
Stop Datamining Me - known
https://www.stopdatamining.me/opt-out-list/
======
corobo
The absolute irony of this site's privacy policy.

> Service Providers. We work with third parties who provide services including
> but not limited to data analysis, order fulfillment, list enhancement and
> other administrative services. We may disclose personal information to such
> third parties for the purpose of enabling these third parties to provide
> services to us. Such services may include: marketing distribution, email
> list management services, advertising, certain product functionalities,
> customer support, web hosting, customer data management and enhancement,
> fulfillment services (e.g., companies that fill product orders or coordinate
> mailings), research and surveys, data analysis and email service.

[https://www.stopdatamining.me/privacy-
policy/](https://www.stopdatamining.me/privacy-policy/)

~~~
unfamiliar
They're mining that no-data-mining market. That's a good market!

~~~
tjoff
It really must be. Because for some reason all big companies are hell bent on
tricking even the 0.001% power users that actually care by constantly
overriding options and nagging people until they accidentally click the wrong
thing that one time.

I have no idea what they expect to gain by infuriating that group.

~~~
froasty
The anger dollar. Huge. Huge in times of recession. Giant market. They're very
bright to do that.

~~~
mattnewton
[https://youtu.be/tHEOGrkhDp0](https://youtu.be/tHEOGrkhDp0) ? (profanity
warning)

------
tpxl
Loads javascript from google-analytics.com and facebook.com. Please do, in
fact, stop datamining me.

~~~
pixl97
301 Redirect Permanent ->
[https://cant.stopdatamining.me](https://cant.stopdatamining.me)

~~~
hexscrews
Gives me a Privacy error on chrome. >.<

This server could not prove that it is cant.stopdatamining.me; its security
certificate is from *.gridserver.com. This may be caused by a misconfiguration
or an attacker intercepting your connection

------
wjnc
So would anyone pay for a service like this that acts like an attorney and
actively contacts companies for insight into the information they store on you
and requests for removal? Included in the service would be class-action suits
and other litigative measures. We could introduce a free tier to find out if X
companies store anything and a service if you want to clean up. Like legal
insurance but then only for data.

~~~
nawtacawp
Just from personal experience I’ve spent time opting out of these collections
in the past. To include, people search websites only to find my information
resurface months later. I think this may take constant monitoring. I’m not
sure the mechinism that is used for data to be added after asking for opt
out/deletion

~~~
wjnc
If you can get judges to rule on costs in favor of the plaintiff (quite usual
in my EU jurisdiction) then there quickly arises an incentive for cooperation.
All you need is a few high profile wins. Those companies would probably start
sharing by default and / or taking opt-out more seriously after that. "It's
your data. Fight it!" (How's that for a slogan. And I know it's not
grammatically correct.)

It's analogous to the operation of those lawyers asking a few thousand euros
for unlicensed use of pictures. That's legit as well here. Legal reverse GDPR
extortion. Gives us insight into these customers, who've given us power of
attorney or we sue. Lose and pay our bills. Win and we are done and the
customers pay a much smaller fee (a person, but hopefully adding up to a
reasonable fee).

~~~
howard941
> judges to rule on costs in favor of the plaintiff (quite usual in my EU
> jurisdiction)

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I think your costs are broader, include
attorneys fees, and are therefore different from US costs. In US courts the
prevailing party defaults to including costs when preparing the judgment order
(parties do almost all of the drafting in US courts) but "costs" is taken to
literally mean court costs as in filing fees and a very limited menu of
closely related expenses such as costs pertaining to service of process, court
clerk photocopying charges, and the like.

~~~
wjnc
Yup, broader costs. Losers often pay quite a substantial part of the legal
fees of the winner. A comparatively extreme example: in liability cases with
injuries, the judge will often allow quite broad legal costs (about 25% of
total claims is legal costs). It's an extreme example since registered
attorneys cannot work on that basis, but goes to show that substantial costs
to the loser does happen.

~~~
howard941
Thank you

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gaff33
Seeing this list and its mix of Email / Phone / Fax / Web systems - and this
is only for 50 companies - makes you realise why GDPR-like regulations are
needed!

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mnw21cam
It has always rather irked me that seemingly the only way to stop people from
datamining you is to give them more information. Many web pages even
specifically complain about third party cookies being disabled in the web
browser, saying that they can't possibly honour my preference unless I switch
it back on again.

I'd much rather just not hand out the information in the first place.

~~~
Tobani
There needs to be a mechanism to tweak the signal-to-noise ratio. Either 1)
stop interact with them and send 0 signal, or 2) have a browser plugin that
just provides random interaction on a webpage and increase the the noise. The
expensive targeting machines they've built become much less useful.

~~~
infinityplus1
AdNauseam is a Firefox extension which clicks ads automatically.

