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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

#101

Post by estaseuropano »

mawise wrote: post #56
beyondd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can submit opt outs, with, or without, a service like ours. The vast majority of data brokers do remove the information after an opt out request is submitted. Unfortunately, over time, many data brokers start adding it back. The CCPA (California's Privacy Law) permits a data broker to stop honoring an opt out after 12 months. To answer your question though, yes, in order to get these companies to remove your i…

> in order to get these companies to remove your info, you have to submit an opt out that identifies who you are. I wonder if you could build an opt-out service or protocol where you share a hash of your personal information instead of the info itself. With the hash you can identify matching records but you cannot create a record from the hash. If Optery bought full datasets from databrokers, it could use a hash to i…

What's the point? The company a you are asking to remove data will anyway know which dataset you asked to delete.

What would work would be a mandatory self block list (e.g. most EU countries have a 'do not call' opt-in list against telemarketers) and then the brokers have to check any new days against the hash of data points in this block list. But that requires government intervention, not startups that bandaid the problem.

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

#102

Post by estaseuropano »

akudha wrote: post #63
beyondd wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone can submit opt outs, with, or without, a service like ours. The vast majority of data brokers do remove the information after an opt out request is submitted. Unfortunately, over time, many data brokers start adding it back. The CCPA (California's Privacy Law) permits a data broker to stop honoring an opt out after 12 months. To answer your question though, yes, in order to get these companies to remove your i…

The CCPA (California's Privacy Law) permits a data broker to stop honoring an opt out after 12 months. Does this mean users have to keep opting out every 12 months? If yes, that sounds...dumb, isn't it? Maybe I am not understanding this correctly, is there a reason behind this 12 month period? Even if they wanted to let data brokers add the data back, 12 months seems too short a time. What am I missing? Why is every…

Lobbying. That's the reason. There is no rational reason why a user's explicitly expressed preference would become irrelevant after a year.

The organ donor database won't ask you every month to verify that you still want to do it - there is nil legitimate reason why this would be 'needed' in this case.

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

#103

Post by estaseuropano »

lizard wrote: post #86
akudha wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CCPA (California's Privacy Law) permits a data broker to stop honoring an opt out after 12 months. Does this mean users have to keep opting out every 12 months? If yes, that sounds...dumb, isn't it? Maybe I am not understanding this correctly, is there a reason behind this 12 month period? Even if they wanted to let data brokers add the data back, 12 months seems too short a time. What am I missing? Why is every…

Not in California, but spent some time several years ago working on the tech for a sales arm. My impression there was that people where pretty conscious of opt-outs and wanting to manage them carefully, if only because the consequences of not doing so could be costly. We spent a lot of time talking about opt-outs and trying to honor them across different tools they used. Many prospects came from purchased lists. Some…

> Which presents the second problem: If you don't hold on to their identifiable information, you cannot determine if they have previously requested to be removed from your offerings. So it may be dumb to have to opt out again, bit the alternative is to trust them not to use your information in the mean time.

This is just false. You can opt to keep e.g. a hash to check against future additions. Else you also would not be able to comply with the 12 month requirement.

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

#104

Post by estaseuropano »

striking wrote: post #38
Nextgrid wrote: 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…

> I have to essentially give (through your service) all these companies & data brokers my info Happy user of Optery here: you don't have to give Optery a whole lot of info. No SSNs or anything, just things they would search by to help you remove them. Are there fields for past addresses or people you lived with or past names you may have had? Sure. Do you have to fill them out? No. Are they provided in bulk to the da…

So they will enter all this data on the websites of the brokers which sell such data....this reminds me of the website that promises it contains all/most bitcoin private keys - just enter yours to find out if its there!

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

#105

Post by estaseuropano »

beyondd wrote: post #23
troydavis wrote: post #15

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…

Can you give an example of a company that mandates this?

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

#106

Post by jrockway »

estaseuropano wrote: post #99
jrockway wrote: post #88

What a nifty startup. I love the idea of using software to make it more difficult to sell my personal information. I'm not sure why I care enough to pay, but after reading this post, I do, and I signed up. (I'm awaiting my report and will probably upgrade after reading it.)

