In-depth Optery review: assessing the good, bad, and essential


Optery promises to remove personal information from data brokers that collect, organize, share, and sell your sensitive data online. Like many personal data removal services, Optery works by submitting opt-out requests to data brokers on your behalf. Unlike many, it offers screenshots to help prove they’ve found and successfully removed your exposed profiles.
But is Optery the best option for your online privacy needs? Our Optery review takes a deep dive into this data removal service to help you decide whether it is worth your investment.
- Optery covers more data broker websites than many other data removal services. However, you must subscribe to their most expensive plan to get full coverage.
- While Optery focuses on people-search sites, the service also covers data brokers without public databases which it can’t scan to find your profiles. They send removal requests anyway, potentially exposing your personal details to sites that didn’t have them in the first place.
- Optery autogenerates links to data broker pages where your information might be exposed. While the technology worked for some data broker sites, numerous links in our dashboard were faulty.
- After a month of subscription, around 20% of sites, including the ones that exposed our data, had no activity (no opt-out requested).
- While Optery explains that they combine “Removed” and “Not Found” into one status to simplify reporting and tracking, our analysis showed that out of 100 sites marked with “Removed/ Not found,” only around 40 were actually removed, over 50 never had our data, and a couple were the ones that still had our profiles published on their sites.
Overall, Optery seems to remove data from some data brokers, but for an online privacy service that boasts about its transparency, we found its dashboard confusing and misleading.
Optery’s reach: understanding Optery’s data broker coverage
Optery promises to remove your personal data from 605+ data brokers. However, the actual number of sites covered depends on the plan you select:
- Free Basic: 0
- Core: 85+
- Extended: 240+
- Ultimate without Expanded reach: 365+
- Ultimate with Expanded reach: 605+
The data removal service focuses heavily on people-search sites, which we believe to be the most crucial type of data brokers to opt out of as they expose your personal information to anyone online – from old friends and classmates to stalkers and scammers. While Optery covers all major people-search sites, some of them are only available with the Ultimate (most expensive) plan, including Radaris, FreePeopleSearch, and Whitepages.
Optery uses its patented technology to autogenerate links to pages on people-search websites where your information could be published. Then the service seems to scan these links and take screenshots if your data is found there exposed. We’ll dive deeper into the accuracy of their scan later in the article.
In addition to people-search sites, Optery’s list also includes data brokers that don’t have publicly available databases. Interestingly, Optery labels them as people-search directories in the dashboard.

We find the practice of adding non-public data brokers to removal lists concerning because:
- Since these sites have no openly published catalogs, there’s no way to scan them and check if they even have your information. Optery sends removal requests to these companies nevertheless.
- To request removal from non-public data brokers, you must typically provide the very data you want removed/ opted out. This information is used to locate and identify your records in their databases for suppression. Since Optery sends removal requests without being able to first confirm that brokers already have your information, the service might potentially expose your personal details to sites that never had it – the opposite of what a privacy protection service should do.
- Even though Optery says it thoroughly researches companies to avoid sharing information with brokers that don’t already have it, and even though most brokers will ethically honor removal requests, there’s simply no guarantee that some sites won’t use your info to enrich their databases instead of suppressing it.
- Since Optery can’t scan these sites, the service must rely on brokers to notify about personal data removal/ suppression. However, there’s no way to verify that removal and some brokers don’t even send confirmations.
Here’s an example: Optery says our personal information was found exposed on AnalyticsIQ, a marketing data broker. However, there are no screenshots or profile links to prove they actually found our data on that site. Still, the activity history says that Optery submitted an opt-out request.

Here’s another example: our dashboard shows that Optery submitted an opt-out request to Acxiom and changed the status to “Removed/Not Found” on the same day. It begs the questions:
- Did Acxiom even have our information before Optery shared it with them for the opt-out request? If Optery doesn’t know whether Acxiom displays the names of family members, did they really find our data before submitting a request?
- Why did Optery report removal on the same day they requested opt-out when Acxiom itself states that processing a request takes up to two weeks?

