Pros & Cons
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- Relatively inexpensive
- Free tier available
- Automates removal from company databases
- Handles unsubscribing from email lists
- Identity theft protection at the top tier
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- Handles fewer data brokers than top competitors
- Doesn't match features of dedicated identity services
PrivacyHawk Specs
| Custom Removal Requests | |
| Family Data Removal | |
| Free Version Available | |
| Identity Monitoring |
Hackers and cybercrooks may steal your personal data, but data brokers and aggregators obtain your info legally. They collect what they can from publicly available sources and quickly gin up a profile that represents you—a profile that they can sell. Oh, you can ask them to remove your data, but how do you know who even has your profile? That’s where a personal data removal service comes in. PrivacyHawk knows where to look among the people search sites and data brokers, and it can automate the process of getting your profile removed. It also helps you eliminate forgotten accounts that may serve as fodder for the brokers. At its highest tier, it even includes some identity theft remediation features. Our Editors’ Choice winners in this realm are Optery and Privacy Bee, both of which scour a wider range of brokers, but PrivacyHawk is worth a look, especially if you prefer working from a mobile device.
How Much Does PrivacyHawk Cost?
As with Optery, Privacy Bee, and a few others, you can run a scan with PrivacyHawk for free and manage data broker removals manually. PrivacyHawk also identifies companies that hold your data and helps you opt out from those, with up to 10 opt-outs per month at no charge.
For $74.99 per year, PrivacyHawk’s Premium plan handles the tedium of opt-outs and personal data removals automatically. It also helps you unsubscribe from periodic emails, and it watches for new appearances of your personal data online. That’s roughly on par with Incogni’s price of $77.88 per year.
At $39 per year, Optery’s Core subscription undercuts PrivacyHawk by quite a bit. However, that subscription has some significant limits. To get everything Optery offers, you pay $249 per year. Top-tier protection from Privacy Bee costs $179.
PrivacyHawk’s Platinum tier costs $124.99 per year and adds some elements of identity theft protection. It scans the dark web and alerts you of data breaches, and it watches for suspicious activity around your SSN and unauthorized change of address attempts. You get the standard million-dollar insurance against costs of recovery from identity theft, but PrivacyHawk doesn’t offer the personalized recovery assistance that characterizes dedicated identity protection services. PrivacyHawk bills itself as a complement to your identity theft service, not a replacement.
Do note that full-scale security plus identity protection systems cost significantly more than PrivacyHawk. You can subscribe to Norton 360 With LifeLock at three levels costing $149.99, $249.99, and $349.99, respectively. Bitdefender Ultimate Security offers identity protection at its Plus and Plus Extended tiers for $189.99 and $249.99 per year.
Starting a Free Scan With PrivacyHawk
Unlike most personal data removal services, PrivacyHawk is mobile-first. You start your journey by downloading the free app from Apple’s App Store or the Google Play Store. After a few introductory screens, you fill in the personal data required for the scan. Specifically, it needs your email address, first and last name, age, city, and state.
Once you’ve satisfied that initial data collection, PrivacyHawk goes straight to seeking your personal information. By observation, it checks 102 data broker sites, which is a bit on the low side. DeleteMe automates removal from about 135 sites, and Incogni hits 274. As for Optery and Privacy Bee, they surpass 600 and 900 sites, respectively.
(Credit: PrivacyHawk/PCMag)I didn’t time the scan, which runs in the background, but it seemed quick enough. On completion, it reported finding 11 brokers holding my data. In truth, several were my wife’s data, but my PrivacyHawk contact explained this is due to sloppiness at the broker end of things. He also noted that, on average, for a new user, the program finds 95 exposures. My online persona is extra-clean because I’ve tested numerous other services of this type.
A button at the bottom of the report has the enticing title Remove Me from All. However, clicking to proceed reveals that removal is only available to paying customers. I’ll discuss the removal process below.
(Credit: PrivacyHawk/PCMag)Privacy Bee, Optery, DeleteMe, and a few others supplement their free scan with a database of instructions for DIY removal requests. If you have more time than money, you can run a free scan and then work through the found brokers manually. PrivacyHawk’s free scan reports what brokers have your data, but if you want to send removal requests manually, you’re on your own.
Check Your Digital Footprint
Every time you make an online purchase or join a discussion group, you leave a digital trace behind. That discussion group may hold nothing more than your username, but the online merchant has your full contact details, including your address for shipping. You might quit the group or stop buying from the merchant, but your data doesn’t go away.
(Credit: PrivacyHawk/PCMag)A data breach of a site you haven’t visited for years could expose your personal information. If the site goes bankrupt, your data might be sold along with other assets, and the new owners could, in turn, sell that information to—you guessed it—data brokers. PrivacyHawk helps you wipe out these unused accounts so they can’t become liabilities. When you first invoke Digital Footprint Reduction, it walks through a detailed discussion of how the process works.
