DeleteMe vs. Incogni

If you’ve ever used the internet, chances are some of your personal information has been spread around and landed on one or several data broker sites. This leaves you vulnerable to getting your personally identifiable information stolen and misused in more ways than we’d care to think about. Instead of worrying, we’ve got the perfect solution for you: Use a data removal service. That’s where websites like DeleteMe and Incogni come in. Both do an excellent job of removing personal and private information from data broker databases and people search sites to improve your personal digital security.

Of the many services out there, these two are among the most popular, so we decided to test, review, and compare both. In this article, we’ll show you how DeleteMe and Incogni stack up against each other based on user experience, security methods, costs, subscriptions, features, customer support, and more. Keep reading if you want to learn how to take back control of your personal data online.

Key Similarities

DeleteMe and Incogni both specialize in the removal of personal and private data online. The types of data they help remove include names, emails, phone numbers, addresses, occupations, relative names, and pretty much anything on a public database. We dug deep in our comparison between the two and found that DeleteMe and Incogni employ effective ways to scrub your data from data brokering and people search websites.

Both services provide regular updates and coverage for the entire length of your subscription. They also offer a wealth of free guides and resources to help you continue to protect your identity and data outside of their subscriptions and efforts. It’s also worth mentioning that neither DeleteMe nor Incogni offer free trials for their subscriptions — though DeleteMe does have a seven-day money-back guarantee. To simplify things even further, both DeleteMe and Incogni:

• Effectively search and remove your personal and private information from hundreds of data brokering websites
• Continue their service for the length of your subscription with regular reports and privacy updates
• Offer free guides and information for those looking to further protect themselves online

Key Differences

We found that the ways DeleteMe and Incogni begin to differ with how they remove your data from databases. DeleteMe really focuses on using human experts to check out where your data is being stored so they can then remove that data by hand.

On the other hand, Incogni uses a more automated process to find your data brokering information quickly and efficiently. Here are some of the biggest differences between DeleteMe and Incogni:

• DeleteMe’s data removal process is performed manually by human experts while Incogni’s process is more automated.
• The automated process of Incogni makes it a faster one on average than DeleteMe’s process.
• Incogni only covers about 170 sites while DeleteMe tackles over 750 websites.

DeleteMe and Incogni Company Overviews

DeleteMe was first launched in 2011 and has had a reputable part in major cybersecurity bills, such as the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights Act and the California Consumer Privacy Act. Both bills place requirements on data brokers to register with certain entities like the California government, as well as introduce an easy-to-use opt-out process that they must legally abide by.

This is really a positive move for cybersecurity laws. We found it to be impressive that DeleteMe was in favor of these bills given how making data brokers less of a threat does not benefit the company from a business perspective.

After hours of researching DeleteMe, its level of transparency stood out to us. We found that they are incredibly open about how they remove private data online. The team of experts backing DeleteMe spends countless hours going through each broker by hand to make sure as little of your private information as possible slips through the cracks.

The age of artificial intelligence has made the average consumer more skeptical than ever about fully automated processes. If you find yourself having any of those concerns, we cannot recommend DeleteMe enough. This data removal service has proven beyond any reasonable doubt that your data’s protection is best served by human hands.

On the other hand, Incogni is owned by Surfshark, who may sound familiar since they make one of the best VPNs available. We’ve personally tested Surfshark VPN and loved it, but does Incogni meet these quality standards? Well, just like DeleteMe, Incogni is committed to removing personal and private data brokering websites to greatly reduce the risk of online scams like fraud or identity theft.

However, unlike DeleteMe, we found that there is not as much information on the company’s origins and daily operations, which is somewhat fitting for a website all about preserving one’s privacy. This might not be a big deal, but we do appreciate it when a company is as transparent as possible even if it’s about its history and involvement in the industry.

Privacy Policies

Using websites like DeleteMe and Incogni to purge your online data from unwanted sources requires you to input that same data to those removal sites. This is big information to trust even the most secure websites with, but both DeleteMe and Incogni offer plenty of information to help you feel at ease with telling them what information you want to be removed from data broker sites.

DeleteMe offers an extensive privacy policy that goes over exactly what data they’ll be removing from these websites and every scenario where they will utilize your information.2 Incogni’s privacy policy functions similarly, while also having a comprehensive breakdown of all the different cookies the site uses.3

One thing that did stand out to us, was how much easier it was to go through Incogni’s privacy policy compared to DeleteMe’s policy. Incogni’s privacy policy doesn’t have any special highlights or summaries like some others we’ve seen, but something about how it’s formatted makes it less overwhelming to read.

