Data Protection FAQs

TextFree now includes a free privacy scan included with your subscription to help you find out if your personal information has been exposed on the web by data brokers, and offers data removal and monitoring to help protect your privacy. Check out the information below to learn more.

How does the free privacy scan work?

Our comprehensive free privacy scan searches hundreds of data broker sites across the web to find out where your personal information has been exposed—and what kind of information they have—to give you a better understanding of your current level of data privacy.

What is a data broker?

Data brokers are services that collect personal information about virtually every US consumer (and beyond), then sell it to other businesses—like advertisers, ad agencies, marketers, and more.

How does my information become exposed to data brokers? 

Data brokers often collect your personal information from public records, online activity, social media, and commercial transactions like loyalty programs, memberships, and credit applications.

What kind of information is exposed to data brokers?

Personal information exposures can include your Social Security Number, address, phone numbers, emails, marital status, legal records, employment history, relatives, and more.

Why should I remove my data from the internet? 

• Most US consumers currently have personal information exposed by data brokers. 
• Removing your personal information helps protect you from identity theft, fraudulent activity, scams, spam, robocalls, hacks, and other threats to your privacy. 
• Contacting each of these data brokers and asking them to remove your personal information is incredibly time-consuming. TextFree can submit removal requests on your behalf and actively monitor for new exposures to protect your privacy.

Is data removal and monitoring free?

While the free privacy scan is available to all TextFree users, you’ll need to upgrade to TextFree Plus to take advantage of Data Protection features like data removal and active monitoring.

What happens next?

After you enroll in Data Protection, we’ll submit removal requests to the data brokers who’ve exposed your personal information—and actively monitor for any new exposures. Data scans are completed at regular intervals, and we’ll send out new removal requests automatically any time we find your personal info exposed to keep you safe and secure.

How do I know when my data has been removed? 

The data removal process takes time, but you can expect to see progress within the first 24 hours. You can check on the status of data removal requests at any time by visiting your Data Protection dashboard in the TextFree app, and we’ll send you notifications as we make progress as well.

Questions? Submit a request.