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Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

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Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#151

Post by literallycancer »

pandabear187 wrote: post #3

I have insider knowledge as I used to work for one of these companies. Depending on the product you purchase the data comes from multiple sources. Also these companies have sophisticated machine learning capabilities to build a profile based on various attributes found in seemingly unrelated pieces of data. So the list consists of credit reporting agencies, public records, your online profiles with public access, cou…

Are any of these companies operating in Europe and/or with mostly European data?

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#152

Post by avh02 »

e0m wrote: post #55

If you have your own domain name with a wildcard, it's really helpful to enter: someservice@mydomain.com as your email. That way if it leaks you'll know who did it and can setup much more robust rules to block. I'll use the domain name as the main address so I remember which name goes to which site. For physical address mailings, you can hyphenate (or use a middle name) as the service. So First Service-Last as the ad…

I just started doing the wildcard domain thing last month, I'm happier knowing that I can shut the taps. I get annoyed just knowing that there's spam in my spam list.

First time I was on the phone with a customer service rep. after using the @.com format I was asked if i was sure my email address was correct. I lol'ed and told them not to worry about it.

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#153

Post by uiri »

mehrdadn wrote: post #107
mikehollinger wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually am running a (year long) experiment. I found a data broker who had my info. They offered a way to "correct" the record, so I added a car that I don't own (who's warranty should be ready for extended warranty offers in a few months) and added many many "off by one" errors like an extra zero on my income, or transposed digits on the size of my house. We'll see where it lands. I personally would also pay for…

> I found a data broker who had my info. How...? Or do you just mean sites like InstanCheckmate themeselves? > They offered a way to "correct" the record, so I added a car that I don't own That's amazing! They didn't need proof? How did you convince them? Is this legal?

Is this legal?

IANAL

That said, fraud is usually defined as "An intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, and upon which the other person relies with resulting injury or damage."

So, in order for such misinformation to be illegal, the data broker needs only to demonstrate injury or damage. Unless the data broker makes assurances to their customer about the truth of the information and gets sued by one of their customers for providing false information, I find it hard to believe that the data broker will be able to demonstrate injury or damages.

I think the data broker knows better than to make such claims about their data but who really knows. And it isn't like the downstream customers are going to independently verify all the information.

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#154

Post by avh02 »

danielk_ wrote: post #109
e0m wrote: post #55

If you have your own domain name with a wildcard, it's really helpful to enter: someservice@mydomain.com as your email. That way if it leaks you'll know who did it and can setup much more robust rules to block. I'll use the domain name as the main address so I remember which name goes to which site. For physical address mailings, you can hyphenate (or use a middle name) as the service. So First Service-Last as the ad…

Even easier is to use john+someservice@doe.com. Works with any e-mail provider, ends up in your normal mailbox. Gmail even adds tags based on what follows the plus. Might not work for some services due to ignorance of the spec or to prevent users doing this.

problem with that is websites who think they're super smart and believe that + is not a valid character in an email... sometimes it's just the javascript though and you can submit it via manual POST request.

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#155

Post by literallycancer »

dsp1234 wrote: post #42
mehrdadn wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no such public list. Most of these companies are privately held, their methods are trade secrets, and there is no real form of legal recourse. How can there not be a public list of these data miners? When e.g. a court needs to control someone's information surely they know who these people are and they can let them know? Is there a secret list in every courthouse or something? Or when someone wants to star…

a court needs to control someone's information surely they know who these people are and they can let them know? I think you have a misunderstanding of what a US court can do. A court can only tell a specific party to take some action, and generally only if that party is somehow related to the legal action (such as being a defendant). Generally, there is no judgement that a court can make that can effect unnamed part…

>Theoretically, you could sue each company with your data, and a court could tell each of those companies to remove your information. But it would have to be for each one, and the judgement is only binding on those companies.

I'd expect going after such companies to be the state prosecutor's job.

