DeleteMe Review 2024: How Well Can You Disappear?

DeleteMe provides an easy and convenient way to remove your personal information from across the internet.
4.0
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On DeleteMe's website

DeleteMe
  • Removes your data from the web to avoid scams, spam and stalkers
  • 100+ million successful opt-out removals
  • Provides continued removals every three months
  • No 24/7 customer support
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Abine DeleteMe is a straightforward data removal and privacy service that makes it easy to clean up and keep private personal information online. We think it’s a bit pricey compared to some of the other similar services, and you’re paying for something you could probably do yourself.

But we also think DeleteMe could be well worth the price considering you’re likely saving dozens of hours of time not having to request opt-outs from hundreds of data brokers.

Let’s explore our DeleteMe review to see if this privacy service is right for you.

4.0
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Learn More
On DeleteMe's website

DeleteMe
  • Removes your data from the web to avoid scams, spam and stalkers
  • 100+ million successful opt-out removals
  • Provides continued removals every three months
  • No 24/7 customer support

In this article
DeleteMe review at a glance
What data does DeleteMe protect?
Our experience with DeleteMe
Does DeleteMe keep your data safe?
DeleteMe customer support
DeleteMe prices and subscriptions
DeleteMe FAQs
Bottom line: Is DeleteMe a good service?

DeleteMe review at a glance

Price $8.60–$15.27/mo
Free trial No
Data broker opt-out Yes
Marketing list removal No
Privacy reports Yes — every three months
Details View DeleteMe Plans

*Prices as of 5/11/2023.

If you don’t like seeing your personal information show up in Google and other search engines, DeleteMe can provide you with a useful solution.

DeleteMe is a service that can help delete your data from the internet by scouring the web for your personal information and requesting that sites remove it.

We think this is more than a novel idea, as privacy concerns are real and growing each day as the internet continues to expand. Still, is DeleteMe anything more than a convenience you’re paying for? You can typically request sites to remove your information yourself.

We think DeleteMe is a convenience, but one that could be well worth the cost. DeleteMe can cost less than $9 a month (depending on the plan), and you get experts who continuously work to remove your info from hundreds of data broker sites every few months.

Consider how much time it might take you to find all the data broker sites with your information and submit opt-out requests to all of them. Then consider that you might have to stay on top of any follow-ups since data brokers can take weeks to respond to requests.

You would also have to stay on top of finding new data broker sites or checking existing ones to see if your information shows up again.

Or you can use a service like DeleteMe to do all that for you.

DeleteMe pros and cons

Pros
  • Can remove your personal data from data broker sites
  • Provides continued removals every three months
  • Has additional online privacy tools, including email, phone, and card masking
Cons
  • Slightly expensive
  • No 24/7 customer support

A password manager is another way to protect your personally identifiable information. Password managers like NordPass allow you to use more sophisticated passwords, without having to remember them, so that your accounts are more secure. You can also save other pertinent information like credit cards and important data.

What data does DeleteMe protect?

DeleteMe removes the following personal information from different data broker websites:

  • Name(s)
  • Email addresses
  • Phone numbers
  • Home addresses
  • Gender
  • Race and ethnicity information
  • Family member information

Note that you have to provide this data if you want DeleteMe to remove your info from Google search results and other sites on your behalf.

DeleteMe prices and subscriptions

DeleteMe provides multiple annual subscription options, ranging from about $129 to $329 per year. Here’s how DeleteMe pricing compares to other popular data removal services.

  • DeleteMe: About $129 to $329 per year
  • Kanary: About $144 to $249 per year
  • Optery: About $99 to $249 per year
  • OneRep: About $100 to $180 per year
  • Incogni: About $78 per year

The lower range of DeleteMe’s pricing is more consistent with what you can find with other services, and the higher part of the range is much more expensive. Keep in mind that these companies don’t all provide the same services, so it might be worth paying more for a certain subscription depending on what you want.

For example, Optery’s most expensive plan (Ultimate) can provide information removal from over 235 websites. But any DeleteMe plan can remove private information from 750-plus data brokers and websites, which is more than three times the number of sites Optery provides.

If you pay for two years of DeleteMe services upfront, you can lower your annual cost by a decent amount. For example, an individual plan costs about $129 per year. On a two-year plan, it’s about $104.50 per year, which could potentially save you $24.50 per year over a one-year plan.

