page loads its prices with a script, so we rendered it in a browser to read the multi-person and two-year figures rather than quoting a third party. We do not run hands-on tests of removal services, and we compared three services out of the roughly 12 in our wider data removal roundup; where a performance figure appears on this page it is Consumer Reports’ or Deloitte’s, and linked. Where a claim could not be verified, we say so rather than fill the gap.

Primary sources: Incogni pricing · Incogni privacy policy · Deloitte ISAE 3000 report · DeleteMe pricing · DeleteMe Standard-plan site list · DeleteMe refund policy · DeleteMe international plans · DeleteMe About page · DeleteMe’s Permission Slip announcement · Optery pricing · Optery family plans · Optery on Expanded Reach · Optery privacy policy · Consumer Reports, Data Defense (PDF).

Frequently asked questions

Is Incogni better than DeleteMe?

For automated breadth and price, yes: 420+ brokers for $95.88 in the first year against DeleteMe’s $129, with Deloitte’s assurance behind the coverage claim. For human handling, custom removals on the base plan and phone support, DeleteMe. Only DeleteMe has an independent removal rate, and it is a weak one (27% at four months), so “better” depends on whether you value a measured result or a managed service.

Is Optery better than Incogni?

Optery has the evidence Incogni lacks: 68% of tracked profiles removed at four months on its Ultimate plan in Consumer Reports’ study, plus screenshots proving each removal. Incogni is cheaper for equivalent breadth, has far better family pricing, covers the EU and UK, and reaches private brokers that Optery’s screenshot model does not. Incogni has never been independently measured.

Which data removal service actually works?

In the only independent test, EasyOptOuts (65%) and Optery Ultimate (68%) worked best, DeleteMe, IDX and Kanary were mid-table (27% to 40%), and ReputationDefender and Confidently barely moved the needle. A manual opt-out control group reached 70%. Incogni was not tested. No service reached 100%, and profiles reappear, so “works” means “keeps re-removing”, not “solves it once”.

How much do Incogni, DeleteMe and Optery cost?

Incogni Standard is $95.88 for the first year ($7.99 a month) or $15.98 month-to-month; Unlimited is $179.88; Family is $191.88 for five people. DeleteMe is $129 a year for one person, $229 for two, $329 for four, with two-year terms at $209, $349 and $499, and no monthly option. Optery is free for the scan, then $39, $149 or $249 a year, or $3.99, $14.99 or $24.99 monthly. All read at the vendors’ pricing pages on October 3, 2026.

Does Incogni’s price go up after the first year?

Its pricing page shows the $95.88 Standard price struck through from $191.76, and its checkout text is phrased as a first-year price followed by an annual renewal price. We read that as the renewal being the list price unless you see otherwise at checkout. Turn off auto-renewal in your account if you do not want to find out the hard way.

Can I use DeleteMe or Optery outside the United States?

DeleteMe sells separate plans for Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Singapore and the UK. Optery covers the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Incogni covers the US, Canada, the EU, Switzerland, the UK, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein on a single plan.

Is it safe to give these companies my personal information?

You cannot use any of them without doing so. What you can do is read the merger clause. Optery gives 30 days’ written notice and a chance to delete your account before any transfer. Incogni’s policy allows sharing with a buyer to complete a transaction. DeleteMe’s 2024 policy allowed transfer in a sale or bankruptcy, which Consumer Reports flagged; we could not load its current policy, so check it before you sign up. Also note who owns what: Incogni is a Surfshark product in the same group as NordVPN, and DeleteMe now owns Consumer Reports’ former Permission Slip app.

Bottom line

Run Optery’s free scan first, whichever service you end up paying. If it shows a real problem and you are in the US, Optery Ultimate is the only plan with a strong independent result behind it, and Extended is the sensible step down. If you want breadth for the money, or you are covering a family, or you live in Europe, Incogni is the pick, with the renewal price diarised. DeleteMe is for the person who wants a case handled by people and is willing to pay the most per person for the least measured result. On October 3, 2026, those are the trade-offs, and none of the three marketing pages will tell you all of them.

About the author. Shielded Browsing is written and edited by Lennit Herrera, who builds and audits websites for a living. He compares privacy products against their published terms, pricing and independent test results rather than marketing claims, and does not run hands-on tests. Corrections: hello@shieldedbrowsing.com.

Related reads

• Best data removal services of 2026 — 12 services compared, including EasyOptOuts
• Optery review — the free tier, the tiers, and what the 68% does and does not cover
• Incogni review — how the recurring-request model works and who it suits
• How to stay anonymous online — the habits that stop brokers rebuilding your profile
• Best family password managers — protect the accounts brokers scrape
• Is a free VPN safe? — the other “free” privacy trap

Run a business email address? Our free email spam checker tests your domain’s SPF, DKIM and DMARC records, the settings that stop scammers from sending email that looks like it came from you.