Watching: a cluster of open-source privacy self-check tools (bulk data-broker opt-outs, OSINT self-checks, spyware trace scans). Stars come fast, but the money goes to established subscription services; indie devs have no examples.
- Status
- Watching (leaning against)
- Confidence
- Low.
Evidence
Grouped by store. Each group starts with the charts that can be graphed (real curves, data dates below the chart), then the scanner's original notes and source links.
Qualifying list 1 pieces of evidence · 4 products with curves
- Made the cut today (11-05 on the same day, two repos): brightsongwrath/personal-data-deletor-osint ("Send deletion requests to 970 data brokers. Free, local, no account, no server") — 2 days old, 554 stars, 90 forks; Chipwithinflash/watson-AI-osint-all-in-one (Windows OSINT search across 3,100+ sources, no command line) — 2 days old, 576 stars. Already on our watch list: interplains/Zero-Breach-Toolkit (offline checks for commercial spyware traces like Pegasus and Predator) — 11 days old, 4,413 stars, 7 days + 1,572; Verlintas/NOIR (scans Android app permissions and reporting endpoints via adb, see [057]).
App Store 1 pieces of evidence
- Paid side: Incogni - Private Data Removal (launched 2026-02) charted only in ca Finance Top Grossing at 158 and 3 in the App Store. On indie, searches for data broker / personal data removal return nothing; no similar product charts in the Chrome Web Store. The Meta keyword table doesn't cover it, so DeleteMe / Incogni ad spend is invisible.
Other sources (official sites, press releases, web pages) 1 pieces of evidence
- Note: two of these repos are from new accounts that gained hundreds of forks within two days. The pattern resembles the gray-traffic repos in [079], so discount their stars and forks (the suspect column didn't flag them).
My take
“Data deletion” is already a mature business: DeleteMe, Incogni, and Optery charge $100+ a year. The open-source one-click tools make its core action free. For a small team, a paid version means competing with incumbents on trust and legal-process handling, while an open-source version gets stars but no revenue. The only plausible gap is local data-broker lists for non-English countries (EU GDPR deletion requests, Japan, Korea), and I haven't seen evidence for it yet.
What would upgrade it
Either an indie data-deletion or privacy-audit product hits $2k+ in 30 days, or someone from these repos launches a paid version. Kill signal: within two weeks these repos stop growing and no paid version appears.
Should every product builder know this?
No.
Change log
Original: Scanner opportunity library #091 (updated daily, 06:00); this page was generated on the 2026-11-08 edition.