The case with Acxiom also brought our attention to the following issue:
Unlike people-search sites that usually have only one removal option, non-public data brokers often have several:
- Opt-out of sale/ sharing of your data (doesn’t remove personal data from their database but limits how it’s used);
- Limiting the use of your sensitive information (doesn’t remove your information from their database but limits how it’s used);
- Deletion of your personal info (sometimes requires identity verification that only you can pass – answers to private questions like what bank issued your card, what your first car was, etc).
This makes us wonder whether Optery really removes information from non-public brokers or simply sends opt-out requests. While opting out is a good step for your online privacy, it doesn’t erase or suppress your info from databases completely.
This also makes us wonder how transparent Optery truly is about its process, identity protection practices, and overall effectiveness in protecting online privacy.
Navigating Optery’s removals: records search, opt-out, and reporting insights
Here are detailed insights from our experience using various Optery plans.
Free Basic
We first signed up for a free Optery account, which generates a PDF Exposure Report and provides DIY opt-out instructions for each data broker site. The report features:
- A list of data broker sites Optery found your profile on
- Screenshots of your profiles for each site
- Autogenerated links to pages with exposed profiles
In our experience, the Exposure Report was accurate and all screenshots depicted correct profiles.

However, we noticed discrepancies in numbers between the report and the dashboard: while the report found our data on 114 websites, the dashboard stated 219. This confused us, considering there weren’t any additional screenshots in the dashboard.
The free tier dashboard features an exposure percentage graphic (the number of matched profiles found vs. not found/search in progress), as well as:
- Screenshots of your profiles on people-search websites (the same as those featured in the Exposure Report) and screenshots of Google search results for your name (depicting data brokers among the top results).
- A list of websites Optery covers. Each data broker features a section that lists additional details about the site, DIY opt-out links, and profile links/ screenshots (if available). We’ve noticed that Optery adds autogenerated links to most people-search sites, regardless of whether they located a profile.
Overall, we found the Exposure Report to be more valuable and informative than the dashboard: the report simply presented accurate results while the dashboard provided a lot of faulty links.
Core plan
Next, we upgraded to a paid subscription with the Core plan, which enabled automatic opt-outs for 90+ sites.
After several days of active subscription, we logged into the account and found some sites already updated to “Removed.” No new screenshots were added to the dashboard, so we suppose that Optery didn’t initiate a new scan after we bought a paid plan but started working with the results of the free scan.
The dashboard allows you to view progress by switching between the following tabs: removals in progress, removals completed, and removals pending.
We checked the “completed” tab, which listed 76 sites Optery had allegedly removed us from. Of those, around 20 were the websites that never had our data. It became clear that we couldn’t trust the numbers in the dashboard and needed to double-check how many profiles were truly removed ourselves.
After some time, we upgraded to the Extended plan.
Extended plan
Optery states that since its scans aren’t always accurate, Extended and Ultimate plan subscribers also get manual reviews in which their staff members cross-check the dashboard with report results to improve accuracy. Additionally, instead of Exposure Reports, Extended and Ultimate users receive quarterly privacy reports called Removal Reports that feature before-and-after screenshots.
Upgrading to the Extended plan didn’t bring any difference in data removal speed but upgraded the site coverage to 240+. However, such major brokers as Whitepages, USPhoneBook, and ClustrMaps were still locked (for being available only on the Ultimate plan).
Ultimate plan
The Ultimate plan without Expanded Reach includes 365+ sites and all 605+ with Expanded Reach enabled. Optery describes the Expanded Reach sites as the ones that don’t meet their rigorous removal verification process. From what we’ve observed, it includes data brokers without public catalogs. For our review, we didn’t enable this feature and evaluated the Ultimate plan itself.
Like with the Extended plan, we didn’t notice a difference in removal progress speed. Notably, not everything depends on Optery as data broker sites take different times to remove a record and some will do so only after receiving several requests. Keeping that in mind, we waited for about a month more, and then came back to examine the dashboard.
First, we checked the removals. This was a bit tricky as Optery combines two, seemingly unrelated, statuses into one: Removed and Not found. The service explains that doing so “dramatically simplifies reporting and tracking.”

