Does DeleteMe Actually Get Your Info off the Internet? I Tried It

DeleteMe 真的能把你的个人信息从互联网上清除吗？我亲自试了试

Recent estimates approximate that there are 16.4 billion Google searches per day globally. A huge portion of those searches is for people’s names. Of those names, many are likely public figures, like Lionel Messi, Sabrina Carpenter, or any number of politicians doing something nefarious. But a great many of the name searches are ostensibly for normies. Maybe even you. Definitely me, based on the deluge of spam calls I get.

据近期估算，全球每天约有 164 亿次谷歌搜索。其中很大一部分是针对个人姓名的搜索。在这些名字中，许多可能是公众人物，比如莱昂内尔·梅西 (Lionel Messi)、萨布丽娜·卡彭特 (Sabrina Carpenter)，或是某些正在做坏事的政客。但还有相当多的姓名搜索显然是针对普通人的。也许甚至包括你。鉴于我收到的海量垃圾骚扰电话，这绝对包括我。

DeleteMe was founded in 2010 and claims to be one of the oldest companies in data removal. Services like DeleteMe and its competitor Incogni work by contacting data brokers on your behalf and getting them to remove your personal information, including your current and past mailing addresses, your phone numbers, and your email address. Theoretically, this process removes you from annoying marketing lists and makes it harder for randos to find you. I’ve used DeleteMe since January, and while it’s not a silver bullet for ensuring the complete absence of unwanted communication from strangers and scammers, it seems to have helped with the number of unsolicited marketing calls I get. It also helped clean up personal info from my Google results, so you’re more likely to read an old article I wrote than see where I live.

DeleteMe 成立于 2010 年，号称是数据清除领域历史最悠久的公司之一。像 DeleteMe 及其竞争对手 Incogni 这类服务，其工作原理是代表你联系数据经纪人，要求他们删除你的个人信息，包括你当前和过去的邮寄地址、电话号码以及电子邮件地址。从理论上讲，这一过程可以将你从烦人的营销名单中移除，并增加陌生人找到你的难度。我从一月份开始使用 DeleteMe，虽然它并不能保证彻底杜绝陌生人和诈骗者的骚扰，但它似乎确实减少了我接到的垃圾营销电话数量。它还帮助清理了我在谷歌搜索结果中的个人信息，所以现在你更有可能读到我写的旧文章，而不是看到我住在哪里。

I have also used Incogni, where I managed an account for my elderly mother. She got similar results, which is to be expected, says DeleteMe executive Jason Dalrymple. Services like DeleteMe and others “all basically do the same thing,” he says. “We’re bound by the same laws and constraints in compliance. It’s a cat-and-mouse game.”

我也使用过 Incogni，并为我年迈的母亲管理过一个账户。DeleteMe 高管 Jason Dalrymple 表示，她获得类似的结果是在意料之中的。他说，像 DeleteMe 和其他同类服务“本质上做的都是同一件事”。“我们受到相同的法律和合规约束。这是一场猫鼠游戏。”

That’s because the degree to which data brokers need to cooperate with the requests of deletion companies is legally murky, given that there’s no comprehensive federal law in the US that regulates the way private companies can use personal data. Rather, most regulations are at the state level, where protections are varied (I live in Missouri, where I feel lucky to have running water). Some states, like California, have more protections, while many states have none. Regardless of where you live, data brokers aren’t necessarily just going to delete your information upon request. They may request further verification of your identity before complying and confirming the request was granted, they may deny the request, and they may ignore the request completely—all actions that require follow-up correspondence with the deletion service.

这是因为数据经纪人配合删除公司请求的程度在法律上尚不明确，毕竟美国目前还没有一部全面的联邦法律来规范私营公司如何使用个人数据。相反，大多数法规是在州一级制定的，各州的保护力度参差不齐（我住在密苏里州，能有自来水用我就觉得很幸运了）。一些州（如加利福尼亚州）有较多的保护措施，而许多州则完全没有。无论你住在哪里，数据经纪人都不一定会应你的要求直接删除你的信息。他们可能会在同意并确认请求之前要求进一步验证你的身份，他们可能会拒绝请求，也可能完全无视请求——所有这些行为都需要删除服务商进行后续的沟通跟进。

With DeleteMe and Incogni, you can track progress via a dashboard that provides an at-a-glance update on how many removal requests have been made and fulfilled. A few more clicks will show you specifics on each broker, though most of these will be unfamiliar to typical users. The main difference I noticed between DeleteMe and Incogni is that the former’s dashboard doesn’t update as often as the latter’s and also doesn’t show as many brokers being contacted.

