[HN Gopher] Show HN: Optery - See the private info data brokers ...
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Show HN: Optery - See the private info data brokers are posting
about you online
Author : beyondd
Score : 60 points
Date : 2021-06-28 14:04 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.optery.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.optery.com)
| shubik22 wrote:
| 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 requires disclosure of personal
| information and some level of trust. I can imagine the fact that
| you all previously worked at data brokers make people less likely
| to trust you with their personal information, rather than more.
| beyondd wrote:
| Hi HN,
|
| After many years working at data brokers such as BlueKai, Lusha,
| and Oracle Data Cloud, we've spent the last few months building a
| tool that provides granular visibility into the private
| information posted about you online by people search sites like
| TruthFinder, MyLife, Radaris, CellRevealer, Spokeo, WhitePages,
| etc.
|
| After sign up, we provide deep links to your profile at over 100
| of these sites, as well as an Exposure Report with screenshots so
| you can see exactly what these sites are posting about you. There
| are typically 40 - 60 matches for each user that signs up.
|
| The top comment in another data privacy Show HN shared recently
| illustrates the gap our tool fills: "Does it take into account
| whether or not a given data broker currently has my data? Since
| the deletion requests contain my personal info (for some, a fair
| amount of it), I'd rather not have that sent to 500 brokers if
| only 10 or 20 of them actually have me in their database."
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27146828)
|
| Full disclosure, signing up is free and provides the visibility
| into what data brokers are posting about you described above, but
| we also have paid subscription tiers where we submit and manage
| the opt outs and removals.
|
| If you want to skip the overview content, you can go straight to
| the signup here: https://app.optery.com/signup
|
| (We only support U.S. residents at this time.)
| qqw wrote:
| 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 charge
| me to have them delete it. I didn't know you had competitors
| though, now I'm comparing your features to theirs.
| beyondd wrote:
| We do not sell data. We are not a data broker.
|
| People sign up with us to see what information data brokers are
| posting about them online, and then are provided with free and
| paid options to opt out and have themselves removed.
|
| Yes - you could manually look up your info at each site listed
| under "which data brokers are covered by each plan?" - which
| would take you many, many hours, or you could create an account
| with Optery and have us do it for you automatically.
|
| The data brokers most likely already have info on you. There is
| a catch22 where in order to opt out, you have to tell them who
| you are. Other services use your own private email address to
| submit the opt outs. We do not share your private email address
| with any third party, including the data brokers we submit opt
| outs to.
| cdstyh wrote:
| Can I know your name, address, and phone number please?
| curtisblaine wrote:
| US only. Please make it clear before asking for email / pwd to
| sign up.
| beyondd wrote:
| Sorry about that. We just updated our sign up page to make this
| more clear.
| mdaniel wrote:
| I requested that they turn on 2FA, since they themselves will
| become an attack target by requesting so much PII
|
| That said, my experience with trying to use _any_ opt-out service
| (automated or otherwise) is filled with a lot of "Oops, server
| error, try again later" responses at the end of filling out a ton
| of forms about oneself, so I wonder if Optery has some secret
| sauce, is persistent in the face of server errors, or just is
| fire-and-forget and thus follows the "spray and pray" method of
| account removal
|
| If I paid actual money for this, I'd want some observable metric
| showing that I had 166 public listings in June, followed by 66 in
| July, or something of the sort.
| neatze wrote:
| How and why are you better then onerep.com ?
| myself248 wrote:
| The pricing page doesn't make it clear why it's charged monthly,
| when it seems like this should be a one-time thing. What happens
| if I pay for a month, get all the opt-outs, and stop paying?
|
| My cynicism says that an unethical service in your position could
| hold my identity hostage and immediately re-publish anything as
| soon as I stop paying. I'm sure you're not doing that, but
| forgive me for thinking it; we're talking about an entire
| industry that rests on ethics that many of us would consider
| stalking and should be profoundly illegal, so the possibility of
| such behavior is palpable! So, it would be good to explain or
| clarify _that_ you're not holding me hostage, and lay out the
| value proposition for an ongoing subscription to what feels like
| a one-time event.
| bythreads wrote:
| US only because you're scared of gdpr?
| tylerscott wrote:
| It's incredible how many companies exist solely to collect (and
| sell?) personal data. I was ignorant to just how wide spread bits
| of my data were until I fired up Optery. It was sorta shocking to
| see all the results.
| altdataseller wrote:
| What about ZoomInfo? Can it remove my profile from there?
| troydavis wrote:
| I did a version of this by Googling my name (as a phrase, with
| and without middle initial) combined with city names or street
| address fragments I've lived at. I then submitted removal
| requests for anything I found.
|
| I ended up submitting about 10 requests, 7 or 8 of which were
| online.
|
| Of course, not all data brokers have publicly indexed page, but a
| lot do.
| beyondd wrote:
| This is great! A lot of people prefer to submit the opt outs
| themselves. Our Free Basic account can be used to help people
| do-it-yourself faster by helping with the discovery process.
