Consumer Reports study finds data removal services are often ineffective

A new investigation of data removal services — companies that say they will strip consumer information from people-search data broker sites — found that they are for the most part worthless.

The nonprofit Consumer Reports found that a sample of 13 of the services, which ranged in cost from $19.99 to $249 per year, failed to get consumers’ data removed quickly or completely.

People-search sites — which are data brokers collecting information from social media platforms, public records and commercial sources — often package their findings into one product and sell it on the web where it can be purchased by anybody without any oversight.

As a result of this information being readily accessible, and the worry that causes some consumers, many data removal services have cropped up to ostensibly fix the problem.

The Consumer Reports study ran for four months and relied on 32 volunteers as test subjects. 

Investigators found 332 data “instances” for the 28 study participants who were subsequently assigned to removal services (not including the four participants who were measured based on opting out via individual requests without help from a deletion service). 

Only 117, or 35%, of those instances were taken down within four months, Consumer Reports said.

Half of the study volunteers live in California because the advocacy group wanted to see if the state’s tough consumer privacy laws, which force data brokers to publicize opt-out requests and answer opt-out queries, affected results.

California volunteers were compared to an equal number of volunteers in New York. Despite the fact that New York has no privacy law, 6% more New York volunteer residents saw their data removed within four months from the people-search sites.

While the online presence of some of the 32 participants’ private data declined or disappeared after the removal searches were deployed, many volunteers’ data remained on the sites one week, one month and four months later.

Many volunteers who tried to manually opt out from some of the data removal services found that the process was frequently ineffective, too, and often data would be deleted only to pop back up weeks or months later. The individual opt-out process also was time-consuming, according to the report.

Notably, researchers found financial partnerships between the people-search sites and the data-removal services, with some removal services advertising or, in some cases, “partnering” with people-search sites.

"People-search sites collect information that was never shared voluntarily with the sites, and they create profiles of private individuals without their knowledge or consent,” Yael Grauer, a program manager for Consumer Reports and the author of the study, said in a statement.

“These kinds of data brokers can pose a real danger by making it easier for stalkers or harassers to find and contact you, facilitating identity theft, and revealing personal information you'd prefer to keep private,” she added.

Consumer Reports checked the people-search sites at one week, one month and four month intervals to see if the volunteers’ data profiles were gone and found that in all cases some data remained. Overall, the results underscore that the industry is on the whole very unreliable. 

The efficacy of removal services varied widely. EasyOptOuts and Optery performed the best, and EasyOptOuts also cost the least at $19.99 per year. 

DeleteMe, IDX, and Kanary were “mid-level performers,” Consumer Reports said, while Confidently and ReputationDefender were the least effective.

“It’s not surprising that many companies are taking advantage of this situation by offering services that claim they can erase or reduce the information collected by the sites,” Grauer said in a statement. 

“But our study shows that many of these services fall short of providing the kind of help and performance you’d expect, especially at the price levels some of them are charging,” she added.

Correction: Story corrected to specify that the most expensive service tested by Consumer Reports was $249 per year. Some services can reach $5,000 per year, according to the organization, but it did not test any at that price point.