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Show HN: Optery – See the private info data brokers are posting about you online

optery.com

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Re: Show HN: Optery – See the private info data brokers are posting about you online

#21

Post by shubik22 »

Congrats on your product. I'm curious what lead to you all creating this product, after you spent "years working at data brokers."

Perhaps this is too harsh an analogy, but how is this different than someone who spends years working at a tobacco company and then launches a company which sells a smoking cessation product? As other comments here point out, even the process of opting out of these brokers via Optery requires disclosure of personal information and some level of trust. I can imagine the fact that you all previously worked at data brokers make people less likely to trust you with their personal information, rather than more.

Re: Show HN: Optery – See the private info data brokers are posting about you online

#22

Post by 123pie123 »

beyondd wrote: post #19
gigel82 wrote: post #11

Be very careful with any tool like this; you'll need to prove who you are by verifying an email address and / or phone number to your real name, which in turn will most likely "confirm" your data with all the upstream brokers (if you pay for some extra service you're twice a sucker with them most likely getting paid by brokers for proving your identity and by you as well for using the "service"). Note: this could be…

Hi! Co-creator of Optery here. We do not sell data. We are not a data broker. We do not have any financial relationship with any data broker. We are not affiliated with any data broker. We are privacy enthusiasts who believe consumers should be in full control of their data. You can learn more about our mission, background and values here: https://www.optery.com/about-us/ There are some bad actors out there unfortuna…

I've no idea if you're legit or not,

but wouldn't a bad actor say the same thing?

why should people trust you with their information?

Re: Show HN: Optery – See the private info data brokers are posting about you online

#23

Post by Hallucinaut »

beyondd wrote: post #19
gigel82 wrote: post #11

Be very careful with any tool like this; you'll need to prove who you are by verifying an email address and / or phone number to your real name, which in turn will most likely "confirm" your data with all the upstream brokers (if you pay for some extra service you're twice a sucker with them most likely getting paid by brokers for proving your identity and by you as well for using the "service"). Note: this could be…

Hi! Co-creator of Optery here. We do not sell data. We are not a data broker. We do not have any financial relationship with any data broker. We are not affiliated with any data broker. We are privacy enthusiasts who believe consumers should be in full control of their data. You can learn more about our mission, background and values here: https://www.optery.com/about-us/ There are some bad actors out there unfortuna…

Hey there, good luck with the venture and look forward to an EU/UK option.

Just wanted to say IANAL but with putting your details out there as a founder and being in the US, unless you've had a lawyer check over your statements I would be very cautious about naming companies specifically. Would recommend anonymising it or deleting that comment if you can't edit it, unless you've already had it checked out.

Ethics isn't part of their business model so any statement without hard facts backing it can get you into trouble.

Re: Show HN: Optery – See the private info data brokers are posting about you online

#24

Post by TheFreim »

> After many years working at data brokers

So you worked for years at (immoral) data harvesters but now you're a changed man who pinky swears to not use people's data they submit to you in a bad way? Sorry, I don't trust this product yet.

Re: Show HN: Optery – See the private info data brokers are posting about you online

#25

Post by troydavis »

I did a version of this by Googling my name (as a phrase, with and without middle initial) combined with city names or street address fragments I’ve lived at. I then submitted removal requests for anything I found.

I ended up submitting about 10 requests, 7 or 8 of which were online.

Of course, not all data brokers have publicly indexed page, but a lot do.

Re: Show HN: Optery – See the private info data brokers are posting about you online

#26

Post by crummy »

photoGrant wrote: post #20

All you need to know: > If you purchase a paid subscription plan, as a condition to fulfilling your subscription plan, (i) you must provide your personally identifiable information(“PII”) such as full name, birth year and home address to Optery, Inc. and (ii) Optery, Inc. must send your PII to the data brokers and information aggregators included in the Removal Lists. This information is required by the data brokers…

how exactly would it work otherwise?

Re: Show HN: Optery – See the private info data brokers are posting about you online

#27

Post by mdaniel »

I requested that they turn on 2FA, since they themselves will become an attack target by requesting so much PII

That said, my experience with trying to use any opt-out service (automated or otherwise) is filled with a lot of "Oops, server error, try again later" responses at the end of filling out a ton of forms about oneself, so I wonder if Optery has some secret sauce, is persistent in the face of server errors, or just is fire-and-forget and thus follows the "spray and pray" method of account removal

If I paid actual money for this, I'd want some observable metric showing that I had 166 public listings in June, followed by 66 in July, or something of the sort.

Re: Show HN: Optery – See the private info data brokers are posting about you online

#28

Post by quickthrower2 »

TheFreim wrote: post #24

> After many years working at data brokers So you worked for years at (immoral) data harvesters but now you're a changed man who pinky swears to not use people's data they submit to you in a bad way? Sorry, I don't trust this product yet.

The only way I'd trust such a service is if it's domain name ends in .gov (or equivalent for other countries) and is free or a nominal fee.

Re: Show HN: Optery – See the private info data brokers are posting about you online

#29

Post by shrimpx »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #28
TheFreim wrote: post #24

> After many years working at data brokers So you worked for years at (immoral) data harvesters but now you're a changed man who pinky swears to not use people's data they submit to you in a bad way? Sorry, I don't trust this product yet.

The only way I'd trust such a service is if it's domain name ends in .gov (or equivalent for other countries) and is free or a nominal fee.

The USDS should work on stuff like this.

https://www.usds.gov

Re: Show HN: Optery – See the private info data brokers are posting about you online

#30

Post by beyondd »

troydavis wrote: post #25

I did a version of this by Googling my name (as a phrase, with and without middle initial) combined with city names or street address fragments I’ve lived at. I then submitted removal requests for anything I found. I ended up submitting about 10 requests, 7 or 8 of which were online. Of course, not all data brokers have publicly indexed page, but a lot do.

This is great! A lot of people prefer to submit the opt outs themselves. Our Free Basic account can be used to help people do-it-yourself faster by helping with the discovery process.

If you choose to sign up for Optery, next to each data broker listing we provide the opt out link and opt out email address to make it easy to navigate to.

When submitting your own opt outs to these companies directly, we highly recommend creating a disposable email address, and Not using your primary email address, as just reaching out to them with an email often adds you to their email lists.

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