|
| If you choose to sign up for Optery, next to each data broker
| listing we provide the opt out link and opt out email address
| to make it easy to navigate to.
|
| When submitting your own opt outs to these companies directly,
| we highly recommend creating a disposable email address, and
| Not using your primary email address, as just reaching out to
| them with an email often adds you to their email lists.
| gigel82 wrote:
| 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 totally legit but in my personal experience,
| 100% of the tools that promise to do this were in fact shady as
| fuck and working with the brokers to enrich their data.
| beyondd wrote:
| 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 unfortunately. The most
| well-known is OneRep, which has an opt out and removals
| business, but are owned by an ownership group that
| simultaneously runs the People Search Site data broker Nuwber.
| It's almost certain that they run off the same data spine,
| meaning your data is co-mingled. Another one is BrandYourself,
| which includes data brokers as part of its affiliate program.
| So if you pay them for removals, you are indirectly paying the
| data brokers. There are others that I have a strong suspicion
| of, but don't know for certain, so I won't risk sharing their
| names.
|
| But please don't lump the rest of us working hard to protect
| people from data brokers into that same bucket. Along with us,
| DeleteMe, PrivacyDuck, and Kanary and a few others are above-
| board with no affiliation or financial relationship with any
| data broker (to the best of my knowledge). Just working hard
| for consumer data rights.
|
| The data brokers most likely already have info on you. There is
| a catch22 where in order to opt out, you have to tell them who
| you are. Other services use your own private email address to
| submit the opt outs. We do not share your private email address
| with any third party, including the data brokers we submit opt
| outs to.
| 123pie123 wrote:
| I've no idea if you're legit or not,
|
| but wouldn't a bad actor say the same thing?
|
| why should people trust you with their information?
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| Hey there, good luck with the venture and look forward to an
| EU/UK option.
|
| Just wanted to say IANAL but with putting your details out
| there as a founder and being in the US, unless you've had a
| lawyer check over your statements I would be very cautious
| about naming companies specifically. Would recommend
| anonymising it or deleting that comment if you can't edit it,
| unless you've already had it checked out.
|
| Ethics isn't part of their business model so any statement
| without hard facts backing it can get you into trouble.
| johnrob wrote:
| Sadly, I doubt the brokers have much concern about their data
| being inaccurate!
| gigel82 wrote:
| I used a tool like this posted to HackerNews a couple years
| back (against my better judgement, eh), and the information
| on a few of the data brokers afterwards was not only not
| removed but actually showed a green checkmark ("verified").
|
| It's entirely possible the data brokers are simply using the
| "opt out" requests as a way to validate the data, but it's
| just as likely that the tool works with the brokers to
| confirm information instead of actually removing it.
| photoGrant wrote:
| All you need to know:
|
| > If you purchase a paid subscription plan, as a condition to
| fulfilling your subscription plan, (i) you must provide your
| personally identifiable information("PII") such as full name,
| birth year and home address to Optery, Inc. and (ii) Optery, Inc.
| must send your PII to the data brokers and information
| aggregators included in the Removal Lists. This information is
| required by the data brokers and information aggregators in order
| to locate your record(s) and remove you from their database(s).
| We cannot control, guarantee or warranty how these third-parties
| will treat your PII or what they will do with it. By purchasing
| and maintaining an active paid subscription, you approve Optery,
| Inc. to submit your PII to data brokers and information
| aggregators for the purposes submitting opt out, suppression and
| removal requests. If you do not wish to submit your PII to data
| brokers and information aggregators for the purposes submitting
| opt out, suppression and removal requests, then you should not
| use Optery, Inc.'s Removal Services.
| crummy wrote:
| how exactly would it work otherwise?
| orf wrote:
| USA only. Not particularly clear. Seems cool though.
| beyondd wrote:
| Sorry about that. We just updated our sign up page to make this
| more clear.
| TheFreim wrote:
| > After many years working at data brokers
|
| So you worked for years at (immoral) data harvesters but now
| you're a changed man who pinky swears to not use people's data
| they submit to you in a bad way? Sorry, I don't trust this
| product yet.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| The only way I'd trust such a service is if it's domain name
| ends in .gov (or equivalent for other countries) and is free or
| a nominal fee.
| shrimpx wrote:
| The USDS should work on stuff like this.
|
| https://www.usds.gov
| bberenberg wrote:
| I don't understand why I need to upgrade from Core to Extended to
| find out if Ultimate is right for me?
| beyondd wrote:
| That's a great question. This is our first time sharing
| publicly, and this is great feedback that we might we need to
| change that.
|
| The intention is to tier the paid version of the product in
| terms of price and value, but that may not be the best place to
| do it.
|
| That said, as soon as you receive your Exposure Report by email
| (typically within ~24 hours), it will include screen shots for
| the data brokers covered by the Ultimate plan, so you will have
| some visibility there for help deciding.
| dgeiser13 wrote:
| I signed up for an account and all I see on the dashboard is...
|
| "Application error: a client-side exception has occurred
| (developer guidance)."
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(page generated 2021-06-28 23:00 UTC)