Incogni

Incogni
Incogni
Industry	Personal data removal; privacy services
Country	Netherlands
Founded	2022
Headquarters	Amsterdam, Netherlands (registered); Vilnius, Lithuania (operations)
Parent company
Status	Active
Verification	Verified Verification status: Verified

Overview

Incogni is a subscription-based personal data removal service that automates opt-out and deletion requests to data brokers and people-search sites on behalf of subscribers. The service originated within Surfshark in September 2021 and launched publicly in January 2022. Incogni operates as a product of Surfshark B.V., which is registered in the Netherlands with operational headquarters in Vilnius, Lithuania, and is part of Nord Security following a 2022 merger.

Boycott

Incogni is listed for boycott because it has acted as the privacy representative of named ICE enforcement agents in their efforts to remove public-interest documentation of their roles, and has done so in a manner that exposed the agent it was instructed to protect.

In a documented case in 2026, Incogni sent ICE List a deletion request under Section 1798.105 of the California Consumer Privacy Act and California Privacy Rights Act on behalf of an ICE enforcement agent. The request named the agent and identified the URL of his profile on ICE List. In the body of the same letter, Incogni transmitted three home addresses for its client to ICE List, unprompted. ICE List had not asked who the client was, had issued no verification challenge, and had not requested any identifying information. The disclosure was volunteered.

ICE List honoured the takedown request on receipt, in line with its standing editorial standard that takedown requests are actioned immediately and the underlying request then enters review on the merits. Weeks after the page had been retired, Incogni sent a compliance reminder threatening statutory action if the page was not removed within 30 to 45 days. The page had already been down for the duration of that period.

This is the second case in which Incogni has acted against ICE List on behalf of an ICE enforcement agent. The substantive position taken by Incogni in its letter is that an ICE enforcement agent is "not a public figure" and that no public interest attaches to documentation of his role.

This listing concerns Incogni's documented operational conduct against public-interest journalism on behalf of federal enforcement agents, and the underlying failure of process that conduct evidences.

Background

Incogni's stated purpose is to protect subscribers from the unauthorised aggregation and circulation of their personal data by data brokers, using statutory rights of erasure available under privacy frameworks including the GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act. The privacy frameworks Incogni invokes contain explicit carve-outs for journalism and processing in the public interest, including Articles 85 and 89 of the GDPR and Section 1798.105(d)(4) of the CCPA. The Court of Justice of the European Union's judgment in *Buivids* (C-345/17) confirmed these protections are not limited to traditional newsrooms and turn on whether the activity is directed at informing the public.

Surfshark, Incogni's parent company, publicly markets itself as a supporter of press freedom, including through an Emergency VPN program providing free service to journalists, activists, and NGO representatives, and through partnerships with Internews and the European Digital Rights network (EDRi). Incogni's documented conduct against ICE List, a public-interest journalism project, is in tension with that stated commitment.

ICE List documents named federal enforcement agents acting in their official capacity, drawn from publicly available sources subject to a two-source minimum verification standard. ICE List is a non-profit public-interest journalism project. It does not hold private data, operate a commercial dataset, or sell or license information. It does not publish home addresses.