We’ve all lost control of our personal data. Time to get it back.

• Almost three quarters of consumers (71%) are worried about third parties sharing personal data without permission
• Over half of UK consumers (53%) do not trust companies with their personal information

London, 27 January 2022 – Rightly, Champions of Data, a consumer data action service today announces the launch of Rightly Protect, a free tool that aims to reduce the increasing numbers of UK consumers being targeted and falling victim to hacks, scams, unwanted marketing and spam each year.

“Thousands of companies will have your data without you knowing it. Some will sell it, others will make money from it. Lots of them will lose it, or get hacked this year. We want to help consumers take control and protect themselves and take their data away from companies that don’t need it. Their data is ours and not theirs after all”. says James Walker, CEO of Rightly.

New research conducted this month by Rightly of 1,500 British consumers reveals that 54% of Brits are confused by their data rights. Three quarters are most concerned about losing control of financial information and 14% about family details. And with good reason: personal data is continuously lost through breaches, mismanaged by careless organisations and exploited by unscrupulous data brokers, who disguise themselves as “marketing service providers”.

The launch of Rightly Protect has come at just the right time, as almost 9 in 10 (86%) consumers can’t remember how many companies they have given their personal information to and over half (54%) don’t know what laws exist to protect their data or that they can ask for it to be deleted. Rightly Protect directly combats these issues, aiming to address the root cause by reducing the instances consumers’ personal data is leaked by companies holding it. To achieve this, Rightly Protect utilises consumer data rights under GDPR and helps users automatically detect the countless organisations that hold their data. This empowers consumers to take informed action to ask those they no longer use or want to hold their data to remove it.

Rightly Protect enables consumers to take back control of their data, helping them to reduce the size of their digital footprint and make targeted scam attacks and general spam less likely. Here’s how it works:

• SCAN: First we scan your inbox to work out who has your data, without you having to. This is completely secure and Rightly doesn’t get to see anything that’s in the emails. This is through analysing the header of the email, not by examining the email’s content
• DELETE: Once you get the results you can tell any company that has your data to erase it. In one click we enable the user to send direct email deletion requests to multiple selected companies. Under GDPR companies have one calendar month to respond to these requests.
• RELAX: Then you can relax, because once the data is deleted, there’s less of you in the online world, reducing the risk of being targeted with spam or by hackers. Users will receive responses directly into their inbox and will be able to provide any additional information by replying directly.

“As the digital world is dramatically growing, it has never been more important for consumers to take control of their digital footprint,” James Walker adds. “For too long, businesses have been neglecting to understand consumers’ own their data and not the company. Rightly Protect is just the start.

“Rightly's purpose is to help individuals and organisations make good use of data. We help them understand their data rights and obligations and equip them with the tools to manage, share and use data rightly. What happens to data should be up to the owner and we are on a mission to make data use fairer for everyone. Online data management should be simple. Consumers should not be falling victim to scams and suffer financially and emotionally. Enter Rightly Protect.”

To find out more about Rightly Protect, or to start the reduction of your digital footprint, click HERE. NB. Rightly Protect is currently available to Gmail users, with other email service providers to follow.

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Research Methodology:

Research was conducted through a consumer survey in January 2022, interviewing 1,500 consumers aged 18-65+ in the UK.