Is Incogni legit? Find out how to protect your privacy online

It's natural to be suspicious of a company offering to erase your data online, especially if most other companies exist to profit from your data. Learn why Incogni is trustworthy.

Chances are you've realized that all of your data is available and for sale online. Data brokers buy and sell user data as a commodity — and whether it's used for ad targeting, stalking, or identity theft isn't a consideration.

That's why it's important to reduce your digital footprint, thus reducing the data available to gather and sell. However, that's only part of the solution for increased data privacy.

The other part is preventing the distribution of the data that has already been gathered. You could go door to door and ask every people search website or data broker database to erase your data — an involved process.

Or, you could rely on data removal services provided by Incogni.

What is Incogni?

Incogni is a personal data removal service created by the Surfshark team to help any internet user take control of their data and privacy — regardless of where they live. Some places offer more privacy regulations than others (if any at all), so a service around controlling data seemed necessary.

If you value your privacy and want help combating the abundant abuse of consumer data online, Incogni has your back. After signing up for an account, the company will send out requests on the user's behalf to an exhaustive list of online data collectors.

Incogni's automated systems keep the pressure on data brokers and people search sites. Plus, they rely on laws and regulations like the California Consumer Privacy Act to help the data removal process and keep data brokers from squirming away.

How does Incogni work?

Once an account is set up and paid for, Incogni asks for permission to act on the user's behalf. This permission is used exclusively for interacting with data brokers and similar agencies to get your data taken down and nothing else.

Website screenshot showing a privacy message about preventing information exploitation. Includes a call-to-action button labeled 'Get started' and data statistics: requests sent, in progress, completed, and suppression list entries.

Keep track of data removal requests with a dashboard. Image source: Incogni

Incogni maintains a database of people search sites, specific data brokers, and similar, so it can systematically contact them on your behalf. It starts with a scan of all known entities for the user's personal information, then they send removal requests.

After the data removal process begins, a re-scan is performed regularly to verify where the user's data is and if a new request is needed. This practice ensures that data is deleted and stays gone after a specific case is closed.

It can take any amount of time between a few hours and a couple of weeks to hear back from a site about a data removal request. All denied requests are challenged by Incogni, and the user doesn't have to worry about being involved other than monitoring what's happening on the Incogni dashboard.

As Incogni finds new data brokers and people search sites, they are scanned for client data so new data removal requests can be sent out. It's all meant to be hands-off and simple for the customer.

So, is Incogni legit?

Incogni collects the minimum amount of data needed to run its service and promises that it doesn't sell personal information. It makes its money from paying customers for the service it provides, not data collection.

Wooden mannequin surrounded by words like full name, SSN, relatives, home address, email, employment history, financial information, shopping habits, date of birth, phone number, education, and gender.

Data brokers have a lot of data about internet users. Image source: Incogni

All data requests are for removal and deletion, so Incogni never gains access to your data in the process. The information provided by the user, such as name, address, and phone number, is only used for identity verification and user contact.

Asking "is Incogni legit?" is perfectly valid considering we just spent an entire article talking about how valuable user data is. Data brokers and people search sites profit from gathering and selling data, and Incogni is here to help users stop them.

The same people behind the reliable Surfshark VPN and its attached services want to offer Incogni as a service because it's one they themselves wanted to use. Take control and restore your data privacy online with a little help.