PrivacyHawk

PrivacyHawk is a consumer-facing personal data protection service that scans a user’s email and accounts to find where their personal data has been exposed or sold, then automates opt-out and data-removal requests against data brokers and other third parties. It also monitors for new exposure, aiming to give individual consumers a continuous, largely automated version of the data-broker removal process that would otherwise require manually contacting dozens of companies.

Founded in 2021 by Aaron Mendes and Justin Wright and based in Los Angeles, the company has raised $5.7 million across two rounds, including a $3 million round in August 2024 that included US News & World Report as a strategic investor. PrivacyHawk reported surpassing one million users in mid-2024, roughly three years after launch.

PrivacyHawk sits outside the typical enterprise-vendor profile on this list — it sells directly to consumers rather than security teams — but it’s included here because personal data exposure and data-broker sprawl are an increasingly recognized enterprise risk surface too (executive protection, employee doxxing, and social-engineering reconnaissance all draw on the same broker data PrivacyHawk targets). Its efficacy depends heavily on continued broker cooperation with opt-out requests, an area with no independent, standardized measurement across the industry.