Data removal services

Data brokers and people-search sites are one half of your data footprint. The companies you have signed up for over the years are the other half. The services on this page address the first half. Paperweight addresses the second. Most people benefit from doing both.

Before the comparison itself, there is one thing worth understanding about how most of these services actually work, because it changes how you should think about them.

How most automated broker removal services work

The standard model goes like this. You hand over your name, addresses, phone numbers, email, and date of birth. The service then submits opt-out requests to every broker on its list, without first checking whether each broker actually has your data. Call it the spray and pray model.

This creates a structural problem. You are submitting your personal information to brokers that may not have had it before. Some of those brokers will treat the opt-out submission as a new data point. A service intended as a privacy safeguard ends up acting as a distributor of the very information it is trying to remove.

The industry acknowledges this quietly. Privacy Guides notes that "removing your personal data on these sites from the internet generally requires providing these companies with your personal data for them to comply with the request." Doing it manually is always more private. Most people lack the time.

A small number of services verify whether your data is publicly listed on a broker site before submitting an opt-out for that site. Most do not.

Why people search for alternatives

Privacy track record. Several large players have documented conflicts of interest or partnerships with the data broker industry they claim to remove you from. Mozilla cited "the realities of the data broker ecosystem" when it shut down its Monitor Plus service in late 2025.

Pricing model. Most services charge $100 to $200 per year on monthly or annual subscriptions. This is a periodic-cleanup task, not something people do daily or monthly. Recurring SaaS billing is a poor fit for how people actually use these tools. One-time pricing and free DIY routes match the use case better.

Geographic coverage. Most services are US-focused. If you are in the EU, GDPR already gives you a direct legal route to demand deletion, and the broker problem looks different. Several US-only services do not operate in the EU at all.

What to look out for

These six questions apply to any tool in this category, including Paperweight.

Who is behind it. Founding company, parent or holding group, funding source, country of operation. Independent operators, VC-backed startups, subsidiaries of VPN companies, and identity-theft conglomerates all show up here, and they behave differently. The ownership question is the hardest to fake and often the most important.

What it actually does. Approaches vary widely. Some services submit removal requests to every broker on their list without checking. Others verify your data is publicly listed before acting. Some use human researchers for each removal. Paperweight derives the target list from your actual inbox. Proof of removal in the form of screenshots or before-and-after records is the test for whether the claims hold up.

What you hand over. Most services need your name, all current and prior addresses, all phone numbers, all email addresses, and your date of birth. Some require additional ID verification. The trade-off is real: you give up more data to remove the data already out there.

How it works. Cloud subscription, mobile app, browser extension, local desktop tool. Open source or proprietary. The question is where the processing happens and what the vendor actually sees during operation.

Pricing model. One-time, annual subscription, monthly, freemium, or bundled with other products. Tiered pricing where useful coverage is locked behind the top tier is common and worth flagging.

Geographic coverage. US-only or international. EU and UK GDPR support. Some services explicitly do not operate in the EU; others claim to but with thin actual coverage.

The tools

Incogni

Founded 2021. Owned by Surfshark (Nord Security group). Based in Lithuania. Available in US, Canada, UK, and most EU markets.

Incogni is the most heavily marketed automated service in the category. Coverage is approximately 420 data brokers automatically, with custom removal requests for 2,000+ additional sites on the Unlimited tier. It is bundled with Surfshark VPN and antivirus in the Surfshark One+ plan. In 2025 Incogni published a Deloitte-audited assurance report on its broker coverage claims, which is unusually transparent for the category.

Pros

• Broad automated coverage with international support
• Third-party audited coverage claims (Deloitte)
• Available in EU markets

Cons

• Submits removal requests to all brokers regardless of whether they hold your data
• No before-and-after proof of individual removals

DeleteMe

Founded 2010. Owned by Abine, Inc. Based in Boston, US. Available in the US, Canada, UK, and a small set of EU countries.

DeleteMe is one of the oldest services in the category. The standard plan claims 750+ sites, though in practice the base plan handles around 100 directly and the rest sit on higher tiers as custom or manual removals. Unlike most competitors, DeleteMe uses human privacy researchers rather than full automation, which means it can handle edge cases like brokers with manual verification requirements. Quarterly PDF reports show what was found and what was removed.

