DeleteMe Review for 2024: Personal Data Removal Done Right

Founded in 2010, DeleteMe is a product of Abine's effort to create an easy-to-use subscription service that removes personal information from more than 750 data brokers.

Apart from individual users, DeleteMe also caters to businesses and boasts more than 100 million individual pieces of data removed from third parties.

What Does DeleteMe Remove?

The Internet is swarming with shady data aggregators that specialize in selling personal data, whether that of individuals or businesses.

DeleteMe's goal is to remove every piece of personal information from all of these websites and safeguard your online privacy. 

DeleteMe can remove the following:

• names
• aliases
• addresses
• age
• email
• phone numbers

This data can be used for custom-tailored marketing and advertising, or, in extreme cases, even identity theft, which is why it's important to remove it.

For company owners, personal employee information can pose a grave cybersecurity risk that can negatively impact business.

How Many Sites Does DeleteMe Cover?

DeleteMe currently covers more than 750 such as 123people.com, MyLife.com, Spokeo, US Search, WhitePages, PeopleFinder.com, and many other personal information collection websites.

You can view the full list on their website. 

The list is not complete and is being updated regularly. It's important to note that DeleteMe, or any other digital footprint removal agency for that matter, can't remove you from search engines such as Google or Yahoo.

However, by removing data from broker sites, it should gradually weed out your personal information out of search engines as well.

How Do I Use DeleteMe?

After you login, you have to enter the personal data that you would like removed.

DeleteMe removes your name, aliases, addresses, emails, date of birth, and phone number from data brokers. You have the liberty to choose which data you want to be removed. 

From that point, DeleteMe's experts find personal information and proceed with the removal, and after 7 days, you will receive a detailed report from their operators.

The DeleteMe Privacy report contains statistics which DeleteMe’s expert team has gathered in the 7 days, and it shows the total number of listings they scanned, how many listings your data has appeared in, and how many brokers had your data in the first place.

Preliminary results also show which data brokers mentioned you the most and how many hours DeleteMe has saved you by crawling for personal data and deleting it. 

In the Findings section of the report, you can find detailed information on all data broker websites you were featured on and how much time it takes for said aggregator site to completely remove your information. 

How Quickly Does DeleteMe Work? 

DeleteMe can't remove online information instantly because the removal process differs from data broker to data broker. Instead, they give you a timespan by which you can expect your data to be removed.

Additionally, it ensures that your data is gone by checking up on third-party websites every 3 months.

DeleteMe Service for Businesses

DeleteMe's services also handle business data removal. The removal process is the same as for individual users: employees, executives, and board members sign up, and the service scans for an exposed digital footprint.

After the scan, all those affected within a company fill out a data removal request and after opting out and sharing the initial report, DeleteMe continues monitoring your vulnerable info all year long. 

How Effective Is DeleteMe?

As mentioned above, DeleteMe removes your information every three months from more than 750 websites.

However, not even the best data broker removal service can remove your information from Google search results, since search engines only work by crawling already existing websites and their content.

Instead, by frequently deleting personal info, DeleteMe ensures that your data is harder to come by using search engines. 

If you want to completely scrub every single personal information from the Internet including people search sites such as Spokeo and Intelius, DeleteMe can't help you there.

However, they provide you with a comprehensive DIY guide on how to remove yourself from said websites. If you follow the steps outlined in these guides, you can count on a clean digital footprint. 

DeleteMe Customer Support

If you have any questions about data removal, DeleteMe also has a dedicated customer support team. You can reach them either by phone(1-833-335-3836), live chat, or email.

Their office hours are Monday – Friday, 9 am – 8 pm, Eastern Time. Alternatively, you can visit their website's FAQ and blog section for more answers.

How Much Does DeleteMe Cost?

DeleteMe has three pricing plans depending on the number of people that want personal data removed. There is also a Family Plan for your family members and relatives.

All plans are billed either annually or biannually, and if you choose the latter, DeleteMe is ready to slash prices. If you need DeleteMe for business purposes, you can contact them and get a customized quote.

Our Final Thoughts on DeleteMe

Similarly to any other data removal services out there, DeleteMe can't completely scrub your information off the Internet.

It only affects search engines to the extent that it can make your data harder to come by deleting it from data broker databases.

When it comes to people search sites, they provide you with a DIY guide since that is the only legally effective way you can hide your information. 

The pricing plans, although heavily discounted, can be a bit too expensive for users, especially if we take into account competitors' prices.

However, as we've shown in our review, that steep cost is justified when you take into account the enormous broker library.

With more than a threefold number of scanned websites compared to their competitors, DeleteMe easily comes across as the best company to remove personal information from the internet.