The key to this scan is that creating or interacting with just about any such account involves email in some way. PrivacyHawk combs through your email (Gmail, Yahoo, or Microsoft) to find companies with which you have an account.
(Credit: PrivacyHawk/PCMag)You do have to put your trust in PrivacyHawk to use this feature, as you must give it full access to read your personal email and send messages on your behalf. The company does promise that “no human has access to any of your personal emails.” For myself, when I work with a service that requires this level of access, I make a point to revoke the access when I’m finished.
Privacy Bee offers a similar option to scan your Inbox and find relationships. You can use it to unsubscribe from emails and to define your trust relationship with companies. At present, it’s specific to Gmail, but support for Yahoo and Microsoft is planned.
When the scan is finished, PrivacyHawk reports the number of company connections it found in your email. In my case, it found 324. Tapping for details gets a breakdown by category, and tapping a category shows you exactly which company connections the scan found.
For each company, you can tap one of two icons, Delete or Do Not Sell. For the latter, PrivacyHawk simply registers with the company so that you do not give permission to sell your data. Choosing Delete means PrivacyHawk sends an official request for the company to totally delete your data. My PrivacyHawk contact explained that the AI agent uses whatever means are appropriate for each company, typically an email or a web form, and then watches for confirmation that the company acted on the data removal request.
(Credit: PrivacyHawk/PCMag)Even at the free level, users can use 10 opt-outs per month. Do note that at 10 per month, it would take nearly three years to clear out the 324 connections it found for me. I proceeded to use my 10 removals for testing. For opt-outs to work, you need to enter a phone number, birthdate, and address separate from the similar data you entered to check data brokers.
Once you’ve stacked up the requests you want to make, you review them and tap go. PrivacyHawk explains that the number of your requests will initially show up in the Processing slot on the Digital Footprint screen. Those that can be fully automated will move to Completed when done, while those that need your interaction move to Notifications.
Unsubscribe From Unwanted Emails
In addition to finding company relationships you might have forgotten, PrivacyHawk identifies companies that regularly send you emails and offers to help you unsubscribe from those to save your bulging Inbox. For each found source of email, you can tap to unsubscribe or actively choose to keep it. Either way, you’ll find that you can’t proceed without a paid PrivacyHawk subscription.
What Do Premium Customers Get?
Everything I’ve described to this point is available at no charge. You can install PrivacyHawk on your phone and get a pretty good idea of its capabilities without paying. If you determine it’s a good fit, though, you’ll want to pay the subscription fee and unlock all features.
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Personal Data Removal
PrivacyHawk doesn’t charge to check its 100-or-so data broker sites and report which of them have a profile for you. It even gives you details about just what kind of personal data each site holds. But if you want it to help you remove those data profiles, you’ll have to pay.
Once you’re in the ranks of paying customers, data removal is as simple as tapping the button labeled Remove Me from All. PrivacyHawk immediately starts processing your found profiles, requesting that the brokers involved remove your data.
(Credit: PrivacyHawk/PCMag)The app explains that personal data removal isn’t necessarily a quick process. For each item, it offers an estimated time for removal. In my case, it estimated 29 days for two of the found instances and 74 days for the rest. PrivacyHawk resubmits requests on a monthly basis, as needed.
The app page for this feature has two facets, selected by tapping tabs titled Processing and Protected at the top. The former shows the removals that are in process, while the latter awkwardly lists all the brokers that PrivacyHawk handles. The list isn’t in any order I can suss out. Each entry has a large amount of whitespace below, including the label “Location”. But there are no locations listed. You can’t see more than two items at a time, and spinning through the entire 100-odd entries takes quite a while. This screen could use a makeover.
No Limits on Digital Footprint Cleanup
Once you’ve given PrivacyHawk access to your email account (Gmail, Yahoo, or Microsoft), it comes up with a list of all the companies you seem to have an account with. For each company, you can tap one icon to request deletion of your account or tap another to inform the company that it may not sell your data. Non-paying customers can exercise up to 10 of these opt-out actions per month. When you open your wallet for a Premium account, that limit of 10 per month vanishes. That’s the only difference.
Do note that many of your footprint removal requests will generate one or more email responses. Often, you’ll get one response to acknowledge receipt of the request and another to report successful removal. For the sake of your Inbox, you may want to make a dozen or two requests, wait a day or so for the responses, and then do a few dozen more, until you’ve worked through them all.
Easy, Automated Unsubscribe
The same scan that lists accounts with various companies makes a separate list of companies that regularly send you emails. Free users can peruse the list, but to unsubscribe, they’ll have to open an email app and manually send requests.
