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Data Broker Opt-Out List

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Re: Data Broker Opt-Out List

#141

Post by reaperducer »

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #6

I’ve been through most of these and removing yourself really can be done. In many cases the removal is considered temporary and you have to repeat every four to ten years. It’s not possible to get off of the skip trace and debt collectors databases run by Transunion, Experian, and others - but you can flood them with false information and they will record it and keep it forever.

Transunion, Experian, and others - but you can flood them with false information and they will record it and keep it forever

I don't know why any company relies on data from the big credit reporting agencies.

I pulled my credit reports for the first time just a couple of months ago, and they were all wildly different from each other, and also wildly inaccurate, each in its own way.

There was nothing bad in my report, fortunately. But just the information was so wrong. One agency had my work history all the way back to 1995, but for some reason was missing any of the jobs I had between about 1997 and 2003. One had my residency history back to 1977, but was missing the place I lived just three years ago. None of them were 100% right in any category, but always in my favor. And none of them really had a complete list of my currently open credit accounts.

One thing they all fail at is addresses. If you have a simple address like 123 Main Street, Anywhere, USA, then it's fine. But as soon as you break from that pattern by having an apartment number, or a street name with more than one word, or a street suffix other than "street" or "drive," or a directional, or a city that is commonly abbreviated (St. Paul versus Saint Paul), it all comes apart.

One place I lived had a simple address like "1234 Some Place Drive, Apartment 123B," and two of the agencies mangled it into "123 Some 12." I know addresses are hard, but both the Postal Service and Google have an API for this stuff.

Re: Data Broker Opt-Out List

#142

Post by reaperducer »

boxed wrote: post #17
seqizz wrote: post #11

Pardon my ignorance,is this US specific (or mostly US)? Why is this stuff allowed?

The US has been dismantling the rule of law for decades. They call it "deregulation". It lead directly to the last big financial crash, and it also is largely responsible for predatory schools, prisons, universities, banks, and much more.

The US has been dismantling the rule of law for decades. They call it "deregulation".

Your response is mostly hyperbole, and indicated an axe to grind. You can be against deregulation, but it's not applicable to the question posed.

There were no data gathering laws "dismantled" in the name of "deregulation." You statement is false.

What is happening here is what has always happened: Laws are almost always a step behind technology. Only very rarely are conditions prohibited by legislation before an offense is committed.

GDPR and the California thing are good steps in the right direction, but they're just the landing of a very long staircase. Hopefully we'll get to the top eventually.

Re: Data Broker Opt-Out List

#145

Post by Shared404 »

ako wrote: post #77
Shared404 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that it's not only deregulation. It's the fact that we exist in a middle ground between proper regulation and a proper free market. Either of those, and we'd be able to do fine. As it is, we get the downsides of both.

That is too simple: every system has pros and cons. Regulation, free market or middle ground. Doesn't matter, there are always pros and cons. Important is that you choose which pros and cons you find important.

I will admit to having over-simplified. In addition, I am by no means an expert and am coming at this from the perspective of an outsider.

However, the way things currently stand now in a middle ground appears far from optimal. There is too much lobbying for there to be enough regulation to be effective, but too much regulation for there to be proper competition. While I believe a middle of the road approach could work, in our current circumstance it isn't.

My ideal path would be to go to a complete free market, and rebuild regulation from there. While rebuilding regulation, actually have legislators listen to experts, and ban lobbying. This will never happen of course, but I can dream.

Edit: Make tone less authoritative, because I need to work on that.

Re: Data Broker Opt-Out List

#146

Post by summitsummit »

reaperducer wrote: post #140
privacy-matters wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea how sketchy these companies are. ZoomInfo (public company) for example provides a free plugin for sales people which is scanning email for all the email signatures and then they sell all that data to their customers. Even crazier is they take data from their customer’s CRM systems. DiscoverOrg is buying data from third parties without really knowing how they got the data. There are a bunch of apps an…

I used to operate a dozen or so small web sites. A spammer once offered me a crazy amount of money for the mailing lists. When I declined, he offered an even crazier amount of money to buy all the web sites, in their entirety, including mailing lists and social media accounts. I ended up selling him the one web site that didn't have a mailing list and only rudimentary social media presences. I bought a new car and mo…

that sounds like a really cool story

Re: Data Broker Opt-Out List

#147

Post by [deleted] »

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #14
paulproteus wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd love to know what kind of false information you're enjoying sending them, and how!

- Fill out surveys at malls with your name and either a phone number or address that matches one currently in your credit file and you can supply false info for the the opposite. - Put in a mail forwarding card with your name from a former address to a random real address like a Starbucks, Taco Bell, apartment complex w/o unit number, etc. - Change the billing address of a credit card or utility and allow to sit for…

[deleted]

Re: Data Broker Opt-Out List

#148

Post by ornornor »

chinathrow wrote: post #113
silisili wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, same shit. Just checked my email, the last one in question was 'Apollo'. The form in question makes you attest you are a resident of California, which began the back and forth. APOLLO Dear Alex, On behalf of Apollo, we are pleased to assist you in exercising your access rights under GDPR and/or CCPA. You may exercise your access rights as follows. If you wish to remove the personal information that we have that…

This is such a shitshow. They never took "reasonable degree of certainty" before storing private data either - it makes no sense to then ask that for deletion requests.

It does if you want to feign compliance while making it hard to delete data.

Re: Data Broker Opt-Out List

#150

Post by salawat »

huffmsa wrote: post #96
ShorsHammer wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm always surprised at the number of people in infosec or _really interesting_ defense positions who have linkedin profiles. It's the lowest rung of where nation states target and you've just handed it to them on a platter. As horrible as it sounds you all sort of deserve it for selling your soul to such a horrendous platform hellbent on fucking with its users. For some reason we're all worried about tiktok now thou…

People describe their company's entire tech stack, in detail on LinkedIn. And the little shot of dopamine they get from being LinkedIn popular would probably make them happy to answer any questions you have about things they left out.

There's a difference between knowing all the pieces that go into a working machine, and knowing how, in what order, to what end, and all the little interactions and knock-on effects in the form of of unwritten knowledge that keep a company cranking along.

Go ahead and set yourself up a Tomcat cluster, an internal Tomcat cluster, some Oracle databases, and even go so far as to reverse-engineer a UI and maybe a data model if we're being extra ambitious.

A business, you still will not have.

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