If you’ve ever done an internet search for your own name, it can get pretty creepy pretty quickly. That’s largely because of data brokers. Data brokers will harvest information about you and sell it to the highest bidder (or sometimes just to someone willing to pay anything).

Malware, ransomware, and hackers aren’t the only ones after your data. Cybercriminals can buy online accounts from data brokers too. This leaves you open to identity impersonation, stolen funds, and loads of spam.

Removal services like Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection can help you clean up your online footprint and increase your online privacy. It can help reduce spam calls, phishing emails, and scam attempts, and it can even lower your chance of identity theft.

Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection review at a glance

When you think of Bitdefender, you may be thinking of the antivirus software or even the virtual private network (VPN). But Bitdefender offers other services offered in addition to cybersecurity. Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection allows you to input personal information like your email address, phone number, name, and previous addresses to see if that information is online.

Between data breaches and data brokers, it’s likely there is a lot of your personally identifiable information hanging out in the creepy back alleys of the internet. With Digital Identity Protection, Bitdefender finds those places and gives you the tools to remove your data. It even helps you remove data from Google and other places you didn’t know were storing your information.

Bitdefender’s comprehensive tools can also give you a picture of how much data exists in comparison to other customers of the service as well as a timeline of when your data began appearing online. It’s an impressive tool that helps you understand how much information about you could potentially be available for public consumption. Services like Bitdefender can assist in reducing your digital footprint, which, in turn, makes you less likely to become a victim of identity theft.

Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection pros and cons

What data does Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection protect?

Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection isn’t as comprehensive as an identity theft protection product. The information you’re entering isn’t as secretive as your bank account details or Social Security number (SSN). The service gives you the option to add more than just one email address or phone number but will generally only search for the name you provide upon sign-up. It does help you remove data from the WhitePages, LexisNexis, and other sites selling your information.

Bitdefender Digital Identity monitors the following information:

• Name
• Previous addresses
• Current address
• Multiple email addresses
• Multiple phone numbers

Our experience with Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection

We found the service to be easy to set up and use. There are a lot of analytic tools to give you a better understanding of your digital footprint. It also helps you request data removal from sites and data brokers. We didn’t find any parental controls, a password manager, or mobile apps, but we did appreciate the notifications and alerts that let us know when our data was being removed.

Getting started

It’s not difficult to get started with the service. After you sign up and provide a payment method, you’re redirected to a page where you enter your name, email address, phone number, and address. Then Bitdefender gets to work scanning the internet for any mention of you. This doesn’t feel intrusive, and you may be surprised where your data has shown up. Two-factor authentication is available but not automatically turned on during installation, so make sure to activate that once you’re in the portal.

Dashboard and reports

The dashboard is easy to use. Once you’re logged in, everything is presented in a clean, easy-to-read format. As you click through the different monitoring options, pop-ups will explain what each option is and why you should use it. By far, this is one of the most well-designed and user-friendly privacy suites we’ve seen.

It may take a day or two for the service to get an in-depth comprehensive view of you online, so it’s important to revisit it for a few days after signing up. This is due to the fact that it has to scan the entirety of the internet for any mention that may be related to you. That can take some time, even for advanced computing power. Afterward, it’s had some time to scan, you’re free to sit back and let Bitdefender go to work getting your data removed from the internet.

One caveat we found was that this dashboard doesn’t work on a Safari browser, but that’s not a deal breaker. You can open it in any browser.

Additional features

One feature we liked that we don’t see on all privacy suites was that it composes emails to services to remove our data. Bitdefender takes all the work out of tracking down the appropriate email and even gives you the phrasing to include in the email. We sent ours off to Home Chef, a service we’ve never even used, and they responded within a few hours to let us know we’d been removed.

How do you know if Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection works?

As you can see in the screenshots above, we used the recommendation from Bitdefender to contact Home Chef and request the removal of our information from its system. Home Chef responded in fewer than four hours, and we were pleased with the result. While we didn’t notice any place where Bitdefender contacted data brokers for us, we did have success using its methods.

Does Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection keep your data safe?

This is not a remediation or recovery service. Most of what Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection does is monitor your name, phone number, email, and other information you provide to find where you are on the web. You can then use its data removal suggestions to get your information removed as well as request that the service remove your data from broker sites. We had success with having our data removed from Home Chef using the suggested form letter.

As far as protecting the data you input, the service does have some cookies listed in its privacy policy, but nothing too egregious. When you pay for a product, you tend to have more privacy and protection with your personal information than if you were using it for free. As far as Bitdefender’s privacy policy goes, we’re not upset about it.

Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection customer support

While we didn’t reach out to support, we did peruse the Support Center. Like most other data broker removal services, this was more of a menu of help-yourself concerns and FAQs than an actual support tool. There is a chatbot in the dashboard that kept popping up when we were first exploring the portal but it disappeared after we logged off and didn’t populate again.

When scrolling to the bottom of the support page, we did see the option to call Bitdefender support. While we didn’t reach out, it’s good to know that there is a way to contact Bitdefender and you aren’t left on your own. Overall, we found the Support Center to be comprehensive and well-organized.

Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection prices and subscriptions

There aren’t really many options when it comes to pricing for Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection. There are no tiers of features, so everyone who purchases the product gets the same access. It's also a service for one person, so there are no family plans. The biggest difference is the pricing structure — you have the option to pay for a full year of service upfront (the first year is priced at a discount) or month-to-month.

The dashboard is well-organized and gives you a comprehensive view of yourself online through charts and graphs. While there is no credit monitoring, identity restoration, or identity remediation, the service is still worth its value for figuring out how much of your personal data is online without your knowledge. We would be comfortable with recommending this service.

Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection plans comparison

Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection alternatives

Whether you’re looking for a data removal service or a more comprehensive identity protection service, there are several options like the ones listed below. We’ve reviewed each of them for you and given you a look at prices and features.

• HelloPrivacy: HelloPrivacy is a data broker removal service that automatically hunts down your data on broker sites and continuously has it removed. There’s no credit monitoring, identity theft insurance, or remediation with this service.
  
  Get HelloPrivacy | Read HelloPrivacy Review
  
• LifeLock: LifeLock by Norton is a little more robust than Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection. It’s a full identity protection suite with identity theft insurance, credit monitoring, and internet and dark web monitoring for your personal data.
  
  Get LifeLock | Read LifeLock Review
• Identity Guard: Identity Guard is another more robust service that can monitor your credit and financial institutions. This service has several affordable price points for different features. It also includes identity theft insurance and remediation.
  
  Get Identity Guard | Read Identity Guard Review

Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection FAQs

Bottom line: Is Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection good?

Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection isn’t a bad product. As far as data protection and data broker removal services are concerned, it’s comprehensive. If you’re looking for a more robust type of protection that can monitor your identity and credit scores, this may not be for you. The service itself doesn’t provide a lot of interaction, but it will monitor and alert you if it finds you online.

If your goal is to reduce your online footprint, this may be a great product for you. We were impressed with the design, tools, and educational elements available to us. Overall, we would be comfortable with recommending this product to someone wanting these services. If you are interested in other top data removal services, you can read our DeleteMe review.

Learn More

On Bitdefender Digital Identity Protection's website

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• Affordable
• User-friendly
• No identity theft remediation or reimbursement

Author Details

Mary James

About the Author

Mary lives in Los Angeles and has been writing about tech for over 5 years. When she's not writing for work or fun, you'll find her in a theatre, at the movies, volunteering, or hiking the gorgeous SoCal landscape.