The Party is Just Getting Started: Block Party is Joining DeleteMe

By Rob Shavell, CEO and Co-Founder, DeleteMe

When we started DeleteMe fifteen years ago, we were fighting a hidden enemy. Data brokers were quietly collecting your home address, phone number, and relatives’ names, and selling that info to anyone with a credit card. 

We built a way to fight back: find the data, delete it, and keep it off the market. But as time went on, our mission grew: to use the power of privacy to restore a sense of fairness online and put people in control of their own identity. 

Today, this mission is more important than ever. Your personal data is increasingly being weaponized by hackers, corporations, and criminals, and as technology and security have evolved, the biggest threat to your online safety is no longer a virus. It’s the information you’ve shared online, and the platforms that let strangers use it against you.

That post on LinkedIn, that payment on Venmo, or that morning jog on Strava, they all leave digital breadcrumbs that hackers and marketers collect and use to build a profile of you. Your data has become the fuel that powers not only today’s social engineering attacks but increasingly our surveillance economy. AI amplifies all that.

The numbers are alarming:

• Greater Exposure: The typical American has 611 pieces of personal info floating around the open web. That’s more than three times what they had just a few years ago. 
• AI Factor: AI-powered attacks jumped 89% last year, using personal data to create deepfakes, clone voices, and craft scams and phishing emails convincing enough to fool anyone.
• Social Scams: Social media isn’t just where data gets exposed. It’s increasingly where attacks start. Fraud originating on social media cost consumers $1.9 billion last year.

That’s why, from the beginning, we’ve been committed to developing solutions that make you harder to find, harder to fake, and harder to target online. We started with data brokers. Today, we’re taking it further by acquiring Block Party, an award-winning social media privacy and safety tool that helps individuals and organizations lock down their social media from unwanted exposures.

Enter Block Party

Tracy Chou, the founder of Block Party, knows these risks personally. The same platforms she used to raise awareness for causes she believed in became vectors for stalkers and harassers to target her. She went through the usual channels and essentially got nowhere. What she realized was that the problem was not just threat actors. The platforms had no real incentive to stop them, and most users didn’t have the background to fight back. So, she built Block Party: a tool that gives everyone the power to protect themselves online. 

Block Party closes this gap by acting like a privacy expert for your social media. It scans accounts like Instagram, Facebook, X, and Google, flags privacy risks, and then “deep cleans” them for you in just a few clicks.

Why We’re Joining Forces

Whether it’s online harassment or AI powered social engineering, today’s attacks all rely on the availability of personal data to target individuals and manipulate them into lowering their guard. By acquiring Block Party, DeleteMe is now the only solution that removes the fuel powering these attacks from the two places hackers go first—data brokers and social media. 

For individuals, this means we’re going to be doing even more to help you reclaim your privacy. For companies, it means proactively protecting your team from sophisticated social engineering attacks just got easier and more effective.

For now, the two products will continue to operate independently but we will keep you updated as our plans evolve. 

If you’re a Block Party user, welcome to the DeleteMe community. We’re excited to have you. 

If you’re a DeleteMe customer, stay tuned for more updates—this is just the first of several steps we’re taking this year to expand protection beyond data brokers and continue to be the industry’s leading advocate for privacy. 

The party is just getting started.