incogni.com worth it?

[Slam]

I get misaddressed emails all the time, not generic spam messages but personal and business ones intended for someone else. Ive been recommended incogni.com but dont know anything about such services. Anyone got experience of this or similar?

Is it the sort of thing you can pay for a month and then stop as they've cleared your contact details off whatever databases? if so then why would anyone subscribe for a year?

 

[leezer3]

You'll never stop them.

Incogni isn't exactly a scam, but it very much depends on the brokers actually respecting removal requests, which they don't exactly excel at.
They also sell data back and forth constantly, so once it's 'removed' once, it just pops back up in the next purchase batch.

However with personal addressed stuff, it's almost certainly someone who can't remember their own email address properly in a case like this.

 

[Jim99]

I was reading an article about this a couple of weeks ago, can't remember where. It flagged a few issues.

Firstly, a lot of these brokers will just collect the data again after a while - that's why these services exist as subscriptions.
Secondly, the "removal services" vary a lot in quality and capability. The ones that have the best "brand" are by no means the best. The article I read tested and found that in some cases the services were only wiping a small proportion of data from the big brokers.
Thirdly, in some cases they're actively detrimental. The worst basically fire off thousands of emails filled with your PII and tell the brokers "hey if you've got this person, delete them" without bothering to check if those brokers have your data, which isn't what I'd want them to do.
Fourthly, GDPR is far more powerful than the US equivalents. The most effective method by far was contacting places directly and asking to be removed, which is really what these services are doing anyway.
Fifthly, many of these services are heavily US-centric. So even if they claim to operate in the UK, they may focus their efforts largely on US data brokers who don't have your data anyway.

 

[Slam]

Thanks for the replies, food for thought, I'll probably pass. Perhaps reply to some to find out where they got my email address from, whether just genuine errors

 

[Raumarik]

It only applies somewhat in EU and a handful of other countries. All it does it ask them to remove what they currently have. they'll get it back and many other countries will simply ignore any request.

It's like the old AV models, they have no real incentive to "solve" the problem long term as they'll cancel too.