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Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet

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21–30 of 150 posts

Re: Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet

#21

Seems very useful. However, I am not a fan of a subscription-based model for this sort of thing. I would hands down sign up if it was a one-time transaction. If that were the case I would also likely be a repeat customer every year.

We do see people activate the subscription for a few months, and then cancel their plan to downgrade back down to the Free Basic tier. The Free Basic tier sends ongoing Exposure Reports, so if they start to see more profiles pop back up, they re-activate. Others activate the subscription for a few months, then cancel, and then completely delete their account, and we destroy all info we have about the user at that point.

Re: Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet

#22
I'd like to take you at face value and not kind of low-key impugn your honor as seems to be happening in some of these other comments. But I still see a problem with the basic core concept here. As you state upfront, these data brokers are just scraping and aggregating from public data sources. As long as those data sources are still out there, your information is still out there. Some other aggregator can come along or a stalker/identity thief can just use primary sources. You're not going to get court records, property ownership, voter registration purged from public view because those are intended to be public by law.

The real solutions are one or both of either make privacy a broader public priority than transparency, which is unlikely to happen, or stop making facts about yourself that are part of the public record an authentication mechanism.

Re: Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet

#23
post #3

I don't see how this can work at a fundamental level. You're telling me that to remove my info I have to essentially give (through your service) all these companies & data brokers my info so they can opt me out, and actually trust them that they'll do so? If anything, opting out is a signal that you may actually be of more interest to them than not doing anything. If these companies can also infer that the request is…

> You're telling me that to remove my info I have to essentially give (through your service) all these companies & data brokers my info so they can opt me out, and actually trust them that they'll do so? Other people raised that concern when this appeared on HN ( https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=27668140 ), and at the time, that’s indeed what the service did. Even if one ignores intentional misuse, simple inco…

That's certainly one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that if you do nothing, you information will continue to persist, multiply, and propagate unchecked. Those that take the time (or money) to remove the profiles, have dramatically reduced online footprints, which is why these types of services are becoming more and more popular. Many companies are starting to mandate their employees use services like ours to strengthen their security posture to reduce exposure to phishing, hacking, email spam, etc.

Re: Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet

#25
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're being a bit hard on them... The FB and GTM are likely to track how well their ads are converting users - it's reasonable for them to advertise to try to get this service infront of your eyeballs. Facebook doesn't sell user data, just uses it for (selling) advertising. Hotjar is great for providing heatmaps to see what parts of their site are working/ not I mean sure it's tracking you but only on that s…

You must be joking. A bit hard on them? They sell removal of personal information off the Internet, and yet they feed tracking data on their visitors to companies directly responsible for nearly complete evisceration of personal online privacy.

You are right, these scrips could only be loaded after user consent.

Re: Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet

#26

I'd like to take you at face value and not kind of low-key impugn your honor as seems to be happening in some of these other comments. But I still see a problem with the basic core concept here. As you state upfront, these data brokers are just scraping and aggregating from public data sources. As long as those data sources are still out there, your information is still out there. Some other aggregator can come along…

To take your first point one further, services like ours don't do anything to remove people's info from the dark web. Indeed, no one can, that's the entire premise of the dark web.

And there are some data sets that are inherently difficult to remove, e.g. public records, voter records, etc (as you pointed out). However, we often can get this type of data removed from the for-profit web sites that re-publish it and market it online. And we do remove the vast majority of information that's out there on individuals, dramatically reducing your surface area for discovery and attack. For example, many of the web sites that re-publish public records, usually only publish very limited amount of information, and lead to other sites that have much richer and more sensitive information like phone number, email address, age, home address, family members' names, etc.

Its very difficult to get everything removed, but if you can get rid of 99% of it, you can maintain a much lower profile and make it that much more difficult for someone that's trying to act against you. If a bad actor is just looking for a victim, they're more likely to move on to the next person that has done nothing to protect themselves.

Also, having a low profile might be a signal to bad actors that you take your privacy and security seriously, you have good security hygiene, and are likely to have other security mechanisms in place to protect you, and make their task more difficult, like identity theft protection, a home security system, a VPN, or even Multi-factor Authentication.

Re: Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet

#29
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're being a bit hard on them... The FB and GTM are likely to track how well their ads are converting users - it's reasonable for them to advertise to try to get this service infront of your eyeballs. Facebook doesn't sell user data, just uses it for (selling) advertising. Hotjar is great for providing heatmaps to see what parts of their site are working/ not I mean sure it's tracking you but only on that s…

You must be joking. A bit hard on them? They sell removal of personal information off the Internet, and yet they feed tracking data on their visitors to companies directly responsible for nearly complete evisceration of personal online privacy.

I may be in the minority, but I make a distinction between personal IRL information like searching my name reveals my phone number or address. And online tracking information like when I have this cookie or browse from this IP, show me more X. Also Facebook is a large responsible company (no major data breaches, etc.) I know they're hated on, but something like Equifax is several orders of magnitude worse in my opinion.

Facebook (and maybe Google?) buy data about me to try to match me online so they can provide ads on their own service, but they don't reveal my data to anyone else - advertisers don't get my phone number or physical address or even email from them, when they want to advertise to me.

The companies that optery seems to be fighting against are ones that post my physical address and phone number and family members and name online in one spot so anyone can find it, without me ever opting in to that.

Re: Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet

#30
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're telling me that to remove my info I have to essentially give (through your service) all these companies & data brokers my info so they can opt me out, and actually trust them that they'll do so? Other people raised that concern when this appeared on HN ( https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=27668140 ), and at the time, that’s indeed what the service did. Even if one ignores intentional misuse, simple inco…

That's certainly one way to look at it. Another way to look at it is that if you do nothing, you information will continue to persist, multiply, and propagate unchecked. Those that take the time (or money) to remove the profiles, have dramatically reduced online footprints, which is why these types of services are becoming more and more popular. Many companies are starting to mandate their employees use services like…

I’m all for spending the time or money to remove my profile. I’d rather also spend a little extra time to see where I’m listed and evaluate that organization, though.
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