Comment by CrispyKerosene
9 months ago
Troy mentions "data opt-out services. Every person who used some sort of data opt-out service was not present."
Anyone have experience with these sort of services? A search brings up a lot of scammy looking results. But if services exist to reduce my profile id be interested.
> Anyone have experience with these sort of services?
Quite a bit. Often if you request removal or opt-out, you'll reappear in a matter of a few months in their system, regardless of whether you use a professional service as a proxy or do it yourself. The data brokers usually go out of their way to be annoying about it and will claim they can't do anything about you showing up in their aggregated sources later on. They'll never tell you what these sources are. A lot of them will share data with each other, stuff that's not public. It's entirely hostile and should be illegal. I am trying to craft a lawsuit angle at the moment but they feel totally unassailable.
I'm extremely skeptical of any services that claim they can guarantee 100% removal after any length of time of longer than 6 months. From my technical viewpoint and experience, it is very much an unsolved problem.
my understanding is that there's a bit of a catch-22 with data removal - if you request that a data broker remove ALL of your information, it's impossible for them to keep you from reappearing in their sources later on because that would require them to retain your information (so they can filter you out if you appear again).
I’ve heard this claim, but they could use some sort of bloom filter pr cryptographic hashing to block profiles that contain previously-removed records.
There could also be a shared, trusted opt-out service that accepted information and returned a boolean saying “opt-out” or “opt-in”.
Ideally, it’d return “opt-out” in the no-information case.
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Sorry, I value my legal rights over the viability of the data broker industry. If they can’t figure out a way for lawfully not collecting my data, they should not collect data period.
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1. They could be required to store a private copy of the removal requests, data that they can't sell (not ideal)
2. Sounds like "data brokers" that sell private information just shouldn't exist...
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They could store a hash.
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I've had a very bad experience with Liberty Mutual following a data opt-out from another service. They sent me on a runaround, ending with an email saying to follow "this link" to verify myself. (There was no link, only sketch.) I ended up getting a human on a phone through special means, and they sent me a fixed email with a working link.
I should be hearing back from them in the next 32 days, as this was 13 days ago.
I got a quote from them and immediately initiated a data removal request. It seems like it went through, got a link in the email. Thanks for the reminder that I might need to follow up to make sure they followed through.
It's hard to make collection, aggregation, and sharing of facts illegal.
Not to minimize the harm that can be done by such collections, but the law is justifiably looking for a scalpel treatment here to address the specific problem without putting the quest to understand reality on the wrong side of the line.
> It's hard to make collection, aggregation, and sharing of facts illegal.
Sure, but the US has a precedent in HIPAA. Not saying it's copy-paste, but... maybe it should be.
I would prefer the law be more restrictive than less, because I don't believe this is true:
> law is justifiably looking for a scalpel treatment here to address the specific problem without putting the quest to understand reality on the wrong side of the line.
I believe the law may use that noble goal as cover for the actual goal: restrict the ability of capital holders to accumulate capital as little as possible. Data sharing isn't a public good in any way. It's mostly not even useful for the targeting purposes it claims. It's extremely reckless rent-seeking that knowingly allows innocent people to have their lives wrecked by identity theft.
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Europe figured it out.
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Instead of making it illegal, we could simply make the people who aggregate the data liable for making people whole if the data is misused.
this is true and nothing new.. mass "gray market" personal information services lept into markets since VISA and Mastercard fifty years ago, and somewhat before that with driving records, in the USA. The "pure land" of democracy in North America was never pure, and the Bad Old Ways have crept into the corners since the beginning.
The difference now though is an attempt to legislate personal data collection, such as the CCPA. I strongly believe they are violating the law, and that if I opt-out or request removal, an answer of "oh well nuthin we can do" is not acceptable when my data re-appears either on their platform or on another platform they provided data aggregation services to.
>The "pure land" of democracy in North America was never pure
don't mix your pet grievances together, having full public knowledge of every person in your country is democratizing, frankly, an aid to democracy, not a hindrance. Not saying I want to live in that world, but it's not an impure democracy.
Norway (and others?) already publishes everybody's income statements. Not healthy imo but I guess would aid more accurate snitching (and envious resentment).
Consumer Reports just published (as in last week) a report[1] surveying a number of these services and found almost all of them to be a little bit effective, none of them to be highly effective, and the cheapest of the lot to be the most effective (EasyOptOuts).
Of note, opting out of a service by yourself by hand was only 70% effective ($0). Using EasyOptOuts was around 65% effective ($20) and using Confidently was only 6% effective ($120).
[1] https://innovation.consumerreports.org/wp-content/uploads/20...
Permission Slip by Consumer Reports (automated):
https://permissionslipcr.com
Simple Opt Out (manual list):
https://simpleoptout.com
I manually did a handful of opt-outs and am not in the list.
I use permission slip and I am not in the breach as far as I can tell
Did you use a grep command? The file is too large for me to open and I have not used grep before to have confidence with it.
Edit: nvm, ``` findstr /i /r ".000000000." ssn.txt ``` did the trick in powershell, with the zeros replaced with the ssn. Also there is a star after each period that HN has changed to italicize the text instead of showing it.
"Not available in your region" bloody hell.
A lot of the data opt-out services are operated by or have the same owners as data brokers. So at the very least they are selling both the poison and the cure.
If you're willing to tempt fait, the best way to 'opt-out' is to tell people, when they call asking to speak to 'your name', that 'your name' sadly passed away recently.
I knew someone falsely declared dead (probably a paperwork mixed up around pensions when his ex-spouse died). Without warning, he lost all of his pensions, social security, medicare, etc, along with most financial institutions freezing accounts and canceling credit cards. Many long phone calls, letters, and lawyers eventually resolve most, but that never fully purged the public and private death records so there would be random issue for the rest of his life (failing fraud checks, brief interruptions to pensions, trouble with the cable company).
You'd think something like that would require a death certificate to actually happen
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I prefer to just never answer a phone call unless I know who is calling and it's someone I know personally and want to speak to. Even then, those people know I'd rather they text anyway so when they do call it's more likely to be really important.
I have tried that, with a particular caller. They always call back.
that sounds very traumatizing, next explain that you have,
filed for injunctive relief from emotional duress due to actions of defendant.
and cant speak any further as instructed by legal cousel
Could cause you to be listed as deceased in some database sending your life into a Kafka story.
"How do you know he's dead?"
"I called him on the phone and he told me!"
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Data brokers don’t care. Whoever calls you will move on but that’s it.
I have used (free trials) and currently use (discounted annual) a service called incogni. It's hard to really verify what's going on, but they at least show the brokers they are contacting on your behalf, and I've directly received confirmations from some.
Anecdotally, searching my name on Google pretty much no longer returns those scummy "People Finder" pages that just scrap any public records they can find.
That said, I hope incogni is happy enough with my money that they themselves don't do anything scummy.
Also, freeze your credit at the big three. do it now.
And turn on the Global Privacy Control header in your browser:
https://globalprivacycontrol.org
In the past I have just searched for my own name. And when I found a match, I would go to that site and request to be removed. It is a lot of work, but thus far it has been successful.
And I say this, because I was on a TV show years ago, so my real name is all over the internet from an entertainment point of view. But, if you search my real name, there are little to none pointing back to "public record" websites and the such.
Many seem scammy, and I went through the search before and gave up.
Then, as fate would have it, a HNer(tjames7000) mentioned he made EasyOptOuts for this reason, so I signed up. Cheap, seems effective, absolutely no complaints.
Since it is Troy I assume it is legit, and I haven't read the link yet. But... How does he know that?
Has the opt-out services leaked as well? Or is noone using them? How would we know?