There are hundreds, if not thousands, of data brokers collecting and selling your personal information: your name, phone numbers, email addresses, current and past addresses, relatives, social media profiles, property records, court filings, employment history, education records, and much more.

I say “hundreds, if not thousands” because many brokers operate under multiple brand names and subsidiaries. It’s often impossible to tell who owns what. What is clear is that they’re all in the business of buying, packaging, and selling your data.

Why does that matter?

Because scammers use this information to make their calls, texts, and emails far more convincing. They know details that seem private, which makes their stories harder to dismiss. They may know where you live, who your family members are, where you work, properties you own, or even that you recently traveled.

And those are just complete strangers running scams. To them, you’re simply another name on a call list.

Then there’s the second group: people who already know who you are.

Maybe it’s a nosy acquaintance. Maybe it’s an ex. Maybe it’s someone with far worse intentions. For less than the price of a nice dinner, many of these services will sell a background report that reveals even more information about your life.

That’s why removing your information from data broker databases is one of the most effective steps you can take to protect your privacy.

Doing this yourself will cost you a lot of time, which is why there are services who will do it for you – but are they worth it?

NOTE: California residents do not need to pay – you have access to the DROP Platform to help get your information removed. The Delete Request and Opt-out Platform lets you send a single request to get your data removed from over 500 registered data brokers. Starting August 1st, 2026, brokers must delete your data within 90 days.

You Save a Ton of Time

I have a guide to removing yourself from data brokers – I wrote it after going through the process myself. Go check it out, it’s long.

It’s very time consuming. For each site you have to find your record, request deletion, and then follow up. It’s not hard at all and I spread it out of many weekends but it still took longer than I expected.

To be honest, if I wasn’t writing a blog post about it, I’d probably have paid a service!

Your Records Will Re-Appear

By law, the data broker has to remove your record… but oftentimes it comes back because they are constantly ingesting data from a variety of sources.

In other words, you have the right to get your record removed but there’s no law that says they can’t put it right back up. That’s why you’d pay a data broker remove service a monthly fee, to keep monitoring and whacking those records if they reappear.

Results About You is a free Google tool that lets you remove personal data from their search results. You should be using it because it lets you remove the data broker’s profile page from search results, which is faster than the broker themselves (it also makes it hard to find you via search). It doesn’t remove the profile page off the broker’s site, you have to do that separately.

But let me show you my removal requests and tell me if you see a familiar name:

ThatsThem appears three times since April 11th! I asked them to delete my profile page, which they did within a day of the request, but my information re-appeared. The last two times were four days apart!

They’re Relatively Cheap

The two big players in this space are both less than $10 a month. To get the best price, you’re asked to pay annually which makes them around $100 a year or less, depending on the level of service you go for.

They offer these discounts for annual because most of the work is up front. The continual scanning is nice but you won’t be dealing with the same level of work each month. You’ll whack a couple ones here or there but at $10 a month, it’s nice to not think about it.

Best Data Broker Removal Services

DeleteMe

DeleteMe has a 1 Person plan, 2 People Plan, and a Family Plan for 4. They’ve been in business for 13+ years and they will go out and remove your information from 976 data brokers (as of 2/4/26).

If you find your information on a site not on their list, you can send them a custom request.

If you use code PARTNER20, you can get 20% off.

Learn more about DeleteMe

Incogni

Incogni touts an automated removal program from 420+ data broker sites with their Standard plan. The Unlimited plan includes 2,000+ additional sites covered as well as custom removal requests and live phone support. The Family plan lets you protect up to 5 members.

Incogni used to be part of Surfshark, a massive VPN company, but was recently spun out.

If you use REMOVEME, you can get 55% off annual plans.

Learn more about Incogni

DeleteMe vs. Incogni

The main difference is DeleteMe uses human “experts” to manually execute the removal of your data. Incogni uses an automated approach to send bulk data requests. DeleteMe covers more sites.

As a result, DeleteMe is slightly more expensive than Incogni because of the more manual nature.

Personally, I think you’d be good with either platform. Then use Results About You to catch any strays.