通过 DeleteMe 和 Incogni，你可以通过仪表板跟踪进度，该仪表板可以让你一目了然地看到已发出和已完成的删除请求数量。再点击几下，你就能看到每个经纪人的具体信息，尽管其中大多数对普通用户来说都很陌生。我注意到 DeleteMe 和 Incogni 之间的主要区别在于，前者的仪表板更新频率不如后者，而且显示的联系经纪人数量也没有后者多。

I prefer the Incogni dashboard because it’s satisfying and reassuring to log in every few days and see that the company is crawling the web and busting brokers, each of which it rates based on their speed and general compliance. There are constant status updates for thousands of websites. DeleteMe, on the other hand, creates a report every few months showing progress on a smaller number of sites. Dalrymple argues that his company’s surgical approach is a feature, not a bug.

我更喜欢 Incogni 的仪表板，因为每隔几天登录一次，看到公司在抓取网络并打击经纪人，而且它还会根据经纪人的响应速度和合规性进行评分，这种感觉既令人满意又让人安心。数千个网站的状态在不断更新。相比之下，DeleteMe 每隔几个月才会生成一份报告，显示少数几个网站的进度。Dalrymple 认为，他公司这种“外科手术式”的方法是一个功能，而不是缺陷。

“It can actually exacerbate the problem [to work faster and cast a wider net] because they send your information out to these companies to make sure they don’t have it—but then they have it,” he says. “They’re adding databases that you’re never going to be on, where you have less than a one in 100,000 chance to be, and then your information is being sent all over.”

“（追求更快的速度和更广的覆盖范围）实际上可能会加剧问题，因为他们为了确认这些公司没有你的信息，反而把你的信息发送给了它们——结果它们就真的有了，”他说。“他们正在把你加入到那些你本永远不会出现在其中的数据库中，而你出现在那里的概率本来不到十万分之一，现在你的信息却被到处发送。”

It’s a fair point, but comparing the efficacy of each service is nearly impossible, given all the factors involved. Even so, Dalrymple makes a convincing case for what he calls DeleteMe’s “more bespoke approach” to privacy and the fair use of your data, which involves looking at who has what and how they’re using it, as opposed to automating removal blasts to the biggest number of data brokers possible.

这是一个合理的观点，但考虑到涉及的所有因素，比较每项服务的有效性几乎是不可能的。即便如此，Dalrymple 还是为他所称的 DeleteMe 在隐私和数据公平使用方面的“更定制化方法”提供了令人信服的理由，这种方法侧重于查看谁拥有什么数据以及他们如何使用这些数据，而不是自动向尽可能多的数据经纪人发送删除请求。

You also can’t argue with DeleteMe’s longevity—it’s among the longest-standing in the space and has customers who have been on for eight-plus years. The average user stays for three years. Again, having spam calls disappear overnight is not a reasonable expectation from a data-removal service like DeleteMe or any of its competitors, so signing on with one of the providers should come with an expectation that you’ll be with them for a bit of time.

你也不能否认 DeleteMe 的长久性——它是该领域历史最悠久的公司之一，拥有使用超过八年的客户。平均用户的使用时长为三年。再次强调，指望垃圾骚扰电话一夜之间消失，对 DeleteMe 或其任何竞争对手这类数据删除服务来说是不切实际的期望，因此在选择其中一家服务商时，你应该做好长期使用的心理准备。

I’m old enough to remember when the Do Not Call registry did just that. That database still exists, but it isn’t really functional, as it won’t block you from receiving unwanted calls from several entities, including charities, political parties, people conducting surveys, and more. The list also won’t offer any help with managing your digital footprint. (In fact, some theorize that joining the registry may actually further compromise your data, as you’re adding your information to yet another list.) Gradually shrinking that footprint is a long game, and DeleteMe has been playing it the longest.

我年纪够大，还记得“谢绝来电”(Do Not Call) 登记册曾经确实能起到作用。那个数据库现在依然存在，但实际上已经没什么用了，因为它无法阻止你接到来自慈善机构、政党、调查人员等多个实体的骚扰电话。该名单也无法在管理你的数字足迹方面提供任何帮助。（事实上，有人推测加入该登记册反而可能进一步泄露你的数据，因为你又把自己的信息添加到了另一个名单中。）逐渐缩小数字足迹是一场持久战，而 DeleteMe 在这场战役中坚持的时间最长。

For perspective, when DeleteMe started, Meta was still a private company called Facebook. At the time, everyone was extremely excited about posting everything they could about themselves to the internet. DeleteMe executive Jason Dalrymple remembers swimming against a hard current while pitching venture capitalists on a data-removal company. “Everybody was excited to share; no one was thinking about the implications of all that data being shared,” he says. “Everyone told us: Privacy’s dead, privacy’s dead, privacy’s dead.”

从宏观角度来看，当 DeleteMe 成立时，Meta 还是一家名为 Facebook 的私营公司。那时，每个人都对在互联网上发布关于自己的一切感到无比兴奋。DeleteMe 高管 Jason Dalrymple 回忆起他向风险投资家推销这家数据删除公司时，感觉就像是在逆流而上。“每个人都热衷于分享；没有人考虑过分享所有这些数据会带来什么后果，”他说。“每个人都告诉我们：隐私已死，隐私已死，隐私已死。”