Engadget staffers love our hardware, from high-end gaming headsets to powerful heaters to the fabric shaver you never knew you needed. Cyber Monday has brought discounts to many of those things. I’m going a different route, though, since I’m a little too dreamy for most physical appliances. The deal I’m most interested in is on an app that ensures online peace of mind with little intervention — so it’s perfect for me.
I’m talking about DeleteMe, which lets you reclaim some of your privacy while sharply reducing the amount of spam you receive on every channel. Through December 5, it’s offering 30 percent off all subscriptions with the coupon code BFCM30OFF25.
Chances are you’ve seen at least one public-facing “people search” site. You know the ones: they usually have names like 411.info or Find.people, and scrape technically public info like your address, phone number and other contact information. If you search your own name, it’s hard to avoid immediately running to the kitchen to make yourself a tinfoil hat.
The most annoying thing is that these “data broker” sites are legal to run and use, but that’s also their biggest weakness. To operate in the open, brokers have to include an option to remove yourself from their database. Most of them make it as aggravating and time-consuming as possible, but the possibility is there.
That’s where DeleteMe comes in. All you have to do is sign up and enter all the data you want removed from brokerage sites. DeleteMe handles the rest. It searches for your information on people database sites, automatically sends opt-out requests, bugs the broker if they don’t comply quickly enough and gives you a weekly report on how it’s doing. You do have to be OK with DeleteMe itself having your data, but I trust them way more than the randos over at violate.privacy.
It’s so much faster than handling all the opt-out requests yourself, which — if you’ve ever tried it — rapidly becomes a full-time job. Since I’ve been using DeleteMe, I almost never get spam calls or texts anymore, except in short bursts before its crawlers catch my name on another site. And yes, it doesn’t work on shady data brokers who don’t follow the rules, but it’s still a massive reduction of your online footprint.
The only problem is that it’s pretty expensive, so I strongly recommend jumping on this Cyber Monday deal. A few months on DeleteMe should be long enough for you to see if it reduces spam for you — and I’m betting it will.
