Surfshark’s new service, Incogni, is a digital privacy tool that helps you to fight for your right to be forgotten and for the data brokers of the world to stop using your personal information to profit. Join us as we explain this exciting new service in full detail.
How long have you been surfing the web today? Or over the last week? The chances are you navigated many websites in the previous few days, some new to you, accepted cookies, and subscribed to a newsletter. And we haven’t mentioned the apps on your phone or tablet yet.
It sounds pretty standard, doesn’t it? The thing is that part of this “normality” implies that the personal information you provided throughout your navigation reached the hands of data brokers, and it’s up for sale on the dark web. No, we’re not paranoid. It’s the nature of the beast. However, we have good news for you: Surfshark’s new Incogni feature can help your rescue your personal information from the dark market.
Incogni went online in January 2022. This tool can accelerate and automate your data removal requests and ensure that the brokers stick to data rights regulations and protocols. It manages each request according to GDPR and CCPA data protection regulations. This feature needs to have a limited power of attorney from you so it can do the job.
Handing out that limited power of attorney is well worth it. Incogni compels data brokers to erase your personal information from their databases without hassle.
This article will show you what Incogni is, how it is under the hood, and how to use it to remove your data from the hands of data brokers. So stay tuned and keep reading so you can find out everything you need to know about Surfshark’s new data protection feature.
Incogni: What is it, and what does it do?
Incogni is the newest additional data protection feature for Surfshark users. It brings automation into removing your data from the dark databases of the internet’s data brokers. It’s a huge blessing.
Consider this: without Incogni, if you want to do it, you would need to sweep the internet to find out who has your personal information. Then, you’d have to contact them all, one by one, requesting them to erase your data. That is tedious, time-consuming, long, and mostly useless. So instead, Incogni helps you with an algorithm determining where your data is most likely. Then, as it locates the target, Surfshark’s legal team joins the process to speed things up, ensuring that everything happens faster.
Incogni’s handling of data removal requests
The number of data brokers collecting user data around the globe was beyond 4,000 in 2019. It’s a massive universe if you want to find out who’s included you in their database, which is also vast. Essentially, doing this by hand is like finding a needle in a haystack four thousand times over. Let’s say you find the culprits, just to be wildly optimistic and for argument’s sake.
The next step would be to write your removal request so it’s water-tight. Do you know the legalese for this? Do you know the laws and regulations that support your side of the story? And then, you’d need to start to haggle until you get your way. In other words, the process is hellish, and Surfshark estimates that any average user trying this process by hand would need about 66 years each time. Incogni saves you all that trouble. It’s not just practical. It makes an impossible process easy.
Incogni’s process starts when you sign up for it. Then, it sends out legal removal requests in bulk in your stead. It’s all automated. You won’t even know what’s happening unless you go to the Incogni dashboard to see how things are going. The dashboard tells you how many data brokers were contacted, which ones acknowledged the request and did something about it, and which are still pending.
The drawbacks
Yes, Incogni is cool. But don’t get overexcited yet.
Incogni will send lots of requests on your behalf, yes. But it does so without hinting that the broker has your data. Instead, it guessed that the brokers in question have your stuff — that’s what the algorithm does.
So there’s every chance that at least one request will reach a data broker with nothing to do with your information.
You must know that Incogni doesn’t find out if a data broker removed you from the database. Instead, it sends an official request but can’t check the database to see if the broker complied. For that to happen, the data broker must publish the database.
The good news is that, according to Surfshark and the Incogni team, the companies they have on their list have cooperated honestly so far.
The data brokers collaborating with Surfshark
Incogni currently sends requests to about 80 data brokers, and it’s working on expanding the list with new companies. Incogni’s team is on the record explaining that whenever a new data broker joins the list, it gets requests automatically, so the process doesn’t have to start all over each time.
Surfshark claims that it chose these data brokers because they are the high-scale players in their markets (financial, marketing, and health, primarily)
Here are some of the leading companies involved:
- Rich Media
- AccuData
- DecaData
- InfoPay
- Yello
- Censia
The precise number of data brokers getting requests on your behalf depends on several factors, such as your physical location, local data laws, and personal preferences.
And what do those data brokers know about me, anyway?
The data brokers of the world are in business to make a buck. The value of the information they sell about an individual depends on the completeness of the profile they can put together. So they use every resource available to them and sweep several sources such as the apps you use, public records, social media profiles, etc. Then, the profile goes to the buyer, for instance, digital marketers.
