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Doxxing defense: Remove your personal info from data brokers

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Re: Doxxing defense: Remove your personal info from data brokers

#51

Post by eplanit »

frtab wrote: post #33
grecy wrote: post #23

Rather than trying to make it harder for people to stalk/harass/intimidate others by hiding data, why don't we get tough with laws and sentencing? A 5 year jail stint for the next 10 idiots to pull this stunt will reduce the incident rate of this happening a lot faster.

There's no significant link between prison sentences and crime rates. If there was, Norway would have a high crime rate and the US would have a low crime rate.

A bit of a broadly brushed analysis. This assumes all other variables/characteristics are equal: economic, social, political, etc.

Re: Doxxing defense: Remove your personal info from data brokers

#52

Post by ghaff »

Someone1234 wrote: post #18

The US really needs something akin to the EU's Data Protection Directive[0]. I've seen tons of businesses hide some tiny clause in their T&Cs (page 30, subsection 15, paragraph 11, etc) which allows them to resell your data to whoever will pay. For example the National Geographic Store sold my personal data when I purchased something from them (even with no check-box opt out, etc during checkout), and I've been recei…

Note that a lot of the information being discussed is public information in the US though. Companies aggregate this information--often for a fee--but it's public by law. To take just one example that struck a lot of people as surprising when it became a topic during the last US election, in many states it's a matter of public record whether you vote or not (not who you vote for but whether you vote). And there are many, many other examples.

Historically, uncovering this information would have meant spending many hours going through files at county or town clerks--which put a very real limit on how widely it would be used. Now much of it is digitized (and aggregated). So at least part of today's issue isn't so much that private information is being made public but that ostensibly public information is now such much easier to access and cross-reference.

Re: Doxxing defense: Remove your personal info from data brokers

#53

Post by wiredfool »

marco1 wrote: post #44
giarc wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you can enter email addresses as x+y@example.com where x=your regular email and y=some word/phrase to indicate who might have sold your email. For example, if you register bill+NG@example.com with national geographic, and you find yourself getting to: bill+NG@example.com from spam, you know who sold your info. My question is, do you think companies know this trick and just remove the portion following the "+"?

That does only work with Gmail, doesn't it? I don't think this is that widespread yet, so few companies (if any) will remove the part after the plus.

It works with many mailservers, on postfix it's called recipient_delimiter. It's enabled on dreamhost as + as far as I know.

The amount of spam/phishing I'm getting to me-macromedia@ and me-adobe@ is pretty amazing. Guess I was part of _that_ breach.

I'm not sure I'd go through that if I were doing it again. I've got hundreds of those emails out there, and being able to just drop some of them hasn't been the help that I would have hoped for.

Re: Doxxing defense: Remove your personal info from data brokers

#55

Post by [deleted] »

ams6110 wrote: post #49
eplanit wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very unusual and ironic to find an argument _for_ punitive incarceration here on HN, which is more typically a bastion of anti-incarceration advocacy. I guess it depends on where societies' and governments' fears lie (the more representative the gov't is the more these fears overlap).

The ususal stance is against punitive incarceration for crimes like drug posession and maybe even sex trade activities. Crimes where someone is actually harmed? I don't think you see a lot of arguments againts punishment for those.

[deleted]

Re: Doxxing defense: Remove your personal info from data brokers

#56

Post by subsection1h »

giarc wrote: post #42
Someone1234 wrote: post #18

The US really needs something akin to the EU's Data Protection Directive[0]. I've seen tons of businesses hide some tiny clause in their T&Cs (page 30, subsection 15, paragraph 11, etc) which allows them to resell your data to whoever will pay. For example the National Geographic Store sold my personal data when I purchased something from them (even with no check-box opt out, etc during checkout), and I've been recei…

I know you can enter email addresses as x+y@example.com where x=your regular email and y=some word/phrase to indicate who might have sold your email. For example, if you register bill+NG@example.com with national geographic, and you find yourself getting to: bill+NG@example.com from spam, you know who sold your info. My question is, do you think companies know this trick and just remove the portion following the "+"?

> if you register bill+NG@email.com

Please use the second level domain label example[1] when writing examples of email addresses. For all you know, you just posted someone's email address.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com

Re: Doxxing defense: Remove your personal info from data brokers

#57

Post by snowwrestler »

doctorfoo wrote: post #15
eli wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what "whitewashed" means in this context, but you are definitely off topic and your comment reads like you are trying to justify some pretty terrible actions. The fact that other bad things happen to other people in no way excuses the bad things that happened to female game developers.

It's the bias in the media. GamerGate supporters are painted uniformly as misogynists. There is a legitimate argument about press ethics, freedom of speech, and whether appreciating an attractive body is the same as objectification. >justify some pretty terrible actions I'm asking that the terrible actions of BOTH sides are reported. There is an awful, hateful minority on both sides, but in the mainstream media, only…

> whether appreciating an attractive body is the same as objectification

I know this is off-topic, but the statement above is literally objectification, because it refers to a body (which is an object) instead of a person.

Re: Doxxing defense: Remove your personal info from data brokers

#58

Post by byerley »

Someone1234 wrote: post #46
angersock wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, indeed, that's what we need--5 year prison sentences for exercising 1st amendment rights. Preventing the creation of these databases? No, far too difficult to enforce...instead, let's go after the uppity little guys. You've suggested a remarkably short-sighted solution to a very thorny problem.

The first amendment doesn't protect criminal activity.

If repeating publicly known personal information is a crime, the printers of telephone directories must have really good lawyers.

Re: Doxxing defense: Remove your personal info from data brokers

#59

Post by jonahx »

frtab wrote: post #33
grecy wrote: post #23

Rather than trying to make it harder for people to stalk/harass/intimidate others by hiding data, why don't we get tough with laws and sentencing? A 5 year jail stint for the next 10 idiots to pull this stunt will reduce the incident rate of this happening a lot faster.

There's no significant link between prison sentences and crime rates. If there was, Norway would have a high crime rate and the US would have a low crime rate.

Your first point may be true, but the US/Norway example is not good evidence for it. There are significant other confounding factors -- relative homogeneity of the population, economic differences, population size, cultural history are just a handful that spring to mind.

Re: Doxxing defense: Remove your personal info from data brokers

#60

Post by 300bps »

rl3 wrote: post #4

The fact most of these sites even have opt-out mechanisms, and that they're apparently effective, is surprising and quite nice. Though, I suspect this became the case out of necessity as a result of horror stories and litigation.

The fact most of these sites even have opt-out mechanisms, and that they're apparently effective,

My last name is one that fewer than 20 people in the world have. So doxxing protection and name management in general is very important to me. A few years ago I took about a day and had myself removed from everywhere I could find. Far more comprehensive than this article.

In the three years since, I've slowly been added back to all of them. I haven't moved, I haven't added or subtracted phone numbers, I've made no life changes. It just seems like these data brokers remove your information when you ask and then for whatever reason just add it back again. One example: whitepages.com. I was removed from there about two years and then suddenly my name and address are back again. That's just one example that leads me to believe the opt-out at these data brokers is "temporarily effective" at best.

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