How We Test and Rate Privacy Services
Every service on Vetted Privacy goes through the same procedure, and every score comes from that procedure. This page describes it once. Reviews link here instead of repeating it.
What we actually check
The site is written by one person, and the research is done by AI tooling under that person’s control. Nobody buys the paid plans. What the site can do without buying is still a lot, and each step leaves a screenshot with a date.
- Test account. A free plan or a trial, opened with a test email created for that vendor. If the vendor asks for a card, a Social Security number or a photo ID before showing anything, the run stops there and the page says where it stopped.
- Dashboard. The first screen after signup, the first scan or search result, the settings, and whatever the landing page promised that is actually there.
- Checkout up to the payment button. First-year price, renewal price, whether sales tax appears in the total, whether auto-renewal is on by default, and which payment methods are offered. No payment is made.
- Cancellation screen. The number of clicks from the dashboard to the screen where you cancel, what the vendor offers on the way, and whether a confirmation email arrives.
- Account deletion. The path to delete the account and its data, and whether the deletion is confirmed.
- One support question. The same question to every vendor, sent during business hours Eastern Time. The reply time and whether the answer matches the terms are recorded.
- Vendor documents. Pricing page, terms of service, privacy policy, refund policy and help center, read on the same day as the test account.
- User reports. Trustpilot, BBB, Reddit, the App Store and Google Play, counted with dates. A complaint counts as a theme when it appears in at least three independent reports.
- Public records. FTC press releases and case files, state attorney general actions, and court records where they exist. Only primary sources with a URL and a date.
Some vendors have no free plan and no trial. For those, steps 1, 2, 4 and 5 can’t run, and the review says so. Checkout is still checked up to the payment button, and the cancellation and refund terms come from the documents.
What the site does not measure: whether a removal service actually got your listing taken down (that takes weeks on a paid plan), VPN speed, or how an insurance claim would be paid. A review never says “it removed my data” or “it protected me.”
The scale: six criteria
Each service gets a grade on six criteria. Grades become numbers, numbers are weighted, and the weighted sum is the score out of 10.
| Criterion | Weight | What it measures | Where the grade comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Results | 30% | Does the service do what it sells, as far as that can be checked without buying. Data removal: the published broker list and the scan in the dashboard. Identity protection: what is monitored and what the insurance terms say. Password managers: a fixed checklist of features. VPNs: kill switch, protocols, and a dated no-logs audit. Email and aliases: aliases, cards, encryption. | Coverage Index, test account, documents |
| Price & value | 20% | The first-year price and the renewal price against what you get. Whether the free plan is real. What is behind the paywall. | Pricing page, checkout screen |
| Checkout honesty | 15% | Renewal price shown before you pay. Sales tax in the total. Auto-renewal default. Clicks to cancel. Refund window as printed. | US Privacy Checkout Test |
| Data handling | 15% | What the service asks for (email, date of birth, SSN, address, ID). How to delete the account. Whether there is a CCPA “Do Not Sell or Share” form. Breaches, with dates. | Signup form, privacy policy, deletion screen |
| Ease of use | 10% | Steps to the first result. Dashboard, apps and extensions in the test account. | Test account, screenshots |
| Support | 10% | Channels, published hours in ET, and the actual reply to our one question. | Our question and its reply |
Weights add up to 100%. They are the same for every cluster.
From grade to score
| Grade | Points |
|---|---|
| Excellent | 9.5 |
| Good | 7 |
| Fair | 4 |
| Poor | 1.5 |
Score = sum of (points × weight), rounded to one decimal, shown as “7.8/10”. If any criterion has no grade because the run stopped before it, there is no score. The review shows “Score pending” instead of a number.
Verdicts follow the score:
| Verdict | Score |
|---|---|
| Worth it | 7.0 and above |
| Maybe | 5.5 to 6.9 |
| Not worth it | below 5.5 |
Two safeguards sit on top of the math. A service with Results below 4 can’t get “Worth it,” whatever the other grades say. An identity theft protection service with Data handling below 4 can’t get above “Maybe,” because it asks for the most sensitive data there is.
The verdict is always shown as text next to the score, not as a color alone.
Checkout honesty: what we look at
Checkout honesty is where most review sites have nothing to say, because they never reached the checkout. This site checks nine things, the same for every vendor:
- Is a card required before the free plan or trial opens?
- Are the first-year price and the renewal price both on screen before payment?
- Is sales tax in the total, added at the payment step, or not shown at all?
- Is auto-renewal on by default, and is there a checkbox?
- Which payment methods are offered (card, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay)? Noted as a fact, not graded.
- What personal data is requested before payment?
- How many clicks from the dashboard to the cancellation screen?
- How is the account deleted, and does a confirmation arrive?
- How long does the support reply take, and does it match the terms?
The answers appear three times with the same numbers: in the review’s “What it’s like to be a U.S. customer” section, in the service’s row of the Checkout Test, and in the comparison table of the category ranking. If they ever differ, the page is wrong and gets fixed.
Our two recurring tests
US Privacy Checkout Test. The nine checkout questions above, run on every service in every category, with one plan per service, one test ZIP code for sales tax, and one identical support question. Results are a grade per axis with two or three facts from the screen under each row. The test feeds the Checkout honesty and Support criteria.
Data Removal Coverage Index. For data removal services only. We take each vendor’s published list of data brokers and people-search sites, count the unique domains on a given date, and check how many of the people-search sites with the most searches are on it.
A vendor that says “750+ sites” without publishing the list gets “no published list” and no index number. The index feeds the Results criterion for that category.
Both tests publish their full procedure on the page and a CSV with the data. Neither test has a schedule. A test is re-run when a vendor changes its prices, its checkout, or its list, or when the site owner orders a new run. The site shows the current run only.
What it takes to enter a ranking
A service appears in a “Best …” ranking only if:
- a test account was opened, or the page says plainly why it couldn’t be;
- the free plan or trial opens without a card, or the page says a card is required;
- the service is available to U.S. residents;
- the price was checked on a dated screen;
- the service has a score, meaning all six criteria have a grade.
Rankings are sorted by score. Ties are broken by the Results grade. Services without an affiliate program sit in the ranking in the position their score earns, with a plain link to their site and no button.
What changes a score and what doesn’t
Changes a score: a new test run, a price change, a change to the free plan, a change to cancellation or refund terms, a breach, or a regulator’s action with a primary source.
Doesn’t change a score: an affiliate commission, a vendor’s request, a vendor’s offer of a free account, or a paid placement. There are no paid placements.
How affiliate links affect this site
Some links on this site are affiliate links: if you sign up through them, we earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That never changes a score or the order of a ranking.
The commission is paid by the vendor after you sign up, and the site has no say in your price. The list of programs, including the ones not yet approved, is on the affiliate disclosure page.
Scores are set by one person, by hand
Grades are not computed by a formula from feature lists. One person reads the run, the screenshots and the documents, assigns a grade per criterion, and writes two or three facts that justify it. The facts are on the review page under each criterion. If the facts don’t support the grade, the grade is wrong, and you can tell me through the contact page.
When we re-check
There is no calendar. A review is re-checked when the vendor changes something the score depends on, when a reader reports a mismatch, or when a new test run is ordered. The “Updated” date under a review’s title changes only when the content changes.
This page contains no affiliate links.