These are the essential pieces of information they want to have about you:
- Full name
- Phone numbers
- Home and email addresses
- Marital status
- Age and gender
- Religion
- Ethnicity
- Hobbies
- Education
- Political affiliation
- Occupation
- Search and purchase history
Incogni’s fees
Incogni comes in two flavors: yearly and monthly. The monthly plan is 11.49 USD. The yearly one gets you a hefty 50% discount, paying 5.79 USD monthly.
Within the CCPA protocol, data brokers must answer a data removal request within 45 days. And you shouldn’t expect the data brokers to move too quickly. In other words, if you choose the monthly plan, a single month won’t be long enough to complete even the second step in the process before your subscription runs out.
However, there’s good news for short-term subscribers too. Those requests will be completed anyway, even if your subscription expires. However, if you want a new request to go out on your behalf, you’ll have to subscribe again.
Is Incogni available in my jurisdiction?
Incogni is a relatively new product that is still in the beginning stage. So it’s not available worldwide yet. However, you can take advantage of it if you live in the U.S. and some of the countries in the European Union as of today.
Getting started with Incogni
You can start sending data requests with Incogni by following these steps:
Get an Incogni account
Point your browser toward Incogni’s website and click on “sign up” or “get started.” Next, enter your email and create a strong password, then click “continue” to start with the setup. First, you will have to verify your email address.
Incogni’s recommendation is for you to use the email address that you use in your online services. That will increase the effectiveness of the data removal process.
Complete the sign-up
Start with the registration process by clicking on “start the process.” Then you’ll arrive at a page where you’ll provide some more personal information, sign a power of attorney, and verify your email. Fill out everything, then click on “next.”
Sign the power of attorney
We already mentioned this step, but it’s that important. It’s limited, harmless, and enables the company to act on your behalf.
Subscribe
After you’ve done everything, it’s time to arrive at the Incogni subscription page. Pick the deal you want and follow through with the billing process. Then click on “start data removal” so the magic can start. You’ll get a confirmation email soon after that.
Why do I have to sign a power of attorney?
Incogni works within the legal framework provided by GDPR and CCPA. Both have provisions for requesting that personal information be deleted from specific databases.
The legal concept behind this is the data’s owner’s “right to be forgotten.” That’s why owners can make an official appeal to ask for their data to be permanently deleted.
However, the request is valid only when the data owner sends it personally or a legally appointed person sends it. Therefore, there’s nothing Incogni can do to help you with the data brokers unless you give it the necessary legal authority to act on your behalf. It’s your official consent that validates Incogni’s request legally.
Otherwise, the request is fake as far as the law is concerned.
A power of attorney is quite narrow. It gives Incogni your permission to contact data brokers and send data deletion requests. It also grants Incogni the ability to escalate requests to local data protection authorities if the data broker refuses to play fair. This power of attorney becomes void once every request is processed and confirmed.
Our final thoughts on Incogni
There are loads of personal information drifting around the digital ether. Maybe you had no clue until now, but it’s all out there. The world’s data brokers know where you are, who you are, your marital situation, shopping habits, and many more things.
They are trying to build as complete a profile as they can on you (and any other individual they can identify). They engage in this activity because the best profiles are worth a bit of money when sold to the right buyer.
While your digital rights in many countries empower you to prevent this from happening to you, the process is exceedingly cumbersome. For most people, it’s impossible even to try it if only because they’re unaware of what is going on. And those who do know will rarely have the time, resources, and expertise to do it themselves. That’s why Incogni is so valuable.
Incongi turns a practically impossible process into a piece of cake for an accessible fee. Whil Incogni might not be as good as Surfshark VPN is in its field, it is a handy new tool. So no, it’s not the whole solution, but digital security has never had silver bullets. Nevertheless, it’s an excellent first step that we recommend wholeheartedly for any internet user who values privacy and the right to be forgotten.
Related read: Surfshark antivirus review: How good is the One bundle
FAQs
No, it’s an affordable service that you can have for s little as 5.79 USD monthly.
Incogni initiates contacts with strategically chosen data brokers on your behalf, asking them to remove your data from their databases. Then it continues with the process, escalating it to the local authorities until each request is solved. You can keep track of the process in the dashboard.
It will keep your name and your email address. That’s all.