DeleteMe plans comparison

Plan Delete Me for 1 Person DeleteMe for 2 People DeleteMe Family Plan
Price per year $129.00/yr $183.00/yr $279.00/2 yrs
Number of people covered 1 2 4
Free trial
Data broker opt-out
Marketing list removal
Email privacy
Privacy reports Yes — every three months Yes — every three months Yes — every three months
Real-time alerts
Details View Plan View Plan View Plan

DeleteMe doesn’t offer a free trial for its services, but you can request a full refund before your first data privacy report is complete. If you’ve already received a privacy report, you can request a pro-rated refund based on how much time is remaining on your subscription.

Our experience with DeleteMe

We found it was easy to set up and use DeleteMe, as you don’t have to do much more than create your account and submit your personal information. DeleteMe does the rest by searching the internet for your personal information and, hopefully, getting it removed.

We also checked out DeleteMe’s other features of email, phone, and card masking, which could be useful if you want to help reduce spam and potential credit card fraud.

Getting started

DeleteMe provides one primary service — removing your personal information from wherever it can find it. According to the DeleteMe website, that’s over 750 data broker sites.

To start the automated process of finding and removing your data from the web, DeleteMe needs some of your personal data. That can sound a bit counterintuitive because we’re trying to not give out our personal information, right?

But it also makes sense because DeleteMe has to know what to look for to start its removal process. Rest assured that this is a normal practice for this type of service, and you can read more about how your information is used in the DeleteMe privacy policy.

Before DeleteMe can get to work, you need to fill out a data sheet with your personal information. Note that you can pick and choose between some of the information you want to provide. For example, you don’t have to give your exact date of birth if you don’t want to.

The DeleteMe sign-up process, which asks for your preferred personal information.

However, it likely makes sense to give as much of your exact information as possible to help DeleteMe find that data online. Some of the details you’ll be asked to provide include your full name, current home address, previous addresses, driver’s license photo, phone numbers, email addresses, employer information, and family member information.

Dashboard and reports

The DeleteMe dashboard is easy to navigate and use. The main screen shows information regarding your last report and information about your subscription. You can also see questions from DeleteMe concerning potential personal data.

DeleteMe's privacy dashboard with report info, subscription info, and data broker statistics.

There aren’t too many different places to explore on your dashboard, with the most important areas likely being your Reports and Data Sheet tabs. Under Reports, you can look at your most recent report to see how many data brokers had your information and how many listings were reviewed.

You typically receive three or four reports per year, depending on when you started your subscription.

DeleteMe page with four reports listening how many data brokers have your information and how many listings it reviewed.

DeleteMe says it can send your first privacy report about a week after you submit information for your data sheet. We submitted our data sheet on a Monday morning and received an email that our first report was available on Saturday morning, almost exactly five days later.

Our report statistics showed that over 2,000 listings were reviewed and 41 were removed. Overall, there were 39 data brokers with our personal information, with 200 total instances of personal data found.

DeleteMe exposure history report with statistics for total listings reviewed, listings removed, PII found, and time saved.

We were notified that most of the listings with our personal information would be removed within a month, but some data brokers could take up to six weeks to honor requests. Then, it could take Google some additional time to remove results from its search cache.

The total time it took DeleteMe to search for and remove listings to compile our first privacy report was about 11 hours. We can assure you that we have little to no desire to spend anywhere near 11 hours searching for our personal information online and submitting removal requests, so the service is clearly appealing.

Note that you can continue updating your data sheet with new information to help DeleteMe find more of your personal data online. We noticed that after receiving our first privacy report, we had an alert in the Data Sheet section of our dashboard asking us to verify whether certain information belonged to us.

DeleteMe data sheet, where you list your personally identifiable information for privacy experts to find.

Additional features

DeleteMe offers a few extra features to help you protect your information more easily. Here are a few ways that DeleteMe can help keep your data safe.

  • Free scan: DeleteMe offers a free scan feature that searches the internet for your personal information. After the free scan, you can see what information is available online. From this point, you can join DeleteMe for assistance in removing the data.
  • Email masking: Use DeleteMe to create other email addresses so you don’t share your personal email address. These newly created email addresses still deliver mail to your regular inbox, but provide an alternate address to help keep your information secure.
  • Phone masking: Similar to email masking, phone masking creates an alternate phone number you can use instead of giving out your actual contact information. This provides an added layer of protection and helps keep your number off the robo-caller lists.
  • Card masking: Keep your credit card information secure by using DeleteMe’s masked card tool. This feature creates a disposable card number you can use when paying with your credit card online.

    How do you know if DeleteMe works?

