If you could go back to the early days of the Internet, would you handle your privacy differently? Most of us would. We would be more careful about the services we connect to and the information we share. Since the time machine is not an option, we have to deal with the present reality. Your personal information is currently available and currently available for sale.
Currently, your phone number, email address, home address and even family connections are packaged and sold to marketers, insurers and hackers. While Apple’s privacy protections in Safari and Mail can help prevent some tracking while you’re browsing the web, they can’t recover years of data that’s already been deleted and spread across hundreds of brokerage databases. Data brokers have built a multi-billion dollar industry by collecting, packaging and selling your digital data. It’s time to get your personal information off the market and off the internet. Let’s see how.
Data broker security risks
The threat goes far beyond annoying spam calls. When your data is everywhere, you become low-hanging fruit for sophisticated cyber threats. Because the industry is largely unregulated, past employment and where you live, previous loans, etc. including your most personal information and details can be easily purchased. This creates a huge security liability.
Modern fraudsters use data brokers’ data to collect and craft highly personalized (and difficult to detect) phishing attacks. When a fraudster already knows your job title, where you live, or the names of your coworkers/friends, they can easily bypass your natural defenses. If a scammer knows a lot about you, they have a better chance of achieving their goals if they catch you at the wrong time.
For those concerned about their physical safety, these sites and brokers serve as public, searchable databases of stalkers and abusers. By mapping the connections between your relatives and neighbors, brokers provide a blueprint for finding individuals who are deliberately trying to remain secretive and secretive.
How to fix the problem: Automated data deletion with Incogni
The scale of this ecosystem is staggering and frankly depressing. Manually requesting hundreds of these sites to remove your data is a full-time job with a near-zero success rate, because if it were easy to do, these brokers would be out of business. What you need is a solution that knows the ins and outs of this industry and how to reclaim your right to privacy.
There is a service like this Unknowns becomes critical to your life in both the digital and physical worlds. This service turns a big problem for you (your data everywhere and for sale) into a problem solved with a turnkey approach. Instead of spending months searching for data brokers, Incogni automates repetitive, bureaucratic opt-out requests on your behalf. They ensure that your data is not deleted just once, but deleted as brokers inevitably try to re-hack and re-admit it.
Incogni’s comprehensive dashboard allows you to track the progress of your personal data deletion in real-time, including:
- How many databases potentially contain your data
- Deletion requests sent on your behalf.
- Completed removal and ongoing maintenance.
The real benefits of data deletion for privacy-focused people
Getting clean from internet brokerage databases provides immediate results for you and your family
- Fewer scam calls and spam texts when companies can’t get your number.
- Fraudsters lose their lead. Identity thieves often obtain information about victims from broker websites.
- Your private address remains private and stalkers and attackers cannot easily find where you live.
- Your credit score stays healthy because limited information exposure reduces the risk of identity theft and strengthens your overall financial health.
Exclusive pricing for 9to5Mac readers
By being proactive in cleaning up your digital footprint, you go from being a convenient target to a malicious one. Because this problem affects everyone, fraudsters and bad actors will go for the easiest targets first and those with the most information.
9to5Mac readers care about privacy and can get substantial savings. Unknowns subscribe using the link below. You are one click away from taking back control of your privacy for yourself and your family.
Special 9to5Mac reader price:
- Monthly standard: $16.58
- Monthly Family: $32.98
- Annual standard: $99.48
- Annual Family: $197.88
- Annual Standard Unlimited: $179.99
- Annual unlimited family: $359.88
Use discount code 9TO5MAC at checkout for these exclusive rates. Get started Incognito websiteand your future self will thank you.
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