The Business of Helping the Ultra-Wealthy Vanish From the Internet

For the ultra-wealthy, digital privacy has become a purchasable commodity. Corporations and high-net-worth individuals are increasingly hiring data-removal services to systematically erase their personally identifiable information from search engines, data brokers and the dark web. These services go far beyond what automated tools can achieve, offering ongoing auditing to mitigate both digital and physical security risks. Affordable, often automated services such as DeleteMe, Incogni, and Google’s free PII removal tool can only get you so far. Data brokers will “insert something like a captcha to ensure that a bot can’t come in and wipe out their database,” said Tom Aldrich, chief operating officer of digital exposure reduction firm 360 Privacy.