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Comment by anonu

20 hours ago

There's almost no real privacy online in the US. When I search for my name my phone number and almost every address I've ever lived at it is publicly retrievable - on multiple sites. Even with a private WHOIS I get spam from various companies via my registrar asking to speak to me about making a website.

9 comments

anonu

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rootusrootus  19 hours ago

You can get some of the major sources to remove you with a service like Optery [0]. Costs a few bucks, but if you let them work at it a few months you can drop the subscription and the effects will linger for a while before you start finding yourself on public databases again.

I used it myself and I have trouble finding information about myself, even with my inside knowledge. If someone is determined enough you probably can't really hide from them, especially if they have any connections to law enforcement or one of the big data sinks. But you can definitely make it harder for casuals.

[0] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/optery

  • yieldcrv  15 hours ago

    I just can't get myself to pay for this problem that's ultimately a failure of the government and relies on another corporation behaving with my data

    fortunately I'm a California resident so looks like that government has passed a solution that's free, thanks for sharing that guys

    • tuwtuwtuwtuw  7 hours ago

      Here in sweden, personal data such as name, address, income, birth date, personal number, car ownership, etc. is public by design.

      I find it interesting how the view on this differs depending on country and what people are used to.

ZeWaka  20 hours ago

It's worth sitting down for an hour and filing a bunch of information redaction requests.

  • edot  14 hours ago

    Might help with phone numbers, but addresses are trivial to find and cannot be removed, if you own property in the United States. Every county publishes property records, searchable by name. Unless you own your house with an LLC, if someone knows or can guess the state you live in, they can 1) search on the property records website of the top 10 counties by population, and if that fails 2) expand to searching other counties until you pop up. Not sure how to mitigate this, other than the LLC method.