Your home address, phone number, email address, and government records are personal bits of information that can get exposed online. You’ve probably entered this information on one website, and it inadvertently made it to a public database. Anyone can look it up, and you’re not comfortable with that. What’s the solution? A data removal platform like Hello Privacy (now known as Privacy Protect).
With Hello Privacy, you can scan 100+ data broker sites for your personal information. If discovered, you can initiate automated removal requests to these sites, then monitor the results. Over time, Privacy Protect rescans these sites to ensure your data stays off them.
Hello Privacy is one of many data removal services out there, so what makes it stand out? What are its core features, pros and cons, and how does it compare to competitors? Read on to learn what Hello Privacy offers and whether it’s your best choice for a data removal platform.
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Hello Privacy: Plans and pricing
Hello Privacy’s pricing structure is quite complicated. There used to be a distinct tool called Hello Privacy, with its own plan: $9.99 monthly or a discounted $100 per year for Premium. However, Hello Privacy was acquired by Array, an online security platform, in 2022, and its name changed to Privacy Protect. Post-name change, Privacy Protect is now offered under Array’s all-in-one bundle.
Array doesn’t have standard pricing. It runs a pay-as-you-go model, where users only pay for the features they utilize. Array is targeted at enterprises, and potential customers have to contact the company’s sales team for a quote.
Here’s another confusing aspect: you can still use Hello Privacy standalone or as part of Array’s Privacy Protect. For some reason, Array decided to integrate the data removal platform into its all-in-one suite and also maintain it as a standalone service, which I’m focusing on in this review.
You can use Hello Privacy’s free version to test the scanning features before making your final decision. There’s no standard refund policy, which I consider a disadvantage.
Hello Privacy: Setup
Setting up this platform follows a sequential, straightforward pattern. Individual users can visit HelloPrivacy.com to get started. Enter details including your first and last name, location, and age to run a free scan. The scan covers 132 data broker sites, including some of the most widely used ones, but this coverage is much less than some competitors offer. For example, DeleteMe covers over 750 data broker sites, and Incogni covers 420+.
The scan takes anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes, depending on the volume of data discovered on the 132 data broker sites. Afterwards, you’ll see a list of the sites where your data was discovered (pictured below).
As a free user, scanning is where the service stops. To send deletion requests to the identified data broker sites, you’ll need to pay for a premium plan. As mentioned earlier, the premium package costs $9.99 per month, but it’s discounted to $100 if you pay annually (compared to $120 if paid month-to-month for 12 months). The $20 discount (around 17% lower than the month-to-month price) isn’t as much as offered by several rivals, but it’s at least a deal.
After subscribing, you can send automated deletion requests to each data broker site. A request asks the data broker site to remove your information from their database so that it’ll no longer be searchable. From your dashboard, you can monitor the progress of every request. You’ll also be alerted if a request is successfully processed.
There’s a drawback, though: Hello Privacy doesn’t support custom removal requests. If you discover your info on a data broker site not part of its 132-strong native coverage, there’s no way to draft a custom deletion request for the site. On several competitors, even when the data broker site isn’t natively covered, the team can still send manual removal requests on your behalf, but that isn’t the case with Hello Privacy.
Along with data removal, Hello Privacy also offers dark web monitoring. That is, it scans data breach databases on the dark web and alerts you if your email address was found in any. If so, it’s a signal to immediately change the password associated with that email address on the breached platform. If you’ve used the same password on other sites, you should also change them (hackers often use credentials obtained on one site to attempt to break into other sites).
Hello Privacy: Ease of use
Using Hello Privacy felt easy. I didn’t jump through obstacles to sign up, scan for personal data, or monitor the progress of deletion requests. Everything felt sequential, with one easy step leading to the next until I got the desired results. Hello Privacy is primarily accessible from a web interface.
Hello Privacy: Security and privacy
For its price, Hello Privacy is a good addition to your online security suite. It isn’t an all-in-one security platform, but it fulfills the valuable role of keeping your personal info off data broker sites. Hello Privacy covers 132 U.S.-centric data broker sites, not as many as covered by several competitors, but it offers good value for its price point.
Hello Privacy: Support
As a Hello Privacy user, you can count on having access to decent support. If there’s a need to contact the support team, you can do that via email or telephone.
I didn’t find a detailed FAQs section or Help Center on the website, which was odd, as having these pages is the norm for competitors.
However, I did find some user guides for opting out of specific data broker sites. In this criterion, there’s more room for improvement by providing better self-help support resources (user guides, manuals, and FAQs).
Hello Privacy: Competition
When talking about data broker coverage earlier, I mentioned two notable competitors, DeleteMe and Incogni. These rivals offer more extensive data broker coverage than Hello Privacy. They also support manual removal requests for data broker sites not part of their native coverage; in-house experts draft legal requests asking these sites to delete your data. Hello Privacy doesn’t support manual requests, which I highlighted as a drawback.
On the bright side, Hello Privacy is a more affordable tool. An annual subscription costs $100 compared to $129 for DeleteMe and $179 for Incogni’s Unlimited plan (which offers similar features to Hello Privacy).
Hello Privacy: Final verdict
I recommend Hello Privacy to users who need an affordable platform to keep their personal info off data broker sites. It doesn’t have the most extensive coverage or extra security features, but it fulfils its role at a cost-effective price. It isn’t a complete security suite, except when purchased as part of an Array enterprise security bundle, but it works well for the average user seeking to maximize their online privacy.
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