We hear a lot about identity theft and cybercriminals stealing our information, but did you know that having your data online can also lead to more scam emails, texts, and phone calls? (As well as those endless and annoying robocalls that try to get you to extend your car’s warranty and other equally infuriating topics.)

Cybersecurity products can’t do it all. That’s where data deletion services, such as HelloPrivacy, can help. HelloPrivacy scans data broker sites and collects the results in one place to make it easy for you to delete all your sensitive data from the internet.

You may think this is a one-and-done service, but data brokers are relentless. Your data can get republished on the broker’s site, even after you’ve requested its deletion. Sites such as HelloPrivacy were created to help you protect your identity. If you’ve decided you want to take back your data and your privacy, this may be the service for you.

HelloPrivacy review at a glance

HelloPrivacy makes requests on your behalf to remove your personal data from the internet. That means it’s searching for mentions of you across the entire web to see who has your data for sale. By deleting your data, you’re reducing your risk of identity theft and keeping away scammers and spammers, hackers, robocalls, and a lot more.

HelloPrivacy doesn’t have a lot of features. In fact, it’s just a scanner and removal service. However, it walks you through the steps to remove your data from sites, even if it can’t do it for you. The almost $100 per year price tag isn’t bad, but we don’t feel that you need to pay for a year of this service. You can pay about $12 a month instead to remove your data and then downgrade to the free plan. In six months, you can reactivate the paid plan for another $12 and do another scan and clean.

Overall, we found this service beneficial with a good privacy policy and excellent online reviews. We also found it easy to use. Other than the fact that it doesn’t have much else, HelloPrivacy is a solid service for data privacy. If you’re looking for more features like online reputation management, you may want to visit the parent company, BrandYourself.com, to see its entire catalog of services.

HelloPrivacy pros and cons

What data does HelloPrivacy protect?

Each data broker’s site has a variety of information about you. This can include but is not limited to:

• Full name
• Age
• Gender
• Birthday
• Phone number
• Current address
• All addresses ever associated with you
• Family members’ names and information
• Email addresses
• Social media profiles
• Arrest records

If you want to remove your data from these sites, as well as from sites such as Google, LexisNexis, or opt-out of Whitepages, you can certainly do that on your own. You will, however, be scouring the internet for a while, looking for all of these sources. HelloPrivacy lets you remove your data with a few clicks.

Our experience with HelloPrivacy

Getting started with HelloPrivacy was easy and didn’t require us to input a lot of information, but removing everything took a little longer than expected.

There were some issues that required us to go to two other sites to request that our data be removed. Neither of those sites responded. HelloPrivacy did provide us with the resources to contact those sites directly or file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Getting started

The process to get started with HelloPrivacy is actually incredibly easy and not too invasive. The service asks for your name and location, then asks you to verify some information that may pertain to you, such as your address. It then scans the internet to provide a comprehensive view of your data.

This likely provides results for people who share your name as well as results that belong to you.

Dashboard and reports

This service is extremely pared down. Even with the paid service, there are really only two elements to your data scans: the list of data brokers with the info they’ve collected and the steps to delete your data.

Once HelloPrivacy canvases the internet and finds every instance of your name, it provides you with a dashboard outlining each broker and what they have on you. It also shows you what you need to do to erase your data from the dark web.

While we had issues with People Connect and Been Verified, the two services you’ll need to contact yourself for data removal, it also provided us with the customer service emails for these services. Additionally, HelloPrivacy recommended we file a complaint with the FCC if these services didn’t remove our data.

If you choose to purchase a multi-month plan, you’ll receive an alert every month detailing where your information is found online at the time of the scan. You’ll also be able to scan the web as often as you choose so you can stay on top of your data. After that, there really isn’t much else to HelloPrivacy. It’s a straightforward service without a lot of frills.

Additional features

HelloPrivacy.com is a direct service without a ton of extra features. We did appreciate the ability to scan multiple email addresses with the Dark Web Scan feature to ensure none of our data was compromised in data breaches. While it didn’t offer a way automatically fix any issues listed in our dashboard, it did walk us through the steps to fix those issues on our own.

