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I wish I could believe that submitting these opt outs would move the needle in any meaningful way but :sadblob:
I would pay three figures for someone to do this for me, for all these brokers. (I'm well aware that outsourcing the job carries its own risks... nonetheless there's an opportunity here.)
I would pay three figures for someone to do this for me, for all these brokers. (I'm well aware that outsourcing the job carries its own risks... nonetheless there's an opportunity here.)
At the bottom of the list you will find a "Paid options" section. The author says they personally have had a good experience with DeleteMe and Kanary.
I assume they wouldn't just "undo" their opt-outs?
I'd prefer a one-time payment over that darn subscription-recurring-revenue-model.
There's a catch 22 where you have to be comfortable enough to submit your information to these sites' opt out pages in order for them to take it down. But if you do nothing, it continues to proliferate unchecked.
Most people don't have the time or inclination to submit opt out requests to data brokers directly, let alone stay on top of when information inevitably pops back up. This is where data removal services like Optery come in, but there's also a similar catch 22 where you have to trust the company you're using. Most companies in the data removal space are trustworthy, but some are not. Along the lines of trustworthiness, one of the most underrated attributes of a data removal service is its security credentials. Optery has its SOC 2, Type II security certification, whereas most other services do not.
If you already use a different service such as DeleteMe, Kanary, or Incogni, you can run a free Optery scan to see what they've missed. The free Optery scan typically produces 50 - 100 screenshots of places your info is published online.
Optery was launched to the public on HackerNews as a Show HN before we got into YC, and again as a Launch HN after we got into YC. Lots of great insights on the topic of removing info from data brokers in those threads:
"Just fill out this form with the very information you're trying to take down and submit it to our servers! It's not like we run a quasi-legal service based around monetizing this exact type of data!" What reason is there to trust that the more shady brokers aren't just updating your record with IP address + 'sent an opt-out request' flag, making the data even more valuable?
This! Plus some forms require an ID and I'm not trusting those people with that kind of documents
Tried doing a few when something similar was posted 5 years back and a couple of months later my data was still showing up, but now with a green check-mark next to it. So learn from my mistakes and try to avoid interacting with these at all; maybe instead shoot a message to your representative asking for more legal privacy protections.
From here https://inteltechniques.com/workbook.html:
> The “MOST BANG FOR YOUR BUCK” removals: Spokeo, Mylife, Radaris, Whitepages, Intelius, BeenVerified, Acxiom, Infotracer, Lexis Nexis, TruePeopleSearch
Doing this work is tough/timeconsuming but can be done DIY. We're working on automating it at scale. YC gave us a grant in 2018 for this work.
Automating this sounds simple but gets extremely complex to scale. - evading cloudflare - solving captchas - managing site footprint (think about google's algo to crawl the web) - ux / product design (how should we communicate to members if a site is an a$$?) - identity matching...
At the end of the day, we need better regulations in the US to help us wrangle the data broker industry. Hand in hand with more advanced technology for monitoring and holding this industry accountable... that seems the best path fwd.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
At the bottom of the list you will find a "Paid options" section. The author says they personally have had a good experience with DeleteMe and Kanary.
Afaict, these are all recurring subscriptions. Is there any reason not to signup for a month or two and then cancel, maybe repeat every couple years? The sub is more of a continuous monitoring thing? I assume they wouldn't just "undo" their opt-outs? I'd prefer a one-time payment over that darn subscription-recurring-revenue-model.
(I've been working for one of the aforementioned—Kanary—for about a year now on this sort of thing.)
Re: undoing opt-outs, we do not do that, but data brokers will re-surface your information again if they find it elsewhere.
"Just fill out this form with the very information you're trying to take down and submit it to our servers! It's not like we run a quasi-legal service based around monetizing this exact type of data!" What reason is there to trust that the more shady brokers aren't just updating your record with IP address + 'sent an opt-out request' flag, making the data even more valuable?
This! Plus some forms require an ID and I'm not trusting those people with that kind of documents
CCPA says: "Businesses also should not require you to verify your identity, though they can ask you basic questions to identify which personal information is associated with you."[0]
The worst is that some of the bigger services (intelius, who provides data for many of these sites) have begun to require opt-outs come from an email address that they already have on file for you. Really need to legislate these companies out of existence.