In our view, doing so dramatically exaggerates your actual removal progress: out of 97 people-search websites, only around 40 had our profiles actually removed and over 50 never had our data in the first place. Interestingly, most of those 50 sites had “Profile has been successfully removed” written in their activity history.

If Optery combines “Removed” and “Not found” for convenience, why do they claim successful removal from sites they didn’t find our data on?
Additionally, there were a couple of sites that still had our profiles published. This made us question how Optery verifies removals and whether they simply rely on data brokers’ responses.
Another thing we quickly noticed was that some websites had no activity:
- The ones that had our profiles didn’t have opt-out requested
- The ones that didn’t have our profiles weren’t updated to “Removed/ Not found,” but had a “Personal Info Found Exposed” status instead
In fact, around 20% of websites covered by the Ultimate plan had no activity after a month on the Ultimate plan.
It’s worth noting that the Extended and Ultimate plans include a human “privacy agent” for quality assurance and special circumstances – manual work does take longer than automatic updates, so it’s possible Optery’s human agents will change statuses, links, and screenshots as they review.
Another important thing to mention is that Ultimate plan users also get unlimited custom removal requests – if you find a site that isn’t on Optery’s removal list, you can send it to them. The Optery team will then submit custom requests on your behalf.
Conclusions
Optery’s patented link technology is certainly capable of locating the people-search pages where your private information is published, with screenshots adding valuable visualization of your exposure.
However, their technology isn’t capable of scanning non-public data brokers for your records. They send removal requests along with your personal data nevertheless, which can potentially expose it to new sites instead of erasing it.
Additionally, we found the dashboard to be considerably overstating the exposure and removal progress. The misleading statuses and activity history made it appear as though the service was finding and removing more profiles than it actually did.
Optery customer reviews and testimonials
Optery has its share of supporters and detractors, as evidenced by reviews and customer testimonials.
At the time of this writing, Optery has an A Better Business Bureau rating, with two complaints over the past three years, and a 4.4 (out of 5) star rating on Trustpilot based on 86 reviews.
Those who give Optery a positive rating cite noticing their profiles disappearing from search results after four months of Optery’s service, Optery finding some profiles a user didn’t know existed, and receiving fewer spam phone calls, emails, and junk mail.
However, some reviewers give Optery low marks for:
- Lack of data removal progress and aggressive upselling
- Submitting data removal requests to the wrong profiles
- One user posted about being upset that Optery claims to do all the work, yet the user needed to manually check websites to confirm data removal as they kept finding their profiles on sites Optery claimed to have removed/ not found them on
- Another Reddit user had the impression that Optery was intentionally delaying opt-outs, suggesting they were doing so in the interest of user retention. Other thread commenters expressed concern that this practice leaves data unnecessarily exposed, and they had to constantly check Optery’s work because profiles marked as removed still existed
- Yet another user felt misled about Optery’s value after noticing around half of the “completed removals” weren’t true removals, but sites Optery didn’t find their profiles on.

