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

Hi! Co-creator of Optery here.

Regarding our pricing. It is true that most of the opt out submissions and removals happen up front. If someone wanted to go this route, I'd recommend keeping the subscription active for a minimum of 3 months, and then cancelling the subscription. Some data brokers process opt out removals within 24 hours, but others take several weeks to comply. Also, the majority of data brokers honor opt out requests on the first try, but others require retries or follow ups over several weeks. In our experience, it can take up to 2 - 3 months of effort for the longtail to disappear.

The other consideration is that data brokers are inconsistent in how long they will honor an opt out. The California Consumer Privacy Act (the most strict privacy law in the U.S.) actually permits data brokers to stop honoring an opt out request after 1 year. Some data brokers honor opt outs indefinitely, but others require annual effort to ensure your name and personal info stays removed.

Like antivirus, the landscape is very dynamic. New data brokers come online regularly, data broker databases are constantly being updated and refreshed (sometimes overwriting prior opt out request flags), and we (Optery) are continually expanding our list of data brokers we cover for each paid subscription plan tier. So if you want a service that's continually scanning for your profiles and opting you out on an ongoing basis when new results turn up, that would be a good reason to keep a subscription active on an ongoing basis. But you are free to cancel, or delete your account entirely at any time!

Regarding your second point. We are not a data broker. We do not sell data. We do not publish data. We do not have any financial relationship with any data broker. We are not affiliated with any data broker. There are some opt out services out there that have financial partnerships and affiliations with data brokers – Optery is not one of them. We only submit to data brokers the minimum amount of information necessary for them to locate your profile, and then remove it, which, in the majority of cases is: First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, City, State, and an email address. Note that we never share our customers private email address with any third party, including the data brokers we submit opt outs to.

I'd like to see beyondd (one of the co-founders on here) to address this

Would be interesting to know why there is no EU option. One possibility is they do not have enough data to offer it; that's good news for EU residents. Another is they want to avoid the costs of GCPR compliance and the possibility of regulatory action in the EU that is de minimis in the US. Either way, the fact they have no EU option does not inspire confidence they are on the users' side. The US is incredibly friendly to these shady "businesses". As such, US residents are "sitting ducks". Very sad. The way to stop this nonsense is with laws not more people accessing the data; trying to label "good guys" and "bad guys" does not work.

Incidentally the same "confirm your data" issue exists every time there is a data breach and people set up "Have I been pwned" websites allowing people to search for their name/e-mail address in the data. (Instead of allowing them download the data and providing instructions how to search it in private.) Not every one of those sites is legit. It is an easy way to at least confirm there is a live advertising target who is actively concerned about this data, and we have an originating IP address for that person. That seems to be what many tech companies want to know, "Is it really you?", so they can more convincingly market "you" as a real target for online advertising.

I see this like a hacker who grows up and realizes that what they did before was wrong. People change. And the best people to address these issues head on- unfortunately- almost always started on the “wrong” side of the issue.

Speaking from personal experience, you can reform yourself.

Best thing I can say is

(a) move

(b) do NOT register for USPS forwarding to your new address (USPS will help the data brokers)

(c) change your legal address for service of process to a registered agent service, not your residential address

(d) get a UPS mail box for your day-to-day corporate mail, and preferably most of your personal mail as well

Completely 100% refuse to ever give out your residential address for anything business-related.

In addition, a couple of other common culprits for unethically releasing addresses to data brokers:

- DMV -- opt out explicitly

- Voter registration - Don't register to vote if you aren't in a swing state

- Utilities -- opt out explicitly

- Credit cards -- opt out explicitly

- Random small e-commerce websites you need to receive packages from -- ship them to your UPS box or to your workplace if you can