Introduction#

Looks like DeleteMe set the stage for companies to email me about this video in a more positive way. In the same way that I offered Rob to share the email with everyone, I’ve offered Darius, the head of Incogni, the same thing. So, here’s the chance to give the company a fair shot to respond to try to re-capture any potential customers that may have seen my video. They aim to fill in some gaps that I may have missed in the video. Thanks again to Darius for sending this over!

The full email#

Hey Anthony,

I’m Darius Belejevas, Head of Incogni. First of all, thank you for taking on the important topic of data removals. Overall, your recent video titled “What DeleteMe and Incogni aren’t telling you?” moved consumer education in the right direction. It is crucial for people to know what is happening with their data, who is exploiting it, and what they can do to protect it.

I would like to clarify some points from your video that might be confusing for viewers. While your video focused on de-identified data, often used for marketing activities (like cookies, mobile IDs, etc.), this is not really the core purpose of data removal services like Incogni.

Incogni aims to remove Personally Identifiable Information (PII), such as email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, information on relatives, financial information, etc. These are potentially dangerous identifiers and data that most people would prefer to keep private on the internet.

Our service is focused on getting people’s PII removed from data brokers, as the combination of personal information with other types of data might become a real-life threat to someone. Aside from annoying spam messages, PII is generally the ammunition for most fraud, online harassment, stalking, and other cybercrimes.

Also, it is important to differentiate between the types of brokers, and I must say you did a great job providing a breakdown of data brokers. And I would like to underline that we remove people’s data from all the types you mentioned. It would be good to differentiate here between the public and private data brokers, as the level of data points they have on each individual and the methods they apply in dealing with data differ significantly.

Public databases are shocking to the average consumer because their personal data appears in search engine results. Anyone can discover which public brokers publish their personal information, for instance, with Incogni’s free data exposure scan.

Private data brokers, covered also by Incogni, require a specialized opt-out process. They collect, aggregate, and sell PII combined with consumer behavior data, purchasing patterns, and web activity across multiple sources to businesses and organizations with little to no consumer visibility. Public data brokers also license data and build products with personal information. They package it as massive datasets, segments, or analytics, and might impact critical decisions such as tax calculations, insurance claims, and criminal background checks.

Unlike some services, Incogni covers both types of data brokers (public and private), including marketing, financial, risk-mitigation, and health information brokers, as long as they collect Personally Identifiable Information. Most of these brokers are listed on the California Data Broker registry, which has 514 data brokers as of 2025, and we do whatever is possible to cover most of them.

When it comes to convenience, sending removal emails is just a small part of the data removal process. The other, and much more time-consuming part, is dealing with all of the objections (usually unfounded) and the additional requirements that data brokers layer into the removal process. Some of them proactively make it difficult for consumers to remove data!

In addition, there are multiple other ways of requesting data deletion, like web forms, that are also extensive and difficult to deal with manually. That’s why Incogni automates these processes. We also send recurring requests to ensure people’s data does not reappear, which, for some data brokers, is a common practice.

In your video, you mentioned that a data removal service is not effective if a person does not reside in a state with privacy legislation. We’ve removed over 150 million data listings, including people who reside in states with weak or no privacy laws. No matter where they live, our customers confirm the benefits of our tool in different reviews, comments, and ratings, which, contrary to what was stated in your video, we do not have any influence over.

You can always check out our Trustpilot reviews (1.8k). We also wanted to underline here that users can cancel their subscription directly from their account.

I’m here as a resource if you ever want more insights about Incogni, data removals, or the data broker industry. If you’re interested, just let me know.

Thank you once again for your thorough work. It’s really cool to see that so many people are interested in protecting privacy and genuinely worried about the direction of the data-exploitation industry.

Wishing you all the best.

Warm regards,
Darius Belejevas, Head of Incogni