Byline: Sixteen Ramos
The Myth of “Deleting Yourself” Online
We’ve all Googled ourselves. And if you’ve done it recently, chances are you’ve seen your name pop up on sketchy people-search sites, obscure data broker pages, or even on services you never knowingly signed up for. That’s the new normal in 2025. Your personal information—email, phone number, address, even salary estimates—is out there, indexed, sold, and resold.
That’s where tools like Incogni come in, promising to claw back control by wiping your data from hundreds of brokers with just a few clicks. It sounds like magic. But what happens when you hit that “Remove My Info” button?
This isn’t about vague promises or marketing fluff. It’s about real outcomes. What gets removed? What doesn’t? How long does it take? And perhaps more importantly, is it worth the price?
Let’s break it down, step by step, with a challenge-first lens—and along the way, help you lock things down fully with the right password manager for your needs.
The First 7 Days with Incogni — Set It and Watch It Work?
Once you sign up with Incogni, you’ll fill out basic personal info—your name, email addresses, phone numbers, and mailing address. From there, you legally authorize them to contact data brokers on your behalf. That’s the setup. It takes less than 10 minutes.
The first few days are quiet. You don’t see immediate changes, and that’s by design. Most brokers operate on 15–45-day removal windows, and some deliberately delay. But Incogni immediately begins dispatching requests—sometimes to over 100 brokers on Day 1.
What’s different about Incogni is the hands-off automation. You’re not tracking down opt-out forms or manually filling out captchas. The dashboard shows requests as “Sent,” “In Progress,” or “Completed,” giving you an at-a-glance view of progress. No busy work, no second-guessing.
That said, if you’re expecting instant vanishing acts from Google search results or email spam halts in 48 hours, temper those expectations. The removals are real—but they’re gradual. This is data decay, not data deletion.
What Gets Removed—and What Stays Behind
Incogni focuses on data brokers, not random blogs or search engines. These are companies like BeenVerified, Whitepages, Intelius, and PeopleFinders—sites that aggregate and sell your details to marketers, background check services, and more.
After about two weeks, you start seeing real results. Certain listings vanish. Your phone number is no longer appearing on previously public lookup sites. In some cases, spam calls and phishing texts taper off. It’s subtle, but measurable.
However, not all brokers play ball. Some are required by law (under GDPR or CCPA) to honor deletion requests. Others exploit legal loopholes or refuse unless you jump through manual hoops. Incogni does its best, but they’re upfront about the fact: some data is stubborn.
And no, Incogni won’t scrub social media or news articles. It also won’t magically delete data held by companies you’ve previously interacted with (banks, apps, retailers). But it does remove a massive layer of exposure that fuels identity theft and doxxing.
The Real-World Impact—Less Spam, Fewer Surprises
The biggest payoff isn’t what you see, it’s what you stop seeing. A few weeks in, you’ll likely notice a reduction in:
- Spam emails from mailing lists you never signed up for
- Robocalls and text scams from spoofed numbers
- Creepy ads that seem to know too much
This isn’t just a placebo. Data brokers feed marketing engines. When those feeds dry up, the targeting weakens.
In some cases, people also report fewer scam attempts linked to old phone numbers or leaked email addresses. One Reddit user even noted their data was removed from over 60 sites within 30 days. (If you’re looking for real-world insights, that thread is one of the more helpful Incogni reviews around.)
Still, Incogni isn’t a one-and-done tool. Your data can be re-collected over time. That’s why ongoing monitoring and repeat deletion cycles are critical. Fortunately, Incogni keeps sending requests on your behalf. Think of it as autopilot privacy hygiene.
Locking It All Down—Why NordPass Completes the Puzzle
Removing your data from public broker sites is a massive privacy win—but it’s only half the battle. The other half? Locking down your passwords.
That’s where NordPass stands out in 2025. Unlike basic password managers, NordPass hits that sweet spot: tight security, smooth usability, and transparency. It’s backed by zero-knowledge architecture, biometric login, and independent audits—not just marketing claims.
What really makes NordPass pop is how it balances consumer-level simplicity with enterprise-grade encryption. You get real-time breach alerts, encrypted password sharing, health reports, and even secure notes. And with cross-platform syncing, your credentials travel safely across all your devices.
Other programs cater to specific needs, such as 1Password for teams and families, Proton Pass for ultimate anonymity, or Bitwarden for open-source enthusiasts. NordPass, on the other hand, is the best all-around password manager available in the market.
Pairing Incogni with NordPass is how you go from reactive to proactive. It’s not just deleting your pastimes, securing your future.
Choosing Tools That Fit Your Threat Level
Let’s be real—Incogni isn’t for everyone. If you’re just curious or fine with a little online exposure, you might not need it. But if your phone’s blowing up with spam, or your personal data is fueling AI scraping, it’s time to act.
Think of your digital threat level in three tiers:
- Low risk: You use aliases online, don’t overshare, and manage passwords well. Incogni might be optional, but NordPass is a must.
- Moderate risk: You’ve signed up for dozens of apps, reused passwords, and appeared in data breaches. Incogni helps reduce exposure; NordPass stops future leaks.
- High risk: You are a well-known person, an activist, a reporter, or a wealthy target. In addition to NordPass’s unwavering credential security and Incogni’s data suppression capabilities, you also need to go further into privacy technologies like VPNs, throwaway emails, and encrypted chat.
Bottom line: Know your risk, then pick your tools. Don’t just download whatever gets mentioned in a podcast ad. Match your privacy stack to your digital lifestyle. It’s not about fear, it’s about control.
Privacy Isn’t a Setting—It’s a Habit
Incogni proves that wiping your data from the web is possible—but it’s not a one-click miracle. It’s a process. It takes weeks to see real results, and even then, your info can resurface. That’s the nature of today’s data economy.
But paired with tools like NordPass, you shift from damage control to futureproofing. You reduce exposure, cut off breaches at the root, and reclaim some power in a system designed to track everything you do.
The internet doesn’t forget—but you can still make it forget you. Start there.