Only good for simple stuff
When I initially signed up for their service (a more expensive plan for a family of four), I noticed that everything worked as promised, although it took about 3-6 months to remove at least 80% of the information they promised to. This is when I started to experience problems. The last 20% of information, including on very famous sites they promised to take care of, was not removed. Since I paid for it, they assigned a person to help manually remove the info. It didn't help either. The long story of it is that when I contacted them about it, they told me they couldn't do much and that I could just contact the companies myself for removal, defeating the purpose of paying for their service in the first place. Overall, I paid a lot for automatic and manual data protection, and they only took care of the low hanging fruit while ignoring the more difficult sites they advertised removal from.
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Update 4/26 – Trustpilot sent me a notice that Kanary.com flagged my review in order to try and (I must only presume here) hide it from other people. Kanary.com cited defamation as the reason for flagging my content yet, their own reply below, paradoxically does not deny my experience and only offers further confirmation of it. Thankfully, Trustpilot sided with me and not the company trying to do damage control at (potentially) the expense of consumers trying to make the best purchasing decision. What does that tell you about a company that tries to hide my factual experience with their false accusations of defamation? In reply to Kanary’s quote of my review: the “manual” was advertised as “manual” assistance I paid for from your end, Kanary. I did not pay you to have me perform manual work on my end. Yes, you advertised that customers could *also* remove their data themselves via instructional material, but that your team would manually remove it as well if your automated systems failed to, which is what I paid for. Why would I pay you for instructions on how to manually remove my data when that’s available for free anywhere online and bears massive opportunity costs for me?
Reply from Kanary
Given the misaligned expectations, and the fact that we do not manage a TrustPilot account or pay them for reviews, we've requested this review be removed for inaccuracies.
You wrote this in 2024, were on our Professional tier, and the expectations for that tier given the cost (<$10/mo) is that some work may be required from you.
As was explained to you by our support team, that tier gives you some scans and results automatically but requires hands on work from you as a member, like you said "automatic and manual". That is why it's priced affordably and available month to month.
That is also why our support team shared information on how to use the product, versus doing the work for you, when you reached out.
We try to set clear expectations with our members about how data monitoring and removal works. Kanary's software helps you find, organize, submit, and escalate requests according to your data privacy rights, but because removing data from the web is adversarial, we cannot guarantee specific timelines or removals. This is standard in the industry and if anyone else says otherwise, you should proceed with caution.
We're always open to honest feedback from members on how we can improve. But your expectations here seem misaligned with the product you paid for.
For anyone reading this, please visit our website, reddit, App Store reviews, for up to date information on our products, services, and customer feedback.