Engadget’s staff loves our hardware, from high-end gaming headsets to powerful heaters to the fabric shavers you never knew you needed. Cyber Monday brings discounts on many of those things. However, I’m going a different route, because I’m a little too dreamy for most physical devices. The deal I’m most interested in is on an app that ensures peace of mind online with little interference – so this is perfect for me.
I’m talking about DeleteMe, which lets you reclaim some of your privacy while reducing the amount of spam you receive on every channel. Through December 5th, it’s offering 30 percent off all subscriptions with coupon code BFCM30OFF25,
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Chances are you’ve come across at least one public-facing “people search” site. You know the ones: They usually have names like 411.info or Find.people, and technically extract public information like your address, phone number, and other contact information. If you discover your own name, it’s hard to resist immediately heading 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 this is also their biggest weakness. To operate in the open, brokers must include the option to remove yourself from their database. Most of them make it as painful and time-consuming as possible, but the possibility is still there.
That’s where DeleteMe comes in. All you have to do is sign up and enter all the data you want to remove from the brokerage sites. DeleteMe takes care of the rest. It looks up your information on people’s database sites, automatically sends opt-out requests, harasses the broker if they don’t comply quickly enough, and gives you a weekly report on how it’s doing. You’ll have to keep your data fine with DeleteMe, but I trust them more than the rando at Violation.Privacy.
This is much faster than handling all the opt-out requests yourself, which – if you’ve ever tried it – quickly becomes a full-time job. Since I’ve been using DeleteMe, I almost never get spam calls or texts anymore, except when its crawlers leave little asides before they catch my name on another site. And yes, it doesn’t work on shady data brokers who don’t follow regulations, but it’s still a huge reduction in your online footprint.
The only problem is that it’s quite expensive, so I strongly recommend taking 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.
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