Is your inbox overflowing with spam or phishing emails? Feel like almost every website knows you? It’s time to take back control of your personal data before things get worse. This is what the Incogni service offers.
Article sponsored by Incogni
When you want to access web services or online stores, it is common, even mandatory, to provide some information about yourself. Here an email address associated with a first and last name, there a postal address, a telephone number, or even more sensitive information such as a credit card number, your gender, your date of birth, your purchasing habits, etc. . So much data that you provide voluntarily and which is added to an impressive amount of information collected during your wanderings on the Web by the advertising agencies which follow you in the trace, from site to site to observe your course and better target your needs. Not to mention the cookies placed on your computer in passing and which allow you to be easily recognized each time you visit a website. Added to this are the social networks which have a lot of information about you and allow you to refine this portrait a little more by knowing your family and friendly relations, your professional background, the places you visit and even, why not, your political affinities, as long as you are a little talkative.
So much so that, as time goes by, you sow on the Web all that is necessary to establish a sometimes quite precise profile of the Internet user that you are. A real gold mine that does not escape “data brokers” or data brokers in French. These are companies whose goal is none other than to collect all the possible data concerning Internet users, to cross-check them, to refine them in order to constitute a profile as close as possible to reality, then, obviously, to resell it to marketing agencies who will flood your inbox with spam, send you text messages or harass you on the phone.
More worryingly, many of this information can be found in open access. Everyone can then find out where you live, know your profession and your connections, what you buy online, etc. Worse, some of your data can also be recovered for fraudulent purposes such as identity theft, for example, in order, why not, to take out a loan in your name and without your knowledge. Not very reassuring.
How to regain control of personal data with Incogni?
In Europe, Internet users are normally protected by the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) which obliges websites to be transparent about the collection and processing of personal data. But many sites established outside the European Union do not care. It is therefore not easy to identify these data brokers who operate in the shadows and to make the information they have collected disappear. This is where Incogni comes in.
This subscription service, offered by Surfshark (the VPN software publisher) will take care of it for you. It has a substantial list of data brokers, constantly updated, nestled in Europe but also in England, the United States, Canada and Switzerland. He takes care of contacting them so that the information of the profile which corresponds to you, recorded in their databases, is deleted. Incogni therefore establishes deletion requests on your behalf and endeavors to follow up with the data brokers (they are sometimes quite recalcitrant) as many times as necessary until they are right. He may even, still on your behalf, seize the CNIL or other similar competent authority in the event of a lack of response or refusal. In addition, Incogni carries out regular monitoring to prevent personal data from reappearing in databases.
How does Incogni work?
Incogni is a subscription service. Once registered, it is obviously necessary to provide some personal data allowing them to be found in the databases of data brokers such as your first and last names, email and postal address, etc. You must then tell Incogni which data you want to see deleted from the databases. All that remains is to sign a power of attorney granting Incogni the right to act on your behalf to demand the deletion of your personal data.
The fully automated service then takes care of all the work for you. It offers a dashboard to monitor the progress of requests. The deadlines can be very variable between a few days and several months depending on the goodwill and “honesty” of the data brokers. The dashboard also presents the names of data brokers, the degree of sensitivity of the personal data they hold and the use that is made of it. Incogni represents a real time saver for those who wish to regain control of their data on the Web and maintain good vigilance to prevent them from reappearing here or there.
How much does Incogni cost?
Incogni is a paid subscription service that allows you to save valuable time by carrying out, for you, all the necessary steps to identify the data brokers who hold your data, contact them to demand their removal, relaunch them and, if necessary, report them. to the competent authorities. Two formulas are proposed. The first is a yearly subscription, billed at $6.49 (5.89 euros excluding tax) per month and currently benefits from a 50% discount. The other formula is based on a month-to-month subscription billed at $12.99 (11.80 euros excluding tax) for one month of use. The year-round formula is obviously more interesting not only financially but also to operate, giving Incogni time to relaunch recalcitrant data brokers and monitor the slightest resurgence of personal data on the Web.
Article sponsored by Incogni