Incogni requires phone numbers only for users with a U.S. address. In all other cases, this information is not required.
In this article, we explain why this requirement applies, how phone numbers are used in data removal requests, and how removals work for users outside the United States.
If you're in the U.S.
You’re required to enter a phone number in your Incogni profile. Here's why:
- Many U.S.-based people search sites use phone numbers as their primary identifier. Without it, they can't match you in their system to remove your records.
- We don't use your phone number for anything else—only to match and remove your data.
If you're outside the U.S.
Your phone number is not required. But here's the important part:
- We do not collect phone numbers from users located outside of the United States, as this information is not required for the applicable brokers.
- We still remove your phone number from data brokers even though we didn't ask for it.
Why?
Incogni follows a data minimization approach, meaning we collect only the information required for data brokers to identify individuals in their systems.
Outside the U.S., data brokers can typically identify individuals using a combination of:
- Name
- Email address
- Physical address