The internet in 2024 can be a dangerous place: hacks, viruses, phishing, and the abundance of data available to data brokers and other entities. In response to these threats, data removal services have sprung up to help your data hygiene.
Over the past weeks and months, we've spent a lot of time with various data removal services to weigh up what works – and what doesn't. As people become more privacy conscious, having the right tools is key.
Tech giants like Apple have made privacy part of their core message to users, and the Cupertino giant has even introduced features like iCloud Privacy Relay to make surfing the web more safe and secure.
Looking to help keep your data sanitised, Hello Privacy is a compelling data removal service option that offers a comprehensive set of features, a free privacy scan, and more. The company claims millions of users of its service.
We'll get into the nitty gritty below, but Hello Privacy works in three pretty simple steps: searching the web for your data, reaching out to websites to remove the data, and then continuing the monitor the web.
As with every online service, we recommend checking out the full array of options on the market, like DeleteMe, Mozilla Monitor Plus, and Optery, to get a sense of what's out there, and how competitive the asking price of each service is.
Hello Privacy: Plans and pricing
Hello Privacy is one of the simplest data removal services we've encounter when it comes to the payment tiers.
First off, there is a free tier, which is pretty limited but gives you a general sense of how the interface works and performs a scan of the web based on your email address, name, and other basic information.
And then there's the $9.99 per month tier (billed at $8.33 when on the annual plan), offering actual data removals from hundreds of website and more powerful features that we'll get into below.
That's it. Hello Privacy really keeps things simple, and we kinda appreciate that: a lot of its rivals offer a huge array of tiers with different prices (plus annual plans), giving and taking certain features based on the plan.
There are also plans available for corporate clients, with details on request. It's hard to say how much these will cost and compare them to rivals.
Hello Privacy: Basic features
Like all data removal services, the primary function of Hello Privacy is to scan the web for your personal data and remove it, either by reaching out to each data broker or website or by using human agents to do so.
The service protects the following data: Full name, age, gender, birthday, phone number, current address (and past addresses), the names of family members, email addresses, social media profiles, and arrest records.
We found the scanning process to be pretty straightforward, and actually nicely quick in comparison to some rivals that can take multiple hours or even days.
Our overarching feeling is that Hello Privacy is an extremely simple service. While the free tier is naturally limited, the paid tier offers basically two functions – to scan and to then remove – and that's pretty much it.
One nice touch is that Hello Privacy offers a pretty extensive amount of opt-out guides that work separately from using the platform. Each data broker, for example OKCaller, gets its own entry and set of removal instructions.
Overall, Hello Privacy is definitely on the more "basic" end of the spectrum.
Hello Privacy: Advanced features
The consumer service might be on the basic side but Hello Privacy has a pretty well-featured setup for enterprise customers, including the usual data removal services, the ability to delete old accounts, and social media cleanup.
There are dark web monitoring services for both consumer and enterprise that we appreciated, and in our testing flagged a fair amount of data breaches where email addresses and so on had featured in leaks.
In terms of enterprise, Hello Privacy lets companies add its privacy features to proprietary products and protect employees from having their data leaked. These tools can be integrated into products with a revenue sharing agreement with Hello Privacy via its API and White Label web portal.
Hello Privacy says Fortune 500 companies uses its services, but doesn't say how many. There are various customer statements on its website.
Hello Privacy: Support
Hello Privacy is owned and run by BrandYourself, a company that helps with reputation management and offers a few different services. The street address is located in New York City and Pennsylvania.
The company offers the standard set of emails for support, as well as blog, although it hasn't been updated since 2022. As we mentioned above, there are extensive and helpful opt-out guides available on its website.
Responses to the email were pretty fast in our experience, and we had no issues.
Hello Privacy: The competition
As Hello Privacy offers a more barebones set of features, we definitely recommend checking out its rivals like Privacy Bee, IDX, and Kanary.
We found that DeleteMe, established in 2011, was one of the best services on the market, both for its longevity but also its range of features. Similarly, Optery has been around for a long time and proven its dependability and trustworthiness.
During our testing, Mozilla Monitor Plus also stood out as it is backed by one of the most well known companies in privacy space, Mozilla, which makes the Firefox browser. Data removal services naturally have a lot of your data, so choosing a company that will never sell that data is essential.
To help make the right decision, we definitely recommend spending some time reading TechRadar's reviews of data removal services and scrolling the websites of each. If you have a specific use case, such as protecting a family member, or a tighter budget, it can't hurt to see the full range of options.
Hello Privacy: Final verdict
Hello Privacy, a data removal service run by reputation management company BrandYourself, is definitely on the more lightweight end of the spectrum compared to its rivals, offering only very basic options even on its $9.99 per month plan.
The service is functional and worked in our testing, so there is no issues with that, but other services offer a far wider array of features that users may appreciate, both in terms of consumer and enterprise versions.
The UI is pretty basic, which is either a good thing (making it easier to use the service) or a bad thing (for power users), and there are few settings to play with.
Getting a monthly subscription (perhaps with a six month check-in) does make a degree of sense, and $9.99 is on the cheaper end of the spectrum, but we think anyone looking for a really well-featured data removal service would be disappointed with Hello Privacy.
