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Ask HN: Best service to remove info from online data brokers?

37 points by TheBlerch ↗ HN
A family member was the victim of highly damaging identity theft which took them forever to correct. Some of the information used by the thieves came from one of the many data brokers out there which thrive without meaningful data privacy laws in the U.S. Removing information from data brokers looks like a time-consuming and slow process, and some of them require you give other personal information to “claim” your account, such as a photo of your driver’s license (note you can black out all the info except your name, something they won’t tell you). What’s the best data protection service out there? And what measures should you take to keep your data from data brokers?

17 comments

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PangurBan
Looking for the same. I’ve heard of DeleteMe, based in Boston, which looks reputable but says it can’t remove from certain sites, such as Radaris, and says you have to handle those. Also found a company called Onerep.com listed as a DeleteMe competitor, which claims to remove from more sites at a lower cost, but it looks sketchy (company appears to have an all-Russian or Eastern European team yet listed in McLean, VA with telephone number in upstate, NY and reviews by supposedly American customers are all in stilted English). Keep in mind that it’s important to remove info from all or as many data brokers as possible, as they scrape each other so data left on one will repopulate others.

As far as measures to keep info from data brokers, I use a separate email for all ecommerce and any forum postings; never give your phone number to companies unless you absolutely have to, and when you do use a fake number or only share a Google number when you need a callback; avoid putting any personal info on any public forums and give out as little personal data as possible.

Some other general privacy measures: Firefox for browsing with all privacy protections (same for Chrome and Safari); use ad blockers; all privacy settings on mobile and services turned on and highly limited location sharing only when needed to use an app; use Google and Facebook (very sparingly) on Firefox using Containers and with VPN.

slvrspoon
co-founder of DeleteMe here. removal from myriad numbers of top data brokers is a onerous process but it can be done free. our service, DeleteMe - www.joindeleteme.com (NOT sadly the obvious url) has both a FREE option which guides you through each removal OR our paid annual "we do it all for you" service. some of the data brokers make it pretty easy, others display criminal-esque behaviors. it is a shady business, and privacy laws are going to be important in controlling it better. @PangurBan is right to use separate emails when possible (Abine has a freemium product for this called Blur). also, Onerep is a competitor to DeleteMe - it is newer, cheaper and the team is in Eastern Europe but we believe they're a legit service. Happy to answer any other questions from HN.
TheBlerch
Great to see you here and thank you for offering free guidance and services. Looking forward to reading your site. I agree we need real data privacy laws with enforcement. Unfortunately most people don't understand how their data is being abused and don't understand that the regulation tech companies are asking for isn’t the answer - they'll just water it down with well-funded lobbyists. A few questions:

1) Why can’t DeleteMe remove info from more services and why is OneRep able to remove from many more? For example, DeleteMe will tell you there are a number of services they can’t remove from, and that any data left on those sites will just be scraped again by the other sites DeleteMe already removed from.

2) Given your expertise, which data privacy practices do you recommend? When using another email to sign up for all services and ecommerce, do you recommend that email not be a Gmail?

3) How does DeleteMe’s Blur product help guard your identity and privacy beyond using a separate email?

slvrspoon
thanks for the questions. 1. DeleteMe's been focused on the biggest and most cumbersome to remove sites. We pride ourselves on doing a thorough job and we use real people to make sure searches are comprehensive and removals complete. we're careful about the quality as we add new data brokers. that said, we should - and are adding more and more. our experts also help with custom requests. what we call "repopulation of data" is also a systemic hard-to-control problem. this is why DeleteMe's a subscription service that keeps checking and removing for a single price all year.

2. best practices are things most HN concerned people are doing... pass manager, tracker blocker, not everything in a single cloud, vpn, etc. the most interesting thing our Blur product does is let you "compartmentalize" key credentials for each 3rd party you exchange data with. meaning: Blur gives you unique emails, phone, and credit cards as well as passwords, stores them locally, and has a proxy server to route between your private credentials, and the new ones you generate. you can use gmail as your "private mail"

lastly, i'd stress: these things help a bunch to make it harder to correlate your identity cross-domain. that said, anonymity is - and has long been - very difficult to attain and expensive to maintain. don't kid yourself on the difference :)

knight2020
DeleteMe has been around a long time and I have used their service for several years. They get excellent reviews. If you are looking for a truly tested, legit service I would recommend them.
TheBlerch
Hard to believe you're a legit customer of theirs considering your account was created less than an hour ago.
987lnuipeuq7
DeleteMe - I have been a customer here for last 5 years. Very fast in deleting and provides awesome service.
HotAsienTeen
The cross sales are the scariest. When I receive ads that are focused on me that could not possibly come from my account; it is gets very concerning. It's the point where you know your data has been resold.

We are a European company and we need to comply with GDPR. The right to be forgotten is basically a human right.

DeleteMe works best where we have seen the worst re-sellers, which are often the hardest to remove completely.

TheBlerch
Another account created an hour ago. And quite a reputable user name to choose...
MVD123
I have been a fan of DeleteMe now for almost 6 months. It promised to be the best product available, and they delivered. Great service (does exactly what it says it will), customer service, and easy to use. Big thumbs up.