    An easy way is to search your name in Google before and after using the DeleteMe service to see if your information shows up. DeleteMe even provides a Google search bar in the Privacy Tools tab of your online account to see what the results are.

    It’s suggested that you include your city or address along with your name to see if there are any results. You can then request removals from any applicable sites by contacting DeleteMe.

    DeleteMe tool to search for yourself on Google and request removals.

    You can also manually check popular data broker sites, such as Whitepages, Spokeo, and LexisNexis to see if your personal information is still there. If your information shows up, you can opt out of Whitepages and other listings.

    The number of data broker sites often fluctuates, so it might be difficult to tell if a data removal service is actually checking all available sites for your personal information. Fortunately, DeleteMe allows you to create custom requests if there’s a data broker not listed on its website.

    Does DeleteMe keep your data safe?

    DeleteMe collects loads of information if you use its service to remove data from different sites. But that’s to be expected because DeleteMe needs your personal information to be able to find where it’s being used.

    Fortunately, DeleteMe generally doesn’t share any of your personal information with third parties without your consent. There are, however, a few situations in the DeleteMe privacy policy where your information could be shared without your consent, such as complying with certain government requests as required by law.

    DeleteMe doesn’t sell user information and tries to abide by leading security practices, including making requests using HTTPS connections.

    You can also set up two-factor authentication in your online account. Your two authentication methods include using an authenticator app or sending a code to your email address.

    DeleteMe security settings for passwordless authentication.

    DeleteMe customer support

    You can contact the DeleteMe customer support team by emailing support@joindeleteme.com or calling 833-DELETEME (1-833-335-3836).

    We didn’t see this advertised, but we also found a chat button while browsing the main DeleteMe website. We initiated a chat with a live customer service representative and found out the chat option is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET if there’s an agent online and available.

    In general, the customer service rep was polite, informative, and responsive. They explained that there wasn’t a free trial, but that we could request a full refund before receiving our first privacy report. After receiving the first report, we could still request a pro-rated refund.

    A chat with DeleteMe customer support.

    Note that the general customer support office hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET.

    DeleteMe FAQs


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    Is DeleteMe worth it?

    It’s worth it if you don’t want to go through the hassle of trying to remove your information from data broker websites yourself. Services like DeleteMe are generally for convenience and don’t necessarily provide anything you can’t do yourself; it’s possible to remove your data from LexisNexis and other sites on your own.


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    How long does DeleteMe take to work?

    It takes about a week to receive your first privacy report after filling out the data sheet and submitting it to DeleteMe through your online account. After your first report, DeleteMe will send you a privacy report every three months.


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    Does DeleteMe sell your information?

    No, DeleteMe doesn’t sell any personal information you submit to its service. Note that DeleteMe has to provide some of your information to data brokers to help fulfill opt-out requests and can’t control what third parties do with your information. But that’s also a necessary part of trying to remove your data from different websites.


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    Is DeleteMe free?

    No, DeleteMe costs between $129 to $329 per year depending on how many people you want included in your plan. If you opt to pay for a two-year plan, you can lower your annual cost to a range of about $104.50 to $249.50 per year. You can also request a full refund before receiving your first privacy report.


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    Is DeleteMe a legitimate site?

    DeleteMe is a legitimate company and website that helps users remove personally identifiable information from the internet. DeleteMe will work on your behalf to find your information online and help you remove that data.

    You can remove this information independently, but it will take much more time and energy. DeleteMe makes the process easier, and it offers some additional features that can help you protect your information more.

    Bottom line: Is DeleteMe a good service?

    If you’re concerned about your personal information being available on the internet, DeleteMe is a good service to use. DeleteMe can remove your personally identifiable information from data brokers and help limit the data online.

    DeleteMe’s other features, such as card, phone, and email masking, can also help keep your information more secure. DeleteMe also allows you to be more proactive about removing your information, since it automates the process and take care of the removal requests for you.

    If DeleteMe doesn't sound like a fit for you, check out alternatives in our best data removal services review — or get up to speed on more ways you can secure your personal info in our identity theft protection guide.

4.0
Use code PARTNER20 for 20% off
Learn More
On DeleteMe's website

DeleteMe
  • Removes your data from the web to avoid scams, spam and stalkers
  • 100+ million successful opt-out removals
  • Provides continued removals every three months
  • No 24/7 customer support
Author Details
Ben Walker is a writer at All About Cookies with a passion for all things internet and technology, whether it's using VPNs while away from home or organizing his life with password managers.