Tax season sharpens the threat of identity theft as data brokers freely sell phone numbers, email addresses, and even Social Security numbers. A simple name search can expose an address, age, job and family ties, giving scammers the raw material they need. Because these details are legally harvested from the fine print of countless sign‑up forms, consumers face a growing privacy nightmare.

Enter Incogni, the data‑erasure service built by the team behind Surfshark. It contacts more than 250 data brokers and people‑search sites, filing removal requests on behalf of users in the US, Canada, UK, EU and Switzerland. The platform runs continuous scans, automatically issuing new takedowns and handling appeals when a broker claims a legitimate reason to retain the data.

9to5Mac readers can lock down their digital footprints with a one‑year 58% discount on Incogni’s Unlimited plan, which covers up to four family members, three phone numbers, emails and physical addresses. Unlimited subscribers also gain custom removal requests for any site exposing personal data—excluding social media, government records, blogs and forums—so the service delivers a practical, ongoing shield against tax‑time fraud.