But this seems to be neither software nor does it actually make it more difficult to sell data. Its a servive that sends opt out requests for you. As far as I can see there is no legal value to this, nor is this sustainable - the next scrape and you're back in. There is (obviously) no guarantee that you data won't be sold, nor any guarantee that their opt out requests don't become basically a signal for 'this is a re…

The teeth come from the laws, though. If you've submitted an opt-out request in compliance with the law, and your data reappears, the vendor now has a problem with the government. Problems with the government are super bad for your business. They have many more resources than the average individual.

I think that these laws don't have much effect when you require individuals to fill out (literally) 200 forms once a year. But software is great at filling out 200 forms once a year. It's the "missing link" for this kind of law; turning the legislature's intent into a regulation that means something.

I rarely see things that are really exciting to me on HN and that I can immediately start using. For whatever reason, this piqued my interest.

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

#107

Post by estaseuropano »

beyondd wrote: post #98
istjohn wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, your second point is just the tip of the sleaze-burg. All those sites they showed as having your information also seem to have info on "Notareal Personxxx": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30610432

This is a product experience defect, and is not intended to be deceptive. Several comments have cried “foul” on this one and we hear it loud and clear. We apologize this has persisted in the product, and can definitely see how this can be misleading. To explain what’s happening from the inside, immediately after the sign up, we retrofit the profile data you’ve input at the signup process into our URL templates for ea…

Sorry I might come across as harsh, but you indicate this is a 'defect', at the same time your comment makes clear that this is a known issue and you choose to keep it that way.

> The other reason this product defect has persisted is because our Free Basic users use the links to QA their own self-service opt out work.

You can't have it both ways - either admit its intentional or change if you know its deceptive.

The whole thread here convinces me that this is neither a product that should exist, nor does this startup have the users' interests in mind.

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

#108

Post by estaseuropano »

jrockway wrote: post #106
estaseuropano wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this seems to be neither software nor does it actually make it more difficult to sell data. Its a servive that sends opt out requests for you. As far as I can see there is no legal value to this, nor is this sustainable - the next scrape and you're back in. There is (obviously) no guarantee that you data won't be sold, nor any guarantee that their opt out requests don't become basically a signal for 'this is a re…

The teeth come from the laws, though. If you've submitted an opt-out request in compliance with the law, and your data reappears, the vendor now has a problem with the government. Problems with the government are super bad for your business. They have many more resources than the average individual. I think that these laws don't have much effect when you require individuals to fill out (literally) 200 forms once a ye…

I certainly as the reasoning but still this is fundamentally a problem that should not exist.

Here's where the service would be actually powerful: if it sends you proof if a broker added you within the 12 month period and tells you where to file a case against the broker.

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

#109

Post by [deleted] »

mazlix wrote: post #29
huhtenberg wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 opini…

[deleted]

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

#110

Post by striking »

na85 wrote: post #97
striking wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are perfectly able to add features to the site, and would absolutely add a feature if they thought it was as important as you think this one is. I get the feeling you've never actually attempted to engage with them in good faith, because they're willing to put in quite a lot of work to dissociate you from your comments while leaving the comment intact. In case you missed it, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=…

> They are perfectly able to add features to the site, and would absolutely add a feature if they thought it was as important as you think this one is. I mean we're talking about the forum software that can't handle more than a few hundred comments without resorting to pagination, so I feel justified in my thesis that engineering hours going into HN are pretty limited.

Again, you're not doing much to convince me you've actually gone out of your way to have a conversation with them.

They have other fish to fry, because maintaining a community doesn't just mean maintaining a codebase. They have a bunch of existing code that is architected in a way that makes some changes (like removing the comment render limit) not so easy. Though some of the consequences are annoying, they've never stopped anyone from using HN.

My personal experience is that they are implementing features and doing experiments, and it seems to me you've just never bothered to reach out and check with them because you think you know better.

Enjoy your thesis, or whatever. They're nice people and I recommend emailing them.

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