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

Hi!

As a EU citizen who spent weeks sending GDPR requests back and worth with several data brokers I know just what a pain it is to get some data deleted. Even if it was only "trivial" stuff like things I have shopped for online (I always requested the data they had before requesting that they delete it) it was a laborious process.

I have two questions for you guys:

1) As a EU citizen do I benefit from signing up to your site or are the data brokers you are targeting focused on US citizens?

2) Why the monthly recurring fee? I would gladly make a higher one off payment every now and then for the removal of my data. Or is it monthly because you are keeping track if any of my data shows up at some point and then immediately remove it?

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.

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 info, you have to submit an opt out that identifies who you are. There is a catch-22, otherwise, they would not know who to opt out.

There are a multitude of reasons why people submit opt outs beyond whether or not the person can pay, e.g. victims of domestic violence, police officers, public figures, government officials, members of the military, etc. The data brokers are aware of this and generally have processes to accommodate the requests.

Millions of people use some form of identity protection to protect themselves from identity theft, email spam, phishing, scams, hacking, etc. It is a multi-billion dollar market across the consumer, business, and government levels.

I do agree that we need stronger privacy laws in the U.S. ASAP!

Great to hear you are fighting the good fight to protect your data!

To answer your question - NO - there is no benefit to signing up for Optery if you do not have a presence in the U.S. The only benefit would be that we will notify you in the future when we begin offering our service in your country. This sentence is buried in the post above "Optery is only for U.S. residents for the time being, and this is one main reasons—the problem is at its worst here."

The reasons the service is charged on an ongoing recurring fee are:

1) We are constantly adding new data brokers, so if you keep the service running, you get covered for new data brokers as we add them to your plan.

2) We do ongoing monitoring and scans, to find and remove your profiles if they pop back up. 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. After opting out, many data brokers actually display a message apologizing in advance admitting that sometimes their opt out records are over-written by accident which might cause your data to reappear.

Seems very useful. However, I am not a fan of a subscription-based model for this sort of thing. I would hands down sign up if it was a one-time transaction. If that were the case I would also likely be a repeat customer every year.