Exposed Private Info and Dark Web Breaches are the only two services you’ll find in the paid version of HelloPrivacy. This online privacy service is singular in its purpose, which isn’t always a bad thing.

It was unsettling to see our loved ones’ names, ages, and other contact information. But it was nice to be able to request that the information be deleted.

How do you know if HelloPrivacy works?

There aren’t any reviews for HelloPrivacy on TrustPilot, which is our go-to for peer reviews of products, but a website called Scam Advisor gave HelloPrivacy a 100/100 Trust Score.[1]

From our own experience, in three days all of our removal requests were still pending. HelloPrivacy does tell you it can take up to 45 days for a data broker to remove information. So right now we’re going to trust the process and let it do its thing.

Does HelloPrivacy keep your data safe?

HelloPrivacy starts off the first page of its privacy policy with very plain language telling you it will not sell your data. Ok, fair enough. That’s a bold and impressive promise, especially for a site that offers a free product.

It goes on to emphasize the fact that it “takes every precaution to limit the data we do have on users to keep that data as secure as possible.”[2] This means the company stores as little data on you as possible. We liked what we were hearing, so we wanted to dig in and see if it was all true.

As far as we could see, there weren’t any contradictions to the declaration. HelloPrivacy was adamant, time and time again, throughout the privacy policy that it didn’t sell data or share any information with third parties. Then we got to this little marketing nugget.

So there are a few cookies and trackers on the site placed by other entities that could track your activity. However, because these are the only real data collectors on the site, they’re easily blocked by cookie and ad blockers. Overall, the privacy policy is a good one and ups our feeling of trust in this product.

HelloPrivacy customer support

The only customer support we found on the HelloPrivacy website was an email address.

Since we purchased a single month to test the product, we wanted to go ahead and cancel before there was a chance to charge us again. It was a little annoying that the only way to do this was by emailing support, but the response was fast.

We didn’t have to go back and forth with the support team either. They simply changed our plan and we called it a day. We did go in and leave positive feedback because it’s worth hyping things that are good.

HelloPrivacy prices and subscriptions

There are two plans: free and paid. Within the paid plan, there are two pricing options. If you want to pay for a year of service, you can purchase that for about $100 a year. If you want to pay monthly, that costs about $12 a month and can be canceled at any time.

With either plan you choose, you’ll have access to your portal for the remainder of your purchased time. There do not appear to be any refunds.

Either subscription is easy to cancel as long as you do it before the next billing cycle. Your renewal date is listed in the dashboard under the account section. You will have to email customer support to cancel your subscription, but they are quick and friendly.

HelloPrivacy plans comparison

HelloPrivacy FAQs

Bottom line: Is HelloPrivacy good?

Yes, HelloPrivacy is a good product that can wipe your data from broker sites across the internet. The privacy policy holds up to its claim of not selling your data (but make sure to block the few trackers and cookies on the site) and the service has positive reviews across the internet.

As far as the pieces of data it can’t remove, it helps you contact those brokers yourself and walks you through what to do if they don’t respond. Overall, a good service.

Some people may be looking for a product with more features. If that’s the case, HelloPrivacy is likely not for you. It’s a direct and singularly focused product. So if you'd like extras such as dark web monitoring, identity theft protection, and more, check out our guide to the best data removal services.

The less information there is about you online, the less likely you are to be a victim of identity theft, stalkers, scams, hacks, robocalls, and other privacy-related issues. Using a product such as HelloPrivacy can automate the process of removing your data and make your digital identity safer.

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On HelloPrivacy's website

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HelloPrivacy

• See if your address, phone number, or other info is exposed in seconds
• Comprehensive reports
• Easy to request info deletion
• No extra features

Author Details

Mary James

About the Author

Mary lives in Los Angeles and has been a cybersecurity writer for over five years. With a B.S. in Liberal Arts from Clarion University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Point Park University in Pittsburgh, her career in online security began in sales and content creation for a private cybersecurity firm.