Privatus

Privatus is a privacy and personal-security startup based in Chicago, Illinois, founded in 2026 by Jamil Alhidiq. The company works with customers who want to reduce how much personal information about them is accessible online, with a particular focus on professionals such as attorneys, physicians, executives, founders and investors whose work puts their names in public view.

The firm's core service is data broker removal. Privatus requests removal of personal information from more than 600 data broker and people-search sites. When a listing reappears, the company files a new removal request, and every finding it has handled stays on watch afterward rather than being treated as a one-time task.

That ongoing-monitoring approach extends across the company's other services. Its privacy offering produces a privacy score and exposure reports, supplies masked phone numbers and email addresses in place of a customer's personal contact details, and requests changes to eligible professional registry and address records, with monitoring continuing after removals are made. A separate security service scans links, emails and websites for threats and provides browser protection against malicious sites and downloads, alongside dark web and breach monitoring and an AI assistant that helps users check suspicious texts and breach alerts.

Privatus also runs a product called Search Shield, aimed at the personal search results that surface when someone's name is searched. The service works on those results so that a customer's professional results rank above personal ones. How many search results Search Shield manages depends on the plan a customer selects, ranging from one result on the Essential plan up to five on the Professional plan.

Among the company's notable work is its service to healthcare clinics, part of a broader base of customers whose professional visibility is the reason they seek the company's services.