101–110 of 256 posts
Have you ever gone to the doctor, signed up for a gym, or signed up for your local grocery store's membership rewards program? That's how they get your information.
If anyone reading this thread is interested: I would pay non-trivial amounts of money on a regular basis for a service that systematically worked to eliminate records like these (and the sources they draw from), as well as chasing down sources of junk mail and the lists they ultimately draw from. The value would depend on effectiveness, and on the degree to which the service clearly reported exactly what they did. Ca…
I've considered working on this problem from a business standpoint, but I couldn't figure out a good business model for it. I don't think too many people will pay a monthly fee to have their information removed from these services. My guess is that they would sign up for a month and after their information has been removed, immediately cancel their subscription until they needed to do it again. And a yearly fee seeme…
Small tip: At the grocery store or anywhere else with a rewards account linked to a phone number, rather than signing up for one just use (Your Local Area Code)-867-5309 The number almost always exists and is a valid account. Get the discount, don't get tracked. Thanks, Tommy Tutone.
I have insider knowledge as I used to work for one of these companies. Depending on the product you purchase the data comes from multiple sources. Also these companies have sophisticated machine learning capabilities to build a profile based on various attributes found in seemingly unrelated pieces of data. So the list consists of credit reporting agencies, public records, your online profiles with public access, cou…
Thank you for the reply. Can you actually give some kind of a list though? The entire problem here is everyone explains the how but no one is willing to explain the who . I certainly understand it's "multiple sources", I'm asking who are these sources I keep hearing about. There can't be nearly as many sources as there are sites who buy from them. If you'd like to not name the company you worked for yourself then cou…
Any and every company selling data and there are thousands is in fact a source you would need to deal with to be removed from the sites that sell it. If you think this answer isn't specific enough, you're not going to achieve anything by me spoonfeeding you info for one such company.
If anyone reading this thread is interested: I would pay non-trivial amounts of money on a regular basis for a service that systematically worked to eliminate records like these (and the sources they draw from), as well as chasing down sources of junk mail and the lists they ultimately draw from. The value would depend on effectiveness, and on the degree to which the service clearly reported exactly what they did. Ca…
I've considered working on this problem from a business standpoint, but I couldn't figure out a good business model for it. I don't think too many people will pay a monthly fee to have their information removed from these services. My guess is that they would sign up for a month and after their information has been removed, immediately cancel their subscription until they needed to do it again. And a yearly fee seeme…
* You're found on sites 1, 2, 3
* Nuking site 1 is $10.00
* 2 is $1.50
* 3 is $22.55
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Or something like that?
If anyone reading this thread is interested: I would pay non-trivial amounts of money on a regular basis for a service that systematically worked to eliminate records like these (and the sources they draw from), as well as chasing down sources of junk mail and the lists they ultimately draw from. The value would depend on effectiveness, and on the degree to which the service clearly reported exactly what they did. Ca…
I actually am running a (year long) experiment. I found a data broker who had my info. They offered a way to "correct" the record, so I added a car that I don't own (who's warranty should be ready for extended warranty offers in a few months) and added many many "off by one" errors like an extra zero on my income, or transposed digits on the size of my house. We'll see where it lands. I personally would also pay for…
How...? Or do you just mean sites like InstanCheckmate themeselves?
> They offered a way to "correct" the record, so I added a car that I don't own
That's amazing! They didn't need proof? How did you convince them? Is this legal?
One book that covers the medical perspective is: "Our Bodies, Our Data: How Companies Make Billions Selling Our Medical Records" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EE08NXM
If you have your own domain name with a wildcard, it's really helpful to enter: someservice@mydomain.com as your email. That way if it leaks you'll know who did it and can setup much more robust rules to block. I'll use the domain name as the main address so I remember which name goes to which site. For physical address mailings, you can hyphenate (or use a middle name) as the service. So First Service-Last as the ad…
Might not work for some services due to ignorance of the spec or to prevent users doing this.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If that's a secret then how would they find out? You don't. I've worked in data acquisition in the past, both buying data and selling it. Sometimes as the original source of truth and sometimes as a middleman that does data cleaning, standardization, appending (from other sources), then selling the derived product downstream. Companies in that space guard their upstream sources quite heavily, because they don't wan…
+1 thanks for the explanation! And regarding this: > Edited to add: You're also asking a lot of people in here to name specific companies even if they can't give you huge lists. This space is super heavy on NDAs (and trigger happy on enforcing them). If you've actually worked in it, there's simply no way you're able to name drop legally. I understand that an NDA would prevent you from naming your own company or your…
Just having that conversation required getting a mutual NDA in place, since the conversation involves revealing your capabilities (even if not your sources). And that's assuming you're even aware of all the NDAs your company has signed with other companies, which isn't always the case. Speculation or name dropping in public could violate an NDA you're not even aware of, then you find yourself having to defend your speculation as just that, rather than as revealing proprietary knowledge (that you didn't actually have but your company did).
At the end of the day, it's easier to default to speaking in generalizations rather than risk the potential repercussions of not doing that. :-/