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#156

Post by literallycancer »

pc86 wrote: post #65
mehrdadn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's surprising. So what happens when there is a high profile case and the court fears for the jurors' lives? Or the case itself involves someone whose life will be in danger afterwards? If anybody can find out where these people live then they're toast. The courts have to suppress the information legally somehow, right? If not the old information, at least they need some protection against mining of new informatio…

> So what happens when there is a high profile case and the court fears for the jurors' lives? Jurors' identities are not generally a secret.[0] There are exceptions, but those exceptions do not extend to wiping that person's data from things like pharmacy and gas station reward card databases. Honestly your entire premise shows a lack of understanding of how the criminal justice system works. > Are you literally say…

What if I told you there are countries where you can use a credit card, and still have reasonable expectations about privacy, where the information gatherer must erase personal information on demand and bears the burden of erasing it and notifying everyone they sold the information to erase it too?

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#157

Post by Dotnaught »

samstave wrote: post #106
jameslk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've considered working on this problem from a business standpoint, but I couldn't figure out a good business model for it. I don't think too many people will pay a monthly fee to have their information removed from these services. My guess is that they would sign up for a month and after their information has been removed, immediately cancel their subscription until they needed to do it again. And a yearly fee seeme…

What about letting a user enter all their pertinent details, then having a "NUKE ME" button and it would eval how many sites and places to nuke from, and you base your costs to the user based on the effort to nuke the info you find. Then give a very straightforward list to the user and let them select which site/item they want to nuke and provide an upfront cost to them. * You're found on sites 1, 2, 3 * Nuking site…

Offering a reward that rises in proportion to the number of sites with your personal information might just provide an incentive to create more such sites.

The more you'd pay for privacy, the more it would be worth to violate it.

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#158

Post by JoshTriplett »

jszymborski wrote: post #149
JoshTriplett wrote: post #14

If anyone reading this thread is interested: I would pay non-trivial amounts of money on a regular basis for a service that systematically worked to eliminate records like these (and the sources they draw from), as well as chasing down sources of junk mail and the lists they ultimately draw from. The value would depend on effectiveness, and on the degree to which the service clearly reported exactly what they did. Ca…

I've been recently: 1) Segregating automated email to some @customdomain.com address (Yandex and Zoho host vanity domains for free) 2) Forward all email @ that domain to a common inbox 3) Sign-up with servicename@customdomain.com (e.g: facebook@customdomain.com) You no-longer need to unsubscribe using dubious e-mail links, just automatically black-hole emails that come from spammer@customdomain.com So, far, so good.…

Useful for email, but this is primarily about postal spam.

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#159

Post by ChuckMcM »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #14

If anyone reading this thread is interested: I would pay non-trivial amounts of money on a regular basis for a service that systematically worked to eliminate records like these (and the sources they draw from), as well as chasing down sources of junk mail and the lists they ultimately draw from. The value would depend on effectiveness, and on the degree to which the service clearly reported exactly what they did. Ca…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_Shepherd

These guys don't do it for you? Basically it is there business plan.

Re: Ask HN: Who really gives your personal info to Intelius, Instant Checkmate, etc?

#160

Post by literallycancer »

Faark wrote: post #134
e0m wrote: post #55

If you have your own domain name with a wildcard, it's really helpful to enter: someservice@mydomain.com as your email. That way if it leaks you'll know who did it and can setup much more robust rules to block. I'll use the domain name as the main address so I remember which name goes to which site. For physical address mailings, you can hyphenate (or use a middle name) as the service. So First Service-Last as the ad…

I do the same, using mailgun to forward them to my usual account. Thou the day i will actually have to send / reply to e.g. customer support with one of those mail addresses will be annoying. Any suggestions on that part?

Google apps can kind of do it[1] (although it appears to leak the main address on purpose), so I guess you can also do it with your own mailserver?

1 - https://support.google.com/mail/answer/22370?hl=en

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