I have a paid premium subscription with optery. I provided them with minimal informed and have been pleased thus far. Good customer service. Fairly quick response time. For years, I've performed monthly searches on my name and naturally submit opt-out requests from whatever data brokers I found. I signed up for optery using a couple discounts from stack social (or one of those sites). They found DOZENS of listings un…
Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet
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Re: Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for trying it out. One thing to clarify is that we list out each data broker we cover, regardless of whether or not your profile was found or not. We do this partly to support our Free Basic users that use the data broker links in the dashboard to QA and verify their own opt out work (or the opt out work of other services). So just because you see a data broker in your dashboard, does not mean we are implying…
This is super sketchy. Even the modal you describe is misleading: >> “External links help with self-service opt outs and provide visibility into where your info is posted online, but are not always perfect.” That is 100% misleading when you are linking to every data broker regardless of whether or not someone is in their database.
I can definitely see how this is confusing though to see all the links for all the data brokers regardless of whether the user has been found or not, and we have a Help Desk article on the topic:
https://help.optery.com/en/article/what-if-a-view-leads-to-a...
The primary reason we have this is for our Free Basic users who use the links as a mechanism to explore where their profile might be exposed and do their self-service opt out work. This is great feedback that we need to address this and make it more clear in the product. Thank you for the feedback.
Below is the full text of the modal:
================
You Are Leaving Optery
Optery is not affiliated with the site you’re being redirected to.
External links help with self-service opt outs and provide visibility into where your info is posted online, but are not always perfect.
When visiting data brokers, we recommend never sharing your personal email or paying any data brokers any money.
We then link into our Help Desk article advising users to never share their personal email or pay any money to data brokers: https://help.optery.com/en/article/do-not-share-your-persona...
We then give the user the option to click "Back" and return to Optery, or to "Continue".
Re: Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet
#73I have a paid premium subscription with optery. I provided them with minimal informed and have been pleased thus far. Good customer service. Fairly quick response time. For years, I've performed monthly searches on my name and naturally submit opt-out requests from whatever data brokers I found. I signed up for optery using a couple discounts from stack social (or one of those sites). They found DOZENS of listings un…
I signed up as "Notareal Personxxx." I listed my city as "Detroit, MI." I'm shown a list of 202 domains under the heading "Websites exposing your personal information." I click "More information" next to one of the listed websites. A modal appears:
>> Notareal Personxxxx, Detroit, MI,
See screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/Z2M8y3d
Re: Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet
#74It's all a data gathering exercise - and given the lax privacy policy of this site, I wouldn't sign up with them. It's way too open and non-explicit. Particularly sharing data with third-parties, cases for using the data, analysing the data, etc.
Pass.
Re: Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for trying it out. One thing to clarify is that we list out each data broker we cover, regardless of whether or not your profile was found or not. We do this partly to support our Free Basic users that use the data broker links in the dashboard to QA and verify their own opt out work (or the opt out work of other services). So just because you see a data broker in your dashboard, does not mean we are implying…
This is super sketchy. Even the modal you describe is misleading: >> “External links help with self-service opt outs and provide visibility into where your info is posted online, but are not always perfect.” That is 100% misleading when you are linking to every data broker regardless of whether or not someone is in their database.
Re: Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet
#76Do you have data on the efficacy of your solution? How many fewer spam and phishing attempts do your customers receive vs non-customers? What is the rate of successful identity theft against your users vs a similarly technical and privacy conscience control group? I love this idea, but you’re asking me to spend more money a month than many streaming services. To command that type of price you’re going to need to show…
Re: Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet
#77just signed up for your free service, and wow, it's creepy to see my childhood home phone number just sitting there next to my name and current address so many times. Three things:
First, I'm looking at your paid plans, and what I actually want right now is just to pay $10 to have this current batch taken care of, and then I can repeat the process any time I happen to think about it. I know that's not what you want as a business, and I'm sure it's not what your backers want, but I can't see why a monthly subscription service is the right model from a user's POV. All I really want is to periodically wipe the slate clean.
Second, I see that you have the most expensive plan labeled as "MOST POPULAR," and I'm afraid I just don't believe that that's true; and given how much your business relies on trust, something about the breeziness/sleaziness of this tactic seems out of place.
And third, a general comment -- this seems like a cool idea for a company, But I'm surprised YC was interested in it. I personally can't see any way that this becomes a billion dollar business, or 100 billion, or whatever returns VCs are looking for. But heck, if I was able to guess that kind of thing, I'd be out there doing it.
Good luck y'all
Re: Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet
#78Hi there, just signed up for your free service, and wow, it's creepy to see my childhood home phone number just sitting there next to my name and current address so many times. Three things: First, I'm looking at your paid plans, and what I actually want right now is just to pay $10 to have this current batch taken care of, and then I can repeat the process any time I happen to think about it. I know that's not what…
Re: Launch HN: Optery (YC W22) – Remove your personal info from the internet
#79Have you thought of a family plan for a family and kids all living at one address? Also niche organizational plans like police departments, law practices, therapists, hospitals, etc? Or ones for lawyers, therapists, etc to buy for themselves? I know a lot of those people just want their name only associated with their professional office addresses, never a home address, and their are rating and professional directori…
We don’t cover the professional ratings sites and directories that people tend to cultivate presences on consciously. We are 100% focused on stopping the unwanted posting and selling of personal information by data brokers. The full list of sites we cover can be found here: https://www.optery.com/pricing/#data-brokers-we-cover
If someone signs up for Optery using a fake name, they almost certainly will get garbage results. The Exposure Report will most likely be empty, and the data broker links will most likely lead to “profile not found pages” or incorrect profiles (garbage in, garbage out). One thing to clarify is that we list out each data broker we cover, regardless of whether your profile was found or not. We do this partly to support our Free Basic users that use the data broker links in the dashboard to QA and verify their own opt out work (or the opt out work of other services). However, based on yours and others comments here, this is definitely confusing peoples, so we need to fix this and make it more clear. Thank you so much for this great feedback.
To prevent abuse, to change the name on your account, you’ll need to reach out to our customer support. We have more info on this on the Optery Help Desk here:
https://help.optery.com/en/article/how-can-i-edit-my-name-1t...
You’re welcome to use any email you want when you sign up for Optery. Email is not a primary key for us when submitting opt outs. We do not use the private email address you use when you sign up with Optery to submit opt outs. Optery creates our own private emails for you that we manage behind the scenes when submitting the opt outs.