Pros

• Long track record and recognized brand
• Human-in-the-loop handling for complex brokers
• Quarterly reporting with explicit removal records

Cons

• Among the more expensive options in the category
• Headline coverage number is larger than the standard plan delivers directly

Optery

Founded 2020. Privately held, US-based. Primarily US coverage with limited international support.

Optery has a genuinely useful free tier that produces an exposure scan with screenshots showing where your data appears. Paid tiers add automated removals and, on higher plans, human privacy agents. They are SOC 2 certified and provide before-and-after screenshots as proof of each removal, which most competitors do not.

Pros

• Free tier produces a real exposure report, not a teaser
• Provides screenshots as proof of removal
• SOC 2 certified

Cons

• Useful coverage and key features locked behind the highest paid tier
• Primarily US-focused

EasyOptOuts

Founded 2020. Privately held, US-based.

EasyOptOuts is one of the few services in the category that verifies your data is publicly listed on a broker site before submitting an opt-out for that site. For sites that are not publicly searchable, it submits regardless. Fully automated, no human review, no flashy dashboard, no family plan.

Pros

• Verifies presence on public broker sites before submitting requests
• Lowest annual price in the category

Cons

• Minimal dashboard and reporting
• PayPal-only payment, no family plan
• Scans recur every four months rather than continuously

Privacy Bee

Founded around 2020. Privately held, US-based.

Privacy Bee is at the premium end of the market. They claim coverage of 1,000+ data brokers plus a much larger set of custom sites. Features include risk assessment, dark web monitoring, a tracker-blocking browser extension, and Google Street View blurring requests. PCMag named them Editor's Choice in 2024 and 2025.

Pros

• Largest claimed coverage in the category
• Bundled extras beyond data broker removal

Cons

• Premium pricing, roughly double several direct competitors
• Mixed Trustpilot reviews on transparency and customer service

Kanary

Founded around 2018. Pivoted to a mobile app, Kanary Copilot, in late 2024. Privately held, US-based. Apple-only currently, with Android on a waitlist.

Kanary's recent product is a mobile app that guides users through bite-sized weekly privacy tasks rather than running full automation in the background. Coverage is around 300 brokers. They have niche features like Twitch chat monitoring for users concerned about doxxing.

Pros

• Guided, hands-on approach for users who prefer control over automation
• Niche features other services do not offer

Cons

• Apple-only mobile app limits the addressable audience
• Initial results take 30 to 90 days, slower than most automated rivals

Aura

Founded 2017. Privately held, US-based. Identity theft protection suite with data broker removal included as one feature.

Aura is not purely a data removal service. It is a broader identity theft protection bundle that includes data broker removal alongside VPN, antivirus, password manager, dark web monitoring, and up to $1 million in identity theft insurance. Data broker coverage is around 140 sites, lower than Incogni or Optery.

Pros

• Comprehensive bundle covering identity, credit, devices, and removal
• Identity theft insurance included

Cons

• Overpaying for unused features if you only want data removal
• US-only

AgainstData

Founded 2020. Privately held, based in Busteni, Romania. EU-native. Web app and mobile, Gmail-only.

AgainstData is the closest functional cousin to Paperweight on this list. It connects to your Gmail, identifies the companies that have sent you marketing or transactional emails, and lets you send GDPR deletion request templates with one click. It does broker-adjacent work via the inbox-discovery route rather than scrubbing public broker sites.

The architectural difference is where the processing happens. AgainstData reads and processes your inbox on its own servers. The vendor sees what is in your inbox during operation. Paperweight performs the equivalent reading locally on your machine, so the vendor sees nothing.

Pros

• Inbox-derived discovery rather than broker scrubbing
• EU-native, GDPR-aligned
• Sends real deletion requests, not just unsubscribe

Cons

• Cloud-based processing of inbox contents
• Gmail-only

Mozilla Monitor

Originally launched 2018 as Firefox Monitor. The paid data removal product (Monitor Plus) was discontinued on December 17, 2025. The free Monitor service continues as a data breach alert tool.

