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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?

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like this? http://www.nationalchangeofaddress.com/

WTF. So if Intelius has your address, they can pay the USPS to get your new address. That incentivizes me not to fill out that darn form.

Seems like getting mail you forgot to forward would outweigh this

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

#132
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing exactly this for a while. Here is my list of companies that have leaked the email address I gave them to spammers: https://gist.github.com/eligrey/5084991

Note that (I think) Adobe was hacked, so that doesn't mean your email was "leaked" by them per se, not in the sense we mean anyway. Also, out of curiosity, how long did it take these companies to leak your info, generally? Days, weeks, months, years...?

Dropbox was hacked as well.

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

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can provide all the sources used for the company I used to work for, however that's irrelevant if you as you said wanted to learn how to fish. Personally, I think this should be a requirement of the government: " HERE IS A LIST OF ALL PEOPLE THAT ARE COLECTING AND SELLING YOUR PERSONAL DATA, CLICK THIS BUTTON TO DELETE YOUR RECORDS " sort of thing... it should be a mandated public service of regulation. Then, the…

2 things, 1.)if you make government enforce this, then we are all going to be paying more and things taking longer. This will push the society toward a fascist or communist states where the government is the all powerful and might beast. I do not like this. 2.) in western countries there are already laws that allow you as the consumer to remove any personally identifiable information from being shared. The ownus is o…

I don't think it's fair to call people lazy for not reading every line of an exhaustingly-long TOS. Also, it isn't fair to expect every consumer to fully understand the legalese that they are reading if they do decide to read it end to end. "Don't click 'I Agree' if you don't know what you're agreeing to!" is unrealistic.

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

#134
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?

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

#135

Small tip: At the grocery store or anywhere else with a rewards account linked to a phone number, rather than signing up for one just use (Your Local Area Code)-867-5309 The number almost always exists and is a valid account. Get the discount, don't get tracked. Thanks, Tommy Tutone.

If I can't conveniently avoid those things, I like to use the names of famous serial killers, with a local address that would be in the ocean (if it existed).

I've yet to have a sales clerk question it (or perhaps they just don't care).

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

#136

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 think the best way to handle this is exactly the opposite. go on mechanical turk, and pay $500 to have them fill out every single free offer, product trial, social media account, ect with slightly similar but incorrect information. Give each turk 10 different pictures that look very similar to you, or are you in bad lighting, and pay them to upload them to G+, FB, ect. It is much easier to make your correct info di…

Then they'll just spam all of them. And if you have other reasons to not want to be tracked down, then having 20 or 30 addresses will not help much.

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

#137
Reading this thread I can answer the question because I have worked in this industry and given/sold data to Intellius specifically.

There are three main sources of ALL of the data:

1. Acxiom http://www.acxiom.com/ 2. Experian http://www.experian.com/ 3. Neustar https://www.neustar.biz/

Acxiom got it's big start by developing a way to copy phone books in the 90s and they won a court case that sided with them saying the name and address information was basically public info. Acxiom aggregates something like 800 different attributes for each named person at each address using third party vendors and then resells the entire consumer database to list brokers who often times will add additional detail for smaller subsets of the data. You can opt out of Acxiom by going here

http://www.acxiom.com/about-acxiom/privacy/consumer-data-inf...

2. Experian. Same as above but they have a lot more specific data about you because you probably fill out forms related to credit and loan applications correctly. Thus they know all of you previous addresses and they sell that to companies like Intellius.

3. neustar: ditto.

The main thing to keep in mind is that each of those three companies have slightly different channels through which they aggregate consumer data so your info comes out a little differently in each database.

Almost any list broker or mailing house or telemarketer that you encounter is getting their data ultimately from one of those three companies (and in many cases they would buy data from all three sources).

Finally, a company like http://www.criteo.com/ uses a process they call "database cookie-ization" to match your online browsing history (hence interests and business) to those three databases via your email addresses. So they know what you look at online, where you live, everything you have ever requested credit for, etc etc.

There are hundreds of smaller companies like these (below) feeding data into those databases too:

https://www.hgdata.com/ https://www.fullcontact.com/ http://zetaglobal.com/ https://www.lotame.com/

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

#138
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…

Why not structure the company as a public benefit corporation or a non-profit?

> Why not structure the company as a public benefit corporation or a non-profit?

This seems like a good idea; I'd happily support such an endeavor.

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

#139

You mean data brokers ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_broker ) Top US brokers: - Acxiom - Experian - Epsilon - CoreLogic - Datalogix - eBureau - ID Analytics - inome - PeekYou - Rapleaf - Recorded Future Protip: loyalty/reward cards are a gold mine, especially drug store purchase receipt data

Opt out links I found -

Acxiom - https://isapps.acxiom.com/optout/optout.aspx

Experian - http://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/credit-education/...

DataLogix Holdings, Inc. https://www.datalogix.com/privacy/#opt-out-landing

Epsilon Data Management, LLC http://www.epsilon.com/consumer-preference-center

Equifax, Inc - https://help.equifax.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2/noInterce...

Fair Isaac Corporation http://www.myfico.com/policy/privacypolicy.aspx

Intelius, Inc. https://www.intelius.com/optout.php

LexisNexis Group http://www.lexisnexis.com/privacy/for-consumers/opt-out-of- lexisnexis.aspx

TransUnion Corp. http://www.transunion.com/corporate/business/datareporting/s...

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

#140
post #59

It pisses me off too. US is so concerned about privacy, yet a LOT of your private information is made public once you start opening bank accounts, buying real estate, sign up for gym, etc. When I opened my first bank account they had a typo in my name, which I found out when I received my debit card. I asked them to fix it immediately, however, two to three weeks later I was already getting mail from stores addressed…

> US is so concerned about privacy

This is not true, at all. HN may provide that appearance, but the vast majority of people who live in the US do not care about their privacy, based on their actions.

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