How to Remove Your Personal Information from the Internet in 2025 with Incogni

Remove Your Personal Information From the Internet – Image Credit: Incogni

Email Facebook x.com Reddit BlueSky

Last updated 4 days ago

A key aspect of staying safe online is minimizing your digital footprint, and while tools like Surfshark VPN can help, take it a step further by taking the fight to data miners with Incogni.

There are companies that exist for the sole purpose of buying personal data online in bulk. This data can be used for legitimate purposes, such as ad targeting training, but it can also be used by bad actors looking to commit identity theft or target specific groups.

What’s worse, if bad actors can gather enough aggregate data about a person, they can steal their online accounts or identity with greater ease. While it may seem futile to try to fight these huge companies, there are simple strategies that can make a big difference.

Save 50% on Incogni

Basic Internet Hygiene Goes a Long Way

Before we discuss deleting data from the internet, it’s important to understand how you can keep it off the internet in the first place. Everything you do, like the websites you visit and the purchases you make, is tracked both online and offline.

First, protect yourself and your accounts by using unique passwords on each website. When a website like Home Depot is hacked and data is stolen, one of the things the attackers do is try to use the username and password combinations on other accounts, like email or bank accounts.

People search sites claim to have data on billions of people – Image credit: Incogni

Second, share as little personally identifiable information as possible, since it can be used to steal your identity. This starts with social media accounts, but also applies to companies like Amazon.

For example, don't upload your contact list just because an app asks you to. And you can still use social media, just don't share your personal information like your maiden name, home address, email address, or phone number, even in private chats.

If you’ve overshared in the past, it might be a good idea to go back and delete old public social media posts or entire accounts. While the website itself may keep an archive of posts, at least web crawlers and Google search results won’t pick up that old data.

If you want to take things a step further, use something like Surfshark VPN to hide your IP address from your ISP. This will hide what websites you visit and give companies even less data to collect.

Surfshark also offers other features like Alternative ID, which allows users to provide generated email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and names to opt-in lists. By keeping your real identity a secret, the account can’t be linked to you if that website is hacked.

It’s never too late to start taking control of your online data. Reveal less personal information from now on, and your footprint will shrink over time.

Let's Fight Data Brokers with Incogni

So you've started practicing good online hygiene, and it's time to clean up what's already there. Instead of calling hundreds of companies and getting stuck, wasting time and money, there's a service that will do the job for you.

Incogni Can Help Remove Your Personal Information From The Internet – Image Credit: Incogni

Incogni is a company that specializes in contacting data broker websites and people search sites to request data removal on behalf of the client.

If you've ever wondered why your email inbox is filled with endless spam, your phone is constantly buzzing with spam calls, and your physical mail is clogged with credit card offers, it's because of data broker databases. Well, at least partly.

Some of the troubles come from simply existing, applying for loans, or purchasing a product. Unfortunately, there's no way to completely avoid them without hiding in a cave and disconnecting from the internet.

However, you can regain your sense of sanity and stay home and online thanks to Incogni. The company will scan the internet for your personal information that is being sold by data brokers and people search sites, send deletion requests, and continue to monitor more exposed data.

If the requests are ignored, they are resent. It's a brute force method, but an effective one.

Incogni provides up-to-date information on all active requests – Image courtesy of Incogni

If you've ever checked Google search results for your name, you may have found people search sites, sites offering to reveal your job, phone number, property records, or even sites promising to show your criminal history. These sites get their data from publicly available data dumps or by purchasing data from data brokers and optimizing that data for search engines.

Data brokers get their information from companies that sell the data for free to make extra profit. For example, many sites will offer coupons in your inbox, but their terms of service also state that your collected email may be sold to third parties.

Incogni will help you recover all your data and reduce your digital footprint online.

Here's how the process works:

Sign up for an Incogni account and give the company permission to act on your behalf.
Incogni scans people search sites and data brokers for your data.
Removal requests are submitted, then re-submitted until something is done.
Re-scanning prevents websites from adding data about you again.
The lists of data brokers, people search sites, etc. are updated regularly so Incogni can stay up to date.
If a data broker appeals a removal request, Incogni processes the appeal for you.