Most existing comparison pages have not caught up to this yet. Mozilla Monitor was a partnership with Onerep for automated data broker removal. Mozilla ended the partnership and discontinued the paid tier, citing "the realities of the data broker ecosystem" and "our high standards for vendors" (Krebs on Security, 20 November 2025).

What remains is free Mozilla Monitor, which checks your email against Have I Been Pwned and alerts you to data breaches. Useful, but not a data removal service.

Pros

• Free breach alerts integrated with Firefox
• Backed by a trusted brand

Cons

• No longer a data removal product
• Free breach checking requires giving Mozilla your email

Pricing comparison

*Prices might differ. We'll try to update, but services often run aggressive first-year discounts; second-year renewal prices are typically the figures above.

Notable concerns

Onerep. In March 2024, KrebsOnSecurity revealed that Onerep's founder had launched dozens of people-search services since 2010, including a still-active data broker called Nuwber. He later acknowledged maintaining an ownership stake in Nuwber. Mozilla announced it was ending its Onerep partnership in March 2024 but did not fully wind it down until December 2025.

Sources: Krebs on Security, 14 March 2024 · Krebs on Security, 22 March 2024 · Krebs on Security, 20 November 2025.

If a product is free, you are the product.

Where Paperweight fits in

Paperweight is a local-first desktop application that maps every company that has ever emailed you, then helps you act on that.

What it does

• Account inventory. Maps every company that has ever emailed you, with risk classifications and recommended actions.
• Bulk unsubscribe. Find and unsubscribe from marketing and mailing lists (auto RFC 8058 where supported).
• Breach alerts. Notifies you when any company you have been in contact with has been breached, checked locally against the Have I Been Pwned breach list. Your email is never sent to a third party in the process.
• GDPR requests. Generates pre-filled GDPR access and deletion requests in multiple European languages. Sent from your email under your control, with manual confirmation before anything goes out.

Supports Gmail (OAuth), Outlook, IMAP, and Proton Mail via Bridge.

Privacy approach

Everything runs on your machine. Email content, credentials, and connection details never leave your device. No telemetry, no cloud sync, no analytics. The code is fully open source and auditable on GitHub. Most alternatives in this space require you to share your data through their services. Some have been caught selling it. Paperweight is the only tool I am aware of that does this entirely locally and is open source.

Licensing and pricing

Free to use with a 30-day scan window. The one-time perpetual license unlocks unlimited history and multi-account support. No subscriptions. The licensing model exists to support open-source development and ready-made builds without locking customers into recurring billing. Recurring fees do not fit how people actually use a tool like this, which is more like a periodic cleanup than daily or monthly use.

Limitations

A few things Paperweight does not do, that some readers may be expecting:

• No people-search or data broker scrubbing. If your goal is removing public listings from people-search sites, a manual approach (Privacy Guides has the canonical list) or a verified scrubber is the right tool. Paperweight is intentionally not in that lane.
• GDPR has the most legal teeth in the EU, UK, and California. Other US states are adding similar protections, but the legal compulsion behind a request still varies by jurisdiction.
• What is not in your inbox is invisible. Paperweight discovers companies by the emails they have sent you. Accounts where you deleted the welcome email, never received marketing, or signed up via OAuth without any email trail will not surface.
• No cross-device sync. Each install is independent. If you have multiple machines, the catalogue does not follow you between them.

Methodology

Note that we tried to give an honest overview, but there's an obvious bias in this comparison.

The framework here is adapted from Privacy Guides' data broker removal recommendations, specifically their criteria that a service should not be a white-labeled reseller, should not be affiliated with the data broker industry, and should only use your personal data for the purposes of opt-outs. Two criteria were added that Privacy Guides does not list because no other service in the category passes them: local-first architecture, and inbox-derived discovery.

The Notable concerns entries are sourced to primary reporting. Pricing and feature claims for competitors were verified against the providers' own sites as of the dates shown. Reviews and complaints cited are from the past 12 months and reflect patterns, not single anecdotes.