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

The number “168” you referenced reflects the number of data brokers we cover, not the total number of times you’ve been “found”. I can see how this would be confusing though, so it is a good reminder to us that we need to implement better tool tips to make this more clear.

In the screenshots you shared, see where it says “Your Exposure Risk Scan is in Progress”, with the green hourglass icon below it? That means your scan has not been completed yet, so actually we do not claim to have found you anywhere yet.

If you input a fake name (as you mentioned), you will of course get bogus results. When you click through the links after inputting a fake name, you should expect to see 404 pages or “Not found” pages at the data brokers as you described. This is because of course the data broker cannot find the fake name you entered. I also can see how this may be confusing, so another reminder to us that we need to do a better job of implementing tool tips to make this more clear.

Even if you input a real name, the “View” links will not always generate results. Here’s a quote from our Getting Started page where we explain how this works:

“Sometimes these links are not perfect, and other people may be listed, or you might not be there at all, but in most cases, they allow you to quickly view a snapshot of where your personal details are exposed online. The quality of our results sometimes varies, for example, if you have a common name like “John Smith” or “Mary Smith”, it might be difficult to find your profiles among many others with the same name. Adding a middle name or a full birthdate to your Optery profile often helps. Keep in mind, we are constantly improving our platform, and we have a lot of things in the works to improve these results.”

Link to full page here: https://www.optery.com/getting-started/

So, your explanation basically confirms that right now your dashboard shows fake results. You call these results “autogenerated profile link at [data broker site] for [name at city, state].” Instead of a link which “you can click through to view your profile” as advertised on your site, many of those links lead to 404 or some random page on a data broker site because your system has found nothing. In case of a bogus name, 100% of those links are fake. I call them fake because they are what they are - imitations of “found” results. Just to clarify, a “bogus name” test is a quick way to check if a privacy service does a real search on data broker sites or just imitates that it found something. For a bogus name I’d expect to see 0 profiles found as a result of a scan. That would be logical and ethical. To sum up, you invite people to register at your service and give away their PII. Then, these people get fake results in exchange for their PII and are invited to sign up and pay. Then, a user expresses her concern to the founders and they say that it is ok for a privacy service to act like this. At least Optery is useless and a waste of time, at worst this service is unethical. With this type of reaction from founders, I’d think twice before sending them any personal data or having anything to do with them at all.

Yes - Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) is in development – this is almost ready and will be released soon.

No server errors have been reported like what you’ve experienced at other services. A few people received an error trying to log in without completing the second step in the signup process, but we resolved this immediately and now prevent people from logging in without completing the two-step registration.

Regarding your last comment, for our customers we deliver Removals Status Updates indicating the number of removals that have been completed, are pending, or are in process. The Removals Status Updates are configurable in account settings for delivery weekly, monthly (default), or never. The dashboard also has up-to-date status indicators for removals pending, in progress, not found, etc. Additionally, for our paying customers, we send Removals Reports approximately quarterly summarizing visually all the places customers have been removed and/or cannot be found.

The data broker sites sell information about consumers, that’s primarily how they make their money. It is true that some data broker sites will attempt to charge you for removing your information, but everyone can make these removal requests for free, so paying them is not necessary (and highly discouraged!)

To reiterate what I’ve mentioned a few times on this page: 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. Per our Privacy Policy: “We don’t sell or rent your personal information to any third parties for any purpose. You are the only owner of your Personal Data and can request disclosure or deletion at any time.” https://www.optery.com/privacy-policy/

We are a third party service, un-affiliated with any data broker, providing visibility to consumers for free on what private information data brokers are posting about them online. We then have free do-it-yourself tools consumers can use to submit opt outs themselves, or paid plans where we submit the opt outs for our customers.

There are misconceptions, and one of them is about what happens if a customer subsequently cancels our service. If that happens, over time, data brokers may start adding you back. For example, 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. However, under no circumstance will Optery ever re-send information to any data brokers for any kind of re-population effort. The only information we send to data brokers are opt out requests.

Thank you for the kind words and for checking out Optery!

We are an Authorized Agent working on behalf of our customers. You can learn more in our Terms of Service here: https://www.optery.com/terms-of-service/