71–80 of 104 posts
Anyway, props on the launch, but it's ultimately a very sad indictment of our society that products like these even need to exist.
Doesn't supplying all this info about myself just confirm that it is correct, thus further putting my privacy at risk? > For each user, we typically turn up 2X – 5X more profile match results than Google, or any of our competitors How? Is it different than manually looking up my info at each site listed under "which data brokers are covered by each plan?" Not a bad idea for a business, you sell them my data then char…
Congrats on your product. I'm curious what lead to you all creating this product, after you spent "years working at data brokers." Perhaps this is too harsh an analogy, but how is this different than someone who spends years working at a tobacco company and then launches a company which sells a smoking cessation product? As other comments here point out, even the process of opting out of these brokers via Optery requ…
The data broker industry is large, and there are hundreds of players across different sub-categories (e.g. people search, email, phone, audience targeting, geolocation, past purchases, TV content viewed, data enrichment, identity graph, etc). Personally, I worked in the audience targeting sub-category for delivering personalized online advertisements. I left the space ~5 years ago when I left Oracle Data Cloud (BlueKai). What we did was anonymized audience targeting for large consumer brand advertisers (i.e. not people search, email, phone, nor anything PII based).
A lot has changed since I entered the space in 2011, and indeed, since I left the space in ~2016. Data has become more weaponized, data brokers have become more brazen in the liberties they take with our data, and the ends they’ll go to circumvent consumer preferences and even privacy laws. Fortunately, a lot of progress is being made. People are becoming more aware, stronger laws are getting passed, technology is being put to better use, and privacy tech is emerging as a more important category.
We felt like we had a lot of inside knowledge of how the industry worked and felt called to put that knowledge to work helping people. This is why providing a Free Basic account that provides a lot of value for free was core to what we wanted to do. Trust is earned over time and we have a lot of work ahead of us given the distrust so many bad actors have established with people’s personal data. We are a new product and company we’re working hard to build trust with our users and customers every day.
Be very careful with any tool like this; you'll need to prove who you are by verifying an email address and / or phone number to your real name, which in turn will most likely "confirm" your data with all the upstream brokers (if you pay for some extra service you're twice a sucker with them most likely getting paid by brokers for proving your identity and by you as well for using the "service"). Note: this could be…
Hi! Co-creator of Optery here. We do not sell data. We are not a data broker. We do not have any financial relationship with any data broker. We are not affiliated with any data broker. We are privacy enthusiasts who believe consumers should be in full control of their data. You can learn more about our mission, background and values here: https://www.optery.com/about-us/ There are some bad actors out there unfortuna…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does a good actor actually have a way to prove they are legit? This comment is a little pointless because almost anything that need your data needs you to trust them.
A good actor doesn't ask for PII in the first place.
The People Search Sites we submit opt outs to all transact in raw PII, therefore, if you want to opt out, either you have to submit your own raw PII to them (or a hashed version, where you and the data broker share the key so the underlying profile can be matched) to the data broker so they can identify you, or you can utilize a third-party opt out service (such as Optery) to do this for you. In either case, submitting raw PII to the data broker for them to identify you and opt you out is required.
We only submit to data brokers the minimum amount of information necessary for them to locate your profile, and then remove it, which, in the majority of cases is: First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, City, State, and an email address. If you do a few manual searches at data brokers, you'll see all of this information is already out there.
Note that we never share our customers private email addresses with any third party, including the data brokers we submit opt outs to.
What about Acxiom?
So I like removing myself from data brokers as a side hobby. In general they seem to be pretty quick to do so. However, OpenCorporates lists my name & home address, and absolutely refuses to remove it, as I'm self-employed and I have a corporate registration with my state. I eventually contacted the CEO directly and he said 'no, we won't remove you, go away'. They're based in the UK. Any general thoughts on them?
Best thing I can say is (a) move (b) do NOT register for USPS forwarding to your new address (USPS will help the data brokers) (c) change your legal address for service of process to a registered agent service, not your residential address (d) get a UPS mail box for your day-to-day corporate mail, and preferably most of your personal mail as well Completely 100% refuse to ever give out your residential address for an…
With all due respect: this is quite silly. There are many issues in American democracy besides the election of federal officials, and your vote is important. In my home state I voted on >15 ballot initiatives this year and several were decided by a few thousand votes, including kitchen table issues that meaningfully impact your life and immediate community in more tangible ways than our president or your senators.
I would much rather have a voice in e.g. how my community addresses homelessness than avoid the nuisance of cigarette coupons that have followed me across 7 addresses in 3 states.
Why only US?