A few months ago, I started using EasyOptOuts and Google’s search result removal service. Eventually, I received an email from EasyOptOuts with a list of sites my data was (supposedly) found on. This included some that I thought I remembered searching manually many months before. When I did my manual search through the list of data brokers PG had at the time, I remember only finding one that had a significant amount of data on me. Another had just my name and phone number.
I also began using Google’s search result removal service, and I sometimes receive updates on places it says it’s found my information. But I took a look at some of those sites myself and didn’t find anything.
Does anyone know why these services might say they’ve found my data on sites that don’t actually have it?
To evaluate the efficacy of such removal services, we then focused
on four services, recruiting 71 participants to use them. We found
that that these PII removal services struggle to discover records
accurately, with only 41.1% of the user records being correct, and
only 48.2% of records successfully removed from data brokers.
Note: Incogni does not show users the specific PII contained in the retrieved records, so Incogni participants cannot self-assess their accuracy. So the accuracy stats uses data from 3 data removal services.
IMO data removal process closely resembles spam filtering. They both rely heavily on automated systems to identity and classify records/data. They need regular fine tuning to maintain acceptable accuracy levels.
My experience is that these services do cut down on the amount of publicly available information about you extremely substantially, but I do not read or trust their reports, and I do not think they replace manual checks and opt-outs.
We’d position these primarily as a tool to help assist with and speed up the manual opt-out process, not replace it.