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

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

#81

Post by logfromblammo » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 5:57 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #40

angersock wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, indeed, that's what we need--5 year prison sentences for exercising 1st amendment rights. Preventing the creation of these databases? No, far too difficult to enforce...instead, let's go after the uppity little guys. You've suggested a remarkably short-sighted solution to a very thorny problem.

You're telling me it's my first amendment right to mail a knife to your home address and suggest you kill yourself?

The protection prevents the government from denying you the ability to make the threat. It does nothing to prevent them from pursuing a criminal prosecution after you have made it, or to prevent your victim from litigating a tort claim against you for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

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

#82

Post by wtbob » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 6:02 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #49

eplanit wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very unusual and ironic to find an argument _for_ punitive incarceration here on HN, which is more typically a bastion of anti-incarceration advocacy. I guess it depends on where societies' and governments' fears lie (the more representative the gov't is the more these fears overlap).

The ususal stance is against punitive incarceration for crimes like drug posession and maybe even sex trade activities. Crimes where someone is actually harmed? I don't think you see a lot of arguments againts punishment for those.

> Crimes where someone is actually harmed?

Is doxxing actual harm, or merely the threat of actual harm?

(Not that it's not bad; not that it shouldn't be illegal; but it's not the same as assault)

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

#83

Post by SCHiM » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 6:02 PM UTC

byerley wrote: post #76

Someone1234 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you well know the topic at hand is people using that data to "stalk/harass/intimidate" as the OP said verbatim. Which is not protected by the 1st amendment.

I read it differently; "this stunt" is ambiguous in context. In any case, I think you're misunderstanding the nature of the problem. The danger of "doxxing" is that people get overwhelmed by a flood of negative attention from many different people. In most cases, none of the "harassing" individuals actually do enough individual harassment to make the action illegal. You can't go after the doxxer because releasing the…

As if a death threat is not 'enough harassment'.

What does constitute enough harassment in your opinion?

You make it sound as though there's nothing to be done against this. But that is not the case, things change. Perhaps releasing personal information about another relating to doxing should be made illegal. It's not as if it's hard to distinguish between someone who's trying to dox another and legitimate sharing of information.

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

#84

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 6:02 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #71

TeMPOraL wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is sexist and ostracizing :P. Such service doesn't have a natural gender discrimination so it's actually additional work to create one. Sure, it might be worth to focus on marketing it to women, if indeed they get "disproportionately large share" of abuse (it sounds plausible to me, but I don't have data) - but there's no need for artificially limiting the service itself. Male privacy nerds would happily use it…

Nobody asked that the service to be limited to women. That's something you're adding to the conversation. So it seems to me that you're politicizing it even more.

From the top comment of this thread:

> And I would happily give money to a nonprofit who provides this as a free service for women in tech

That's how I understood it, and I think it's supported by the poster's other comments.

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

#85

Post by a1a » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 6:06 PM UTC

azitzer wrote: post #36

wpietri wrote: post #5

Wow. This is an app just waiting to be built. I would definitely subscribe to a service like this. And I would happily give money to a nonprofit who provides this as a free service for women in tech. Developers, start your IDEs!

LifeLock is launching a free service to help with this exact problem. We're in Beta right now. You can request an invite here: https://privacy.lifelock.com and here's an article about it: http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/blog/techflash/2014/10/li...

You should really consider making a non-js version of your website. The noscript googletagmanager iframe is not really screaming "we care about your privacy" either.

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

#86

Post by devindotcom » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 6:09 PM UTC

There are a LOT more data brokers than listed here, though it's a decent list to start with. These are small fry in the scheme of things though. You can start working your way through this one if you're really concerned:

http://www.worldprivacyforum.org/2013/12/data-brokers-opt-ou...

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

#87

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 6:12 PM UTC

subsection1h wrote: post #56

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 "+"?

> if you register bill+NG@email.com Please use the second level domain label example [1] when writing examples of email addresses. For all you know, you just posted someone's email address. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com

[deleted]

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

#88

Post by joe_the_user » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 6:14 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…

Yeah,

The simplest defense is to completely separate any online persona from your "real" offline persona. Obviously, how separate you make them has to be proportionate to many enemies you expect.

But you are an actual public person who is public with their real name, I do not envy you.

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

#89

Post by ghayes » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 6:14 PM UTC

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] https://www.safeshepherd.com/

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

#90

Post by angersock » Thu, Nov 20, 2014, 6:25 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #40

angersock wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, indeed, that's what we need--5 year prison sentences for exercising 1st amendment rights. Preventing the creation of these databases? No, far too difficult to enforce...instead, let's go after the uppity little guys. You've suggested a remarkably short-sighted solution to a very thorny problem.

You're telling me it's my first amendment right to mail a knife to your home address and suggest you kill yourself?

Sure is. What type of knife?

Can it be a kitchen knife? I need a new chef's knife...mine is a little bent.