{"id":225692,"date":"2026-03-20T10:12:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T14:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/20\/hit-by-breaches-i-tried-a-data-removal-service-to-take-back-my-privacy-how-it-paid-off\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T10:35:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T14:35:09","slug":"hit-by-breaches-i-tried-a-data-removal-service-to-take-back-my-privacy-how-it-paid-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/20\/hit-by-breaches-i-tried-a-data-removal-service-to-take-back-my-privacy-how-it-paid-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Hit by breaches? I tried a data removal service to take back my privacy &#8211; how it paid off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/delete-me-review\/\">Hit by breaches? I tried a data removal service to take back my privacy &#8211; how it paid off<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/delete-me-review\/\">https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/delete-me-review\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-20 10:12:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.zdnet.com\">www.zdnet.com<\/a><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"g-text-large g-text-large-bold g-outer-spacing-bottom-xsmall\">ZDNET&#8217;s key takeaways<\/h3>\n<ul class=\"c-keyTakeaways_listElement\">\n<li><span>Pros: Removes personal info from data brokers, ongoing monitoring, easy setup<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span> Cons: Some features locked behind higher tiers, can&#8217;t clean certain data<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Follow ZDNET:\u00a0<span class=\"c-commerceLink\"><span>Add us as a preferred source<\/span><\/span>\u00a0on Google.<\/p>\n<p>Whether you realize it or not, your personal information is likely somewhere online. Massive data breaches over the years have poured millions of records onto the wider internet. It&#8217;s also no secret that some companies collect user data and sell it to data brokerage sites. If you&#8217;re like me and don&#8217;t want these third parties having your information, you may want to invest in a data removal service.<\/p>\n<p>Very recently, I had the opportunity to test such a service called <span class=\"c-commerceLink\"><span>DeleteMe<\/span><\/span> to scrub the internet of my data.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also: How to delete or hide yourself from the internet &#8211; 11 effective ways (and most are free)<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I like to think I am a good candidate to test DeleteMe, since my information has been leaked multiple times. I know this is true thanks to a website called Have I Been Pwned, a database that lets you know if your personal data has ever been compromised.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>According to the database, I&#8217;ve been a victim of eight data breaches, including the Under Armour leak from November 2025 and the ParkMobile hack from March 2021.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"c-bestListDeals_hed u-text-center\">Best personal data removal service deals of the week<\/h3>\n<p>Deals are selected by the CNET Group commerce team, and may be unrelated to this article.<\/p>\n<h2>How it works<\/h2>\n<p>DeleteMe scans the internet for personal information linked to your name and works to remove it from search engines and data-broker websites. The data it looks for includes email addresses, home addresses, phone numbers, and, in some cases, financial information. The company maintains a public list of the websites it targets, ranging from public record aggregators to Google Search itself.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also: You&#8217;re being tracked online &#8211; 9 easy ways to stop the surveillance<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It is possible to remove this information yourself. Many data broker sites provide opt-out forms, and Google&#8217;s Results&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/delete-me-review\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hit by breaches? I tried a data removal service to take back my privacy &#8211;&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":225693,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/a\/img\/resize\/6e40c71e950997c0790392edb6a6317d0c1e1901\/2026\/03\/20\/45a26c0b-3fa3-48d3-a6d4-e1fc5f570d45\/gettyimages-1824363355.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=675&width=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225694,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225692\/revisions\/225694"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}