If you’ve paid for a Premium account, PrivacyHawk handles the unsubscribe process for you. Just tap each item you want to unsubscribe from. You can also flag those you want to keep, so PrivacyHawk won’t list them in its next scan.
(Credit: PrivacyHawk/PCMag)The selections you make stack up in a list, with the number appearing on the Continue button at the bottom. My inclination would be to process a dozen or so at a time, as with digital footprint removal requests.
When you tap Continue, you see all the emails you’ve selected. Tap Send, and PrivacyHawk will start working on those unsubscribe requests.
(Credit: PrivacyHawk/PCMag)Just like the company data opt-outs, some can be handled in a fully automated way. Those simply move from Processing to Unsubscribed. Others may need a response from you. Either way, it’s a lot easier than searching out mailing lists and unsubscribing manually.
What Do You Get With a Platinum Subscription?
Subscribing at the Platinum level costs $50 more than the Premium level. Naturally, you get all the premium features. In addition, PrivacyHawk monitors the dark web for your personal data and reports on data breaches. It keeps an eye out for unauthorized change of address requests and for misuse of your SSN. And it offers phone support with a $1 million guarantee if you suffer identity theft.
To start, you enter your first and last name and full physical address. If you’re keeping score, this is the third time you’ve done something like this. You supplied your name, age, and city to check data brokers. To opt out of the company storage of your data, you must fill in your name, address, and birth date. I get the feeling that some kind of central storage would be beneficial.
Next, add your birthdate, SSN, phone number, and email. After you submit a texted verification code, you’re in! When searching for data broker profiles or sending data opt-out requests, you’re limited to a single address, phone, and email. The identity protection system goes well beyond that. You now add even more personal data, the data that PrivacyHawk will monitor on the dark web and other sources. You can save:
- 10 Addresses
- 20 Bank accounts
- 10 Credit/Debit cards
- 10 Driver’s licenses
- 10 Emails
- 10 Medical IDs
- 10 Passports
- 10 Phone numbers
- 3 SSNs
That’s nine types of personal data. Avast One Platinum, Bitdefender, and Norton track 11 types, adding birthdate and mother’s maiden name. The average is a little over 10 types of data, so PrivacyHawk is right in the mix.
(Credit: PrivacyHawk/PCMag)Once you’ve entered this important information, you’re done. There’s no option to hook up your bank accounts and monitor for anomalous transactions the way you can with Bitdefender, Norton, Webroot Total Protection, and a few others. The social media tracking offered by ESET HOME Security Ultimate, IDShield, IDX Complete, and others doesn’t show up with PrivacyHawk. And, like UltraAV, PrivacyHawk doesn’t monitor your credit score with any of the credit bureaus, nor does it help you manage credit freezes.
All the dedicated identity theft services I’ve evaluated offer some form of lost wallet protection. With many of them, you record the contents of your wallet to aid in recovery. PrivacyHawk doesn’t do this, though its remediation assistants will surely help you recover from the consequences of losing your wallet.
So, what does PrivacyHawk do to protect your identity? First, as noted, it scans the dark web to see if any of your personal data is for sale. If it finds a problem, you’ll get an alert. You’ll also get notified if your data appears in a breach, or if there’s suspicious activity around your SSN or change of address. These features work in the background—you won’t see them except when they find something to report.
(Credit: PrivacyHawk/PCMag)Then there’s the big one, the $1 million guarantee. If you experience identity theft, you can call the 24/7 help hotline for recovery assistance. PrivacyHawk promises to cover expenses up to $1 million, with certain limitations. For example, the insurance covers lost wages, but no more than $1,500 per week for up to five weeks. It covers travel expenses, elder care expenses, and an initial legal consultation, but provides no more than $2,000 for each.
Bitdefender Ultimate Security and Norton maintain separate funds to reimburse for stolen funds and for ransomware losses. At its most expansive and expensive level, Norton 360 With LifeLock reserves a million dollars to each of these, for a total of $3 million potentially to spend on your case. Bitdefender’s top tier goes up to $2 million. PrivacyHawk doesn’t maintain similar separate funds.
It’s important to remember that identity protection in PrivacyHawk is a bonus, not the main event. PrivacyHawk is primarily oriented toward personal data removal. The identity protection features are a top-tier add-on, at an incremental cost of $50 per year over the basic service. It’s not in competition with the major (and more expensive) identity theft services. If you feel its somewhat limited identity features are worth $50, go for it! If not, just stick with the standard Premium tier.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: PrivacyHawk)
PrivacyHawk
PrivacyHawk automates the removal of personal data from online brokers and prevents them from mining valuable data in forgotten or abandoned accounts. Its mobile-first focus makes it a good match for the right user.