What user information does Optery collect?
Optery collects the following information to provide the removal of private data from websites:
Minimum:
- First and last name
- Birth year
- Current home address
- An email address
Optional:
- Middle name
- Full birthdate
- Past addresses
- Phone number
- Additional phone numbers (though only one at a time can be used for scans)
- Names of family members
- Alternative names and misspellings
- Gender
- Additional email addresses (though only one at a time can be used for scans)
- LinkedIn profile link
- Companies you’ve worked for
- ID card (upload)
Optery also collects additional information about users for various purposes, including payment information, cookies and usage data, marketing stats, and other data necessary for the website to function.
What’s included? A look at Optery’s subscription packages
Optery’s data removal service has four tiers:
- Free Basic ($0): The free tier gives an Exposure Report and dashboard access with instructions for self-service opt-outs.
- Core ($3.99/month): Offers automated removals from 85+ brokers for one name, city, and state per user.
- Extended ($14.99/month): Automated removals and human assistance for quality assurance and special circumstances for 240+ data broker sites, plus unlimited name, city, and state variations. Removal reports with before and after screenshots.
- Ultimate ($24.99/month): The same as Extended but with 605+ data brokers covered with Expanded Reach enabled and 365+ without, unlimited custom removal requests, and Google outdated content tools submission. Includes priority email support.
The service doesn’t have a free trial or family plans, but Optery offers discounts for multiple users so you can add your entire family:
- 20% off 2 paid plans
- 25% off 3 paid plans
- 30% off 4 or more paid plans
The company also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Optery plans comparison
Free Basic | Core | Extended | Ultimate | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Price | $0 | $3.99/month | $14.99/month | $24.99/month |
Data broker coverage | 0 | 85+ | 240+ | 365+ without Expanded Reach 605+ with Expanded Reach |
Removal process | DIY | Automated | Automated with human “privacy agent” for QA & special circumstances | Automated with human “privacy agent” for QA & special circumstances |
Custom removal requests | No | No | No | Unlimited custom removals (after 90 days) |
Google outdated content tool submission | No | No | No | Yes |
Reports | Exposure Report | Exposure Report | Exposure Report and Removals Report w/ before & after screenshots (every 90 days) | Exposure Report and Removals Report w/ before & after screenshots (every 90 days) |
Name variations | Unlimited | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
City/sState variations | Unlimited | 1 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Support | Standard | Standard | Standard | Priority |
Support
Optery offers multiple support options:
- Live chat
- Email ([email protected])
- Social Media
Optery doesn’t offer phone support but it has a comprehensive Help Desk & FAQ section.
Ultimate subscribers are promised priority email support, others get standard.
We reached out to Optery via email on the Free Basic plan, and they responded with a detailed answer within 90 minutes, so we feel their support team does a proper job of responding quickly and answering questions.
Assessing Optery’s effectiveness in data security
After trying every tier of the service ourselves, our assessment is that Optery has great marketing – perhaps the best in the industry – but their technology doesn’t live up to the expectations created by that marketing.
Optery’s free exposure report did find our data on many sites but the numerous data brokers listed in the dashboard made it appear as though our exposure was greater than it truly was.
Optery boasts about transparency, but our takeaway was that the dashboard is confusing if not misleading. We couldn’t trust that any of the “view” links led to our profiles or that any of the removals actually occurred without double-checking them ourselves, and in several instances, we found discrepancies between what Optery dashboard reported and what we found on our own.
FAQ
Is Optery a legitimate company?
Yes, Optery is a legitimate company founded in 2020 and based in Clayton, California. The personal data removal service is accredited by the Better Business Bureau and is well-known in the data privacy industry.
How long does it take for Optery to work?
Optery paid subscribers will begin to see their profiles removed from some data brokers within the first days of subscription. However, it could take several weeks or even months to see data removal from all the sites. Optery states that around half of a user’s exposed profiles will have “Removed/Not Found” status in a month and it can take 3 to 4 months for the rest to be removed.
How often does Optery scan?
Optery offers monthly automated scans, which means they scan data broker websites for exposure a minimum of once every 30 days.
Where is Optery located?
Optery is headquartered in Clayton, California.
Is Optery safe?
Optery is SOC Type II certified and has optional multi-factor authentication. However, Optery covers data broker sites without public databases which they can’t scan for your information. This means that they send your private information over for removal without first verifying that a broker even has it. Doing so may expose your personal data to sites that didn’t have it in the first place.
