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

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121–130 of 150 posts

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

#121
Two recommendations for everyone:

1. Check out the IntelTechniques workbook. You can a lot of this yourself for free. https://inteltechniques.com/workbook.html

2. If you want to hire someone, there are a bunch of similar options. This list was put together by a competitor, easyoptouts, but it seems pretty neutral: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M1YXTKmfs6rVDJHQVO3V...

And a question for Optery: I tried your service but it mainly found people who aren't me. Are you working on improving identification?

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

#122
post #85
post #77

Hi 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…

Thanks for trying out Optery! It sounds like you got the same “Wow” moment most new Optery users describe. Glad to hear! 1) We do see some people activate their 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 (currently every 3 months), so if they start to see more profiles pop back up, they re-activate. There…

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

#123
post #77

Hi 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…

Wait until you find out that as a kid your phone number and address where in a yellow pages in every household around your community!

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

#124
Can Optery help with cleaning / opting out of Google Knowledge Panel?

Right now a search for my first and last name bring up a knowledge panel with my full date of birth.

I suppose I am lucky because it is correct DOB but still feels unsettling.

I have not claimed my Knowledge Panel because I am afraid it would show even more information.

It is such a tiny thing but if there was a way to revert to just showing my age it would be amazing.

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

#125
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not familiar with the rules for data brokers or if Optery is able to compel anyone to actually delete things, especially if they claim not to not have a way to prevent reentry. The platforms I worked with all handled opt-outs with a "Has Opted Out" indicator that could be filtered, in particular on distribution, and deleting profiles was a separate concern with the only crossover that they must be kept long enough to honor opt-out requirements.

Personal profiles are messy. People have different names, addresses, email, phone numbers, and different people sharing any of the aforementioned details. This is complicated enough with the raw data and unless you have a very simple profiles or opt-out rules, such as treating the entire household as one, you're going to need more than a simple hash to figure out if there is existing opt-out history.

Profiles may also need to be kept for transactional purposes. Presumably, data brokers and people who have only heard of you through brokers wouldn't have any transactional activity. But everyone else likely needs to deal with opt-outs on the distribution side, making opt-outs a solved problem that doesn't need to happen on intake.

So...sure, you can.

But I wouldn't hold your breath that this will be seen as a reasonable expectation for most developers or businesses to implement.

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

#126
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…

The same feeling I get when I click unsubscribe from spam emails - Am I actually signaling them that I exist and reading their spam ?

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

#127
post #78
post #77

Hi 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…

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

Thanks again for pointing this out. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, this is a product experience defect, and is not intended to be deceptive. We made a few quick cosmetic updates to mitigate until we can re-work our dashboard more meaningfully. For example:

1) We changed the data broker dashboard title from "Websites exposing your personal information" to "Websites that expose personal information"

2) We changed the data broker dashboard subtitle from "Discover where your personal data is exposed..." to "Explore where your personal data might be exposed..."

3) Within the data broker dashboard subtitle, we added the text "Links frequently lead to empty pages" with a "learn why" link to the post on our Help Desk titled "What if a "View" link leads to an empty or not found page?" that goes here:

https://help.optery.com/en/article/what-if-a-view-link-leads...

We have several more changes we're working through to address this issue. Thank you again!

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

#128
post #73

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…

Just hijacking the top comment to point out that Optery's onboarding process is deliberately misleading in an attempt to get you to subscribe to a paid tier. 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 P…

Thanks again for pointing this out. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, this is a product experience defect, and is not intended to be deceptive. We made a few quick cosmetic updates to mitigate until we can re-work our dashboard more meaningfully. For example:

1) We changed the data broker dashboard title from "Websites exposing your personal information" to "Websites that expose personal information"

2) We changed the data broker dashboard subtitle from "Discover where your personal data is exposed..." to "Explore where your personal data might be exposed..."

3) Within the data broker dashboard subtitle, we added the text "Links frequently lead to empty pages" with a "learn why" link to the post on our Help Desk titled "What if a "View" link leads to an empty or not found page?" that goes here:

https://help.optery.com/en/article/what-if-a-view-link-leads...

We have several more changes we're working through to address this issue. Thank you again!

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

#129
post #69
post #52

Earlier 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.

Thanks again for pointing this out. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, this is a product experience defect, and is not intended to be deceptive. We made a few quick cosmetic updates to mitigate until we can re-work our dashboard more meaningfully. For example:

1) We changed the data broker dashboard title from "Websites exposing your personal information" to "Websites that expose personal information"

2) We changed the data broker dashboard subtitle from "Discover where your personal data is exposed..." to "Explore where your personal data might be exposed..."

3) Within the data broker dashboard subtitle, we added the text "Links frequently lead to empty pages" with a "learn why" link to the post on our Help Desk titled "What if a "View" link leads to an empty or not found page?" that goes here:

https://help.optery.com/en/article/what-if-a-view-link-leads...

We have several more changes we're working through to address this issue. Thank you again!

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

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This sounds like an interesting add-on to explore.
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