TechRadar Review Finds PrivacyHawk Easy to Use but U.S.-Focused

PrivacyHawk offers two individual plans. The Premium plan costs $20 per month and the Platinum plan costs $30 per month, according to TechRadar. Annual billing is much cheaper: an annual Premium subscription costs $74, compared with $240 if paid month-to-month, and an annual Platinum subscription costs $125, compared with $360 if paid month-to-month. Family packages covering four people cost $200 annually for Premium and $300 annually for Platinum. If paid monthly, the family plans cost $40 and $50, or $480 and $600 over 12 months. The review advised against paying month-to-month for the family package. It also said PrivacyHawk does not offer a standard free trial but provides a 30-day refund window and some free scans through an unofficial free tier, which the review said is not a substitute for a standard trial.

Setting up PrivacyHawk starts with downloading its iOS or Android app and signing in with an existing Google or Apple account, the review said. Users then enter their first name, last name and age, and PrivacyHawk runs the data against a network of more than 100 people-finder sites. The review said this scanning is geared toward U.S.-centric data broker sites. Non-U.S. residents can run a digital footprint scan but cannot scan or send deletion requests to data broker sites. For a digital footprint scan, users must sign into their email again; the reviewer said they were uncomfortable with that requirement. PrivacyHawk claims it analyzes email inboxes to see which companies could expose personal data and compiles a list of junk email senders that users can unsubscribe from.

The review said a scan can take from a few minutes to a few hours and then shows a list of data broker sites hosting the user's data. PrivacyHawk sends automated deletion requests to those sites. The review said PrivacyHawk covers more than 100 data broker sites, a figure it described as not large compared with several competitors, and said the service focuses on U.S.-centric sites rather than global coverage. The Premium plan offers mostly data removal, while Platinum adds features such as dark web monitoring, identity theft protection and priority support. The review also said PrivacyHawk provides features outside data removal, such as dark web monitoring and spam call blocking.

TechRadar listed a user-friendly interface, deep scanning and iOS and Android mobile apps as reasons to buy PrivacyHawk. It listed no live chat support and U.S.-centric data broker coverage as reasons to avoid it. The review concluded that PrivacyHawk is a decent data removal service with room to improve its customer support channels and data broker coverage.