This accessibility is something we look for in a privacy policy since it isn’t the most fun thing in the world to read. Whenever a policy is even slightly easier to read, it’s definitely something we appreciate. So, bonus points to Incogni for that.

User Experience

Ease of access is important for cybersecurity websites like DeleteMe and Incogni, especially in an age where so many struggle to keep up with the constantly updating entity that is the internet. User experience through a well-designed homepage and dashboard essentially functions as a user’s first impression on whether this is a service worth using. In that respect, DeleteMe and Incogni both made a strong first impression on us.

• Navigation: The websites for DeleteMe and Incogni are both fairly easy to use, being simple to navigate regardless of how experienced you are with the internet. Each of their homepages is sleek and simplistic in the best way. Everything you could possibly be looking for being just a click away. If you can’t find something specific, you’ll more than likely find it in the Q&A section for both or either site. Kudos to both for being user-friendly and having plenty of resources.

• Reporting: A much bigger difference between DeleteMe and Incogni can be seen in how they report their findings to their subscribers. All of DeleteMe’s reports are handcrafted and curated to tell you not only what sites have your data and what they removed but also a full breakdown of just about every statistic you’d need to know about the process. Incogni’s is admittedly much less comprehensive, with the report simply stating what data has been identified and that the removal process has begun. Both give quarterly reports just like our favorite identity theft protection services with credit reporting.
• Transparency and Clarity of Information Provided: While both platforms offer basic information on your privacy status in an efficient manner, DeleteMe has a clear edge in terms of going above and beyond what’s expected from a privacy report. Not only does DeleteMe tell you its progress on your data’s removal, but it also does so in a quick and efficient way that also gives you key information to prevent data brokers from getting your information in the future.

Customer Support

When reaching out to customer support, both DeleteMe and Incogni host extensive Q&A pages for routine questions users may have about their products. If you have questions for DeleteMe, the company can be reached through call, email, or a live chat feature. As for Incogni, they can be reached via a direct request form available on their website.

>> Learn About: Staying Safe from Chatbot Scams: Your Ultimate Guide

DeleteMe vs Incogni: Features Overview

In short, DeleteMe and Incogni both ultimately perform the same function. They each effectively remove your data from a wide variety of data broker databases and people search sites, but the way they go about removing that data varies fairly significantly. For a full breakdown of both company’s features, take a look at the following table below:

Cost and Subscription Plans

DeleteMe and Incogni’s various pricing plans and subscription options differ from each other quite a bit. On average, Incogni is nominally cheaper than DeleteMe and has the option to be billed annually or monthly. Surfshark also runs deals on Incogni that can bring its price down even more. Or, you can go with Surfshark’s premium One+ plan that includes a whole bunch more, including the Surfshark antivirus software we tested and Surfshark VPN. Their antivirus software even made our list of the best antivirus available.

>> Read More: Surfshark Cost & Pricing Plans in 2024

DeleteMe is a lot less flexible in this department. It requires an annual upfront payment, without a free trial. If it didn’t have such a positive reputation, this would be incredibly hard to trust. However, it does have that money-back guarantee, so that might give you more peace of mind if you’re leaning more in DeleteMe’s direction.

More details for each individual pricing plan and what exactly you’re getting from each service can be found below:

Recap: DeleteMe vs. Incogni

Regardless of which option you decide to go with, DeleteMe and Incogni will make your personal and private information far more safe and secure. That said, it’s abundantly clear that one option is more thorough and comprehensive than the other, as DeleteMe covers far more websites than Incogni and provides more information for every report. On the other hand, Incogni is a more affordable option on average and typically quicker due to its automated process.

Pick DeleteMe if you’d like…

A more comprehensive and broad dive into the data that data brokers online have about you. DeleteMe’s process is far more thorough since its privacy reports and data removals are all done by hand through human experts. This makes the process slightly longer and a bit more expensive on average, but the result is more than worth it. One of the few things we wish DeleteMe had was more varied pricing options, such as a subscription plan where you can pay monthly rather than annually.

Pick Incogni if you’d like…

A rapid and cost-effective way to remove your data from the major data-brokering websites. The benefit of Incogni’s automated process is that it turns a process that would typically take days by hand and turns it into one that takes hours.

Incogni’s base annual plan is decently cheaper than DeleteMe’s; you also have the option to pay monthly. The downsides to a shorter time commitment and a lower price is that the data removal is not as thorough or comprehensive.