Is DeleteMe.org real? Looks too good to not be a data stealing scam.
8 months ago by MeowerMisfit817 to c/privacy
There are hundreds of those data brokers. And new ones opening as others close every week. Doing it yourself, and keeping up with it on a regular basis? That's nearly a full time job. Nobody does that.
There's a lot of those though
How time-consuming would doing it yourself be, if anyone here has tried?
I've tried, it sucks. Each broker has their own process, often several steps, and often a step is broken (like server errors, can't get past a captcha, "try again later", etc). You end up not just having to do the process, but also follow up with many of the ones that are ambiguous or returned server errors or whatnot. I did the top 8 or so brokers and then stopped.
Quite. Some of them make it as difficult as possible, requiring the request to be physically printed and sent in via the post. Some hide the information regarding how to make the request as obscurely as possible. And essentially none of them treat it as a 'and don't collect any more' request so they just start up a new collection on you the next time you do basically anything with one of their 'business partners.' Allowing people to request deletion is just the excuse they use to keep collection legal when it shouldn't be.
I used to spend one day each year doing all the opt outs and data delete requests i could find. it was going well for me until this year. i averaged about 2-3 spam emails a day, combined across 5 different emails, one was made all the way back in 1997 and two of them were made when gmail first started.
someone got breached this year, i don't know who, and now i get a lot more.
i also used firefox monitor to check for info on breach websites and darkweb lists, around the same time i started getting more spam, my list of breached info went from ~16 to 600+.
Reject Convenience did a pretty good breakdown of DeleteMe, Incogni and the data broker industry on their YouTube channel a while back. It’s a good overview but, fair warning, it might send you down a bit of a rabbit hole after watching.
Seriously. It's criminal to not include a summary in a case like that.
Reject Convience does privacy policy reading streams, and has a pretty hard stance on no TLDRs. If you don't have time to watch it, save it for later. Better that than to trust a random person's 5 word TLDR.
There’s already some really good replies, but think critically for a second about what you’re asking for:
You want a summary of content made by “reject convenience” about the data broker and removal request industry, shouted into the void on social media, specifically on the insanely easy to infiltrate and subvert fediverse.
Real black comedy posting hours who’s up?
Invidious link because icky YouTube: https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=iX3JT6q3AxA
Reject Convenience makes some really great videos, but holy fuck are they a depressing watch.
If you want that service, don't consider anything else besides EasyOptOuts, it's both the cheapest and most effective option.
If you have a Discover card, they offer a service like this for free. I'm not sure how good it is, but since they already have my information I figured it was fine to use their service instead of increasing my footprint by passing my info to another company. It also hasn't found anything since I started using it because I did what they do manually, years ago.
They are discontinuing the service January 15, 2026.
Everything gets worse :(
This is the second time I've seen this info yet I can't find anything with discover anywhere.
They are discontinuing the service :(
That explains it. Thank you.
Not to be confused (like me) with this great service. https://justdeleteme.xyz/
And not sure what happened to the old cool URL of justdelete.me
They are a legitimate service. Whether you should use them or not is something you need to decide for yourself.
One of the biggest things they are good for is not giving all of your information away. A lot of these privacy companies simply spam out all of your information and request for the company to delete anything that matches that.
So for instance, if you signed up to a website newsletter with your email, they have your email address. And that's it. Then comes a "privacy" company that send them your email address, name, home address, etc and asks them if they have any of this data then they need to delete it. That's asinine and backwards.
DeleteMe doesn't do this. They are more specific with how they process the data removal requests.
I'm not advocating for them, I don't use them and probably never will. I have no idea if they are a good company or decent at what they claim to do. I just know they don't do the spam technique.
Personally, any company that is a mass sponsor of YouTube channels is something I won't trust myself. But that's just my weird litmus test.
My personal feeling about companies like this is that there is very little reason to assume that requesting my information be deleted will result in it actually being deleted. So at best I'm paying to be ignored.
If I could 100% guarantee that my personal information would actually be deleted upon request then sure it would be worth the money. But we all know that companies violate the law on a regular basis and nothing happens to them, especially if they're US based. So why bother?
All that nonsense can just hit my spam filter like it's been doing for the past 20 years. It's not like I answer the phone to unknown numbers either, so I'm not sure what I'm paying for here.
I probably agree with that, which is why it seems scammy. I'm not sure you can get a true understanding of what is being done or not done either on the effort or the results. I don't know, maybe these companies have a way of reporting that, but I doubt it.
Anther issue I see is that this seems like a one and done process. Scrubbing your old data when you didn't realize how much was being out out there and shared is a process, but eventually it ends. If you're privacy minded enough to use them, then you aren't continually putting your data out there, so there's no need for an ongoing subscription.
"I don't use them and I dont trust companies that do mass sponsorship of youtube channels"
"tHaTs GuErIlLa MaRkEtInG!!"
In reality they do help superficially, but they very much inflate their numbers on a shiny dashboard, showing you how much they're helping. All while only hitting a small fraction of databrokers.
I also think, that as a subscription solution to a problem, they could turn into the online version of turbotax any second now. Lobbying for harder self-optouts so that their service stays relevant.
If I remember from Reject Convience they will spend 6 months to email 2-3 companies to delete your data. (I listen to these to fall asleep to. I may be missing some facts)
There are several companies that do this.
Even Mozilla did until this month.
DeleteMe seems not to be the best. They might sell data to places while getting it removed from other places.
I just signed up with Incogni which is one of the biggest.
According to the wiki page you linked, incogni are owned by surfshark.
Is there a Firefox Extension that does it still orrrr...?
Oh.
I kinda doubted their ability when I searched for a certain podcaster who had them for an advertiser. One of the personas on the podcast never appears on screen and I like putting a face to voices. 5 minutes later I found the person's name, and their work site with a photo. I was just curious and know some Google fu. A malicious actor could do so far more quickly. So at the very least, they don't provide their service to those whom advertise on their behalf.
Exactly why I suspect it.
Several of the big privacy people have recommended them online, e.g. Techlore, so I'd say yes. Though it's been a couple years since I saw those reviews, and I haven't read up on them recently.
EDIT: Grammar.
No they don't. EasyOptOuts is the one TechLore recommends and also the one Consumer Reports recommends for your best bang for buck.
Oh well, they did in the past.
heard that stuff like deleteme and incogni sell your data to other places so if you ever stop subscribing so I'd avoid it myself 🤷
you can do it yourself, find a list of brokers and send the same mail/pdf or whatever to them all
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@lemmy.ml
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
go to feed...
IIRC, they’re not a scam, but they also aren’t doing anything you couldn’t do yourself. They’re just sending opt-out requests to data brokers on your behalf.
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