Doxxing defense: Remove your personal info from data brokers • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by pistle » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 7:49 PM UTC

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…

Any non-misogynist Gamergaters (are there any?) don't get "it" or the media. Maybe in some weird deconstruction of "equality," so long as you can provoke a response, you can plead "they were mean too!"

But, most people know who threw a punch first and who keeps throwing punches below the belt from their painful, awkward youth. The framing of the situation is not within the control of those who started the mess. Fewer and fewer 3rd parties give a shit about any morsel of authenticity in the game media ruse. More and more people are seeing people they know and/or care about get impacted and think, "Fuck GG's and anyone who stands anywhere near them." There's not enough time to separate the wheat and chaff - time to just burn the rotting pile.

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

#122

Post by wiredfool » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 7:49 PM UTC

codezero wrote: post #96

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 "+"?

Personally I self host a domain that accepts anything@ and file it into a special inbox. This lets me give real addresses to specific sites and blacklist them as needed.

I did that, until I got the second run of someone sending spam to [dictionary]@mydomain.

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

#123

Post by innguest » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 7:55 PM UTC

jonahx wrote: post #59

frtab wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Those oft-repeated "factors" can only be factors if you show that they are.

Simply mentioning that there are differences between those two countries does not make any difference you care to list a "factor".

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

#124

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 7:58 PM UTC

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.

> 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.

Copyright infringement comes with the potential for multi-million dollar fines, but that hasn't put much of a dent in it. Why would it be different here?

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

#125

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 7:59 PM UTC

blauwbilgorgel wrote: post #3

Just because a data aggregation site does not show your data on the front-end, does not mean they deleted it from the back-end. So now you can charge 50$ for people to search in the "special" data pile, where people took the effort to remove it from the front-end. These data brokers crawl publicly available information. Telling them to remove your data, only slows down the doxxer, it does not stop them at all, since…

[deleted]

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

#126

Post by thinkling » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 8:04 PM UTC

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.

I only looked at Spokeo, the first site on the list in the article. To opt out, you have to give Spokeo your email address, they send you a link, and you click the link to be delisted.

Why does Spokeo make it so easy?

The only answer I can think of is that they now have your email address and value that. Draw your own conclusions...

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

#127

Post by blacksmith_tb » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 8:15 PM UTC

ghayes wrote: post #89

ryan-c wrote: post #6

Abine's DeleteMe[1] service will take care of removing you from these sites, though it's not cheap. They will keep re-checking and re-removing. I've been using it for a few years, and it seems to work pretty well. IIRC there was still one site that I had to call and deal with myself. 1. https://www.abine.com/deleteme/

I would also add Safe Shepherd [0]. We remove your information from the standard data brokers, and also give you guides on how to remove yourself from a large universe of sites yourself. Message me if you have any questions. Edit: The service costs $13.95/mo, but you can get started with a 10-day free trial where we'll kick off all of the removals. You can (fully) delete your account at any time if you'd like. [0] ht…

Question - I can see the value of a service that automates all these removal requests. That said, the monthly subscription model seems a bit excessive, as I assume data would creep back in gradually. I would think quarterly, or even annually resubmitting them all would be adequate. No?

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

#128

Post by ghayes » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 8:22 PM UTC

tilsammans wrote: post #101

ghayes wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also add Safe Shepherd [0]. We remove your information from the standard data brokers, and also give you guides on how to remove yourself from a large universe of sites yourself. Message me if you have any questions. Edit: The service costs $13.95/mo, but you can get started with a 10-day free trial where we'll kick off all of the removals. You can (fully) delete your account at any time if you'd like. [0] ht…

Thanks for adding the price info to your post. Should probably be on the site too. :-) is your service open for non-US people? And will it be useful?

The top data brokers are very US-focused, so our service is US-focused. Outside of data brokers, we can the web for your information and have guides on why the site might be exposing your information and what to do if so. This is useful for all people.

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

#129

Post by Joona » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 8:30 PM UTC

I think just using a nickname (instead of your own name) and not sharing addresses etc is the best way to go.

Lirik (a big Twitch streamer) chooses to only use his online alias, and although it's a common question what his real name (or other details) are, no one really has an answer. You just have to put some effort to not leaking information from registrations to sites (and such).

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

#130

Post by r00fus » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 8:50 PM UTC

This is useless. The only way to defeat mass collection is to poison the well. I always put some fake data wherever it's not legally required. The only issue is where it is required and that is the root of the problem - why is it required in so many places?