Peace of mind is €12.99/month (or €9.99 if you pay annually)
This line, popping up on the cookie banner of a company promising to help me erase my digital footprint, perfectly sums up where we are today.
A new generation of services — Incogni, DeleteMe, Aura, to name a few — has emerged to protect our online presence. They offer to scrub our names from data broker lists, shield us from constant tracking, and reclaim peace of mind.
Personally I already pay for a VPN (which also happens to work well as an ad blocker), not because I have something to hide, but because I travel often. Without one, I literally can’t access my German bank account from some parts of Asia. The only way I can gain access is by pretending I’m back home, with a VPN. I’m tech-savvy enough to work around these things, but that shouldn’t be a prerequisite for using the internet.
And the VPN is just one layer. These newer tools promise something even more ambitious: protection from everything, data brokers, phishing scams, identity theft, creepy search sites, even your Tinder date doing a reverse lookup on your phone number. And that new safety comes with a monthly invoice.
The cost of opting out
Incogni charges €87 a year for its standard plan, or €156 for unlimited removals. DeleteMe is €129 for one year, or €209 if you buy two upfront. Aura runs €144 annually per user. All of them offer “family protection” plans, complete with messaging like “keep your loved ones safe.”
These services have been everywhere lately, recommended in newsletters, reviewed on blogs, mentioned by creators I follow. The fact that they exist at all and that they’ve found such traction says something uncomfortable: the internet is now something you have to pay to opt out of. Privacy has been rebranded as a premium feature. On top of that, they don’t just sell cleanup: they also offer protection.
Aura warns that your odds of falling victim to online crime are “1 in 4.”
Aura proactively protects you and your family, pushing the odds in your favor.
DeleteMe makes the threat feel personal:
Anyone, like a coworker, a new online date, or even a stranger, can pose a threat if they gain access to your personal information.
Incogni goes darker still:
Cybercriminals need your personal information to target you with more and better tailored attacks. And what better place to get their hands on it than through data brokers and people search sites?
This isn’t sloppy writing, but absolutely surgical framing. The product here isn’t just a data removal tool: it’s peace of mind. And they lean heavily on urgency, personal risk, and the idea that you’re being watched right now. Each service also makes sure to address you as a parent, who should be doing the right thing, which is protecting your family at any cost. This is emotional leverage as a business model.
"It would truly be a shame if something were to happen to your family..."
Here’s an old cliché from mafia movies: the protection fee. You give someone an enveloppe full of cash every two weeks, not because you believe they're doing something good, but because you’re told it’s dangerous not to. It’s not technically a scam, as they only "suggest" that “things can go sideways if you stop paying.” As long as you don’t see anything going wrong, you may assume the protection fee is working as intended, so you keep paying. And that’s the whole game.
This new breed of services feels exactly like these corrupt cops in movies, but with a Silicon Valley badge. That’s the energy I get when I land on a privacy service homepage, greeted by a popup asking me to accept cookies, then shown a list of threats I didn’t ask for or knew about, and offered a solution I’d be sorry to decline.
The modern internet works the same way. It’ll cost you around €30/month to see it. It's alright, but the one where you can relax a little is probably closer to €45/month. And for €60? A private tech company will personally make sure no other private tech companies can approach you and your loved ones ever again. Just click here and enter your credit card info.
I have absolutely no idea how the fuck we get out of this one.