~~~
mrweasel
While that seems like a fun idea, I'm not a fan of the permissions the
extension requires.

~~~
SilasX
Mozilla screams bloody murder about security and careless users, but then
forces you to choose between "no extensions" and "extensions with unlimited
permissions to see everything you do".

------
AdmiralAsshat
So do we have any proof that these sites actually honor the opt-out requests
and don't simply add the information we had to provide to them to their
dossier?

Profile: Doe, John

New Details: Hates data-mining.

~~~
tivert
> So do we have any proof that these sites actually honor the opt-out requests
> and don't simply add the information we had to provide to them to their
> dossier?

I don't know, especially for scummy people search websites.

However, I've requested a lot of disclosure reports and opted out of _a lot_
of stuff, and I don't think I've volunteered anything the dataminer probably
didn't already know. The real big names like Lexis Nexus and the credit
bureaus have their tentacles in everything, so it'd be very difficult to hide
your address, telephone number, and property information from them.

The requests that require emails or phone numbers have never rejected
throwaway accounts or non-personal phones numbers I have access to. I think
they mostly ask for them to impede bulk opt outs.

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medlazik
Dilemma: In order to remove my info I need to give them my info

------
soared
Or just use the bulk opt-outs provided by the advertising industry
organizations. The first is webchoices (the blue triangle you see in the
corner of some ads, which allows you to report ads, see how you were targeted,
etc.) and the second is the NAI (Network advertising initiative, a non-profit
pushing self-regulation for advertisers.)

[http://optout.aboutads.info/?c=3&lang=en](http://optout.aboutads.info/?c=3&lang=en)

[http://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1](http://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1)

You can also see what types of data Oracle has on you. This doesn't include
all of the companies they own though.

[https://datacloudoptout.oracle.com/registry/](https://datacloudoptout.oracle.com/registry/)

~~~
jcfrei
Before I can get to the opt-out page it loads a "Webchoices Browser Check" and
it fails because I block third-party cookies? Is this a joke?

~~~
soared
You opt-out by using third party cookies, what do you expect it to do without
having access to that?

~~~
jcfrei
Opting out of tracking via first-party cookies. I mean the owner of a website
could just share my page visits with an ad network regardless of third-party
cookies.

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GrinningFool
What is this, exactly?

The "Take Control of your Data" call to action takes me to list of 'how to opt
out from company X' which exists in plenty of other places, and I'd have to
submit them myself. Nothing that goes into data usage, etc. Then there's the
privacy policy as others have pointed out, and the analytics/facebook scripts.

There's no functionality or service provided that I can find. The blog seems
to be retweets and noise.

Not sure how this got voted onto on the front page, it doesn't seem to be a
legitimate thing.

------
octosphere
Doesn't opting out cause a Streisand Effect?[1]. I mean, if you go out of your
way to hide something it makes you even more interesting and you stand out. My
own strategy for not having data collected on me is to compartmentalize and
have various contextual identities across different services and never cross
contaminate identities and never have all my personal info in one centralized
location that makes it easier for the likes of Acxiom Corporation to profile
me. I call it identity 'sharding'.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)

~~~
soared
Your strategy doesn't work, FYI. If you have /ever/ used the same device or
network they are linked. If you've ever used a credit card across your
'shards', if you've ever logged into a service (especially gmail/fb) accross
'shards' then your identities are linked. You'd need entirely separate
devices, networks, names, browsing habits, social accounts, etc. You might've
lowered their confidence, but that has nearly zero effect. Cross-device graphs
are exceptionally advanced.. all the machine learning/etc that gets discussed
on hn is used to beat users like you. Oracle is one of many vendors who do
this.

[https://blogs.oracle.com/oracledatacloud/crosswise-
questions...](https://blogs.oracle.com/oracledatacloud/crosswise-questions-
answered)

[https://go.oracle.com/LP=57841](https://go.oracle.com/LP=57841)

------
ryanisnan
Also the first site’s opt out is a total joke. Provide all your sensitive PII
so they can remove it from their system. No thanks.

------
techbio
If you scroll to the bottom you'll see that this is a lead generator for
attorneys, who are notorious for using "advanced" advertising techniques. They
bring in a hot lead, like this site seems well designed to do, and write a
letter for $X+.00, and maybe repeat as whack-a-mole goes.

------
thosakwe
What if there were a browser plugin that would generate large amounts of fake
data, and sent that to ads/analytics/trackers whenever they popped up, in
addition to preventing the actual user's data from being sent?

~~~
pseudoanonymity
AdNauseam _Clicking ads so you don 't have to_

[https://adnauseam.io/](https://adnauseam.io/)

------
sixothree
I'm sick of just knowing what "kind" of data people have about. I (expletive)
want to know what people know about me.

~~~
soared
Here you go:

[https://datacloudoptout.oracle.com/registry/](https://datacloudoptout.oracle.com/registry/)

------
wintorez
Nice try!

------
awolf
The Equifax link leads to a form where you submit your social security number
and birthdate. Cool.

------
Antonio123123
Reminds me of those public "do not call" lists. Guess what - they get called
more often.

~~~
elliekelly
I can't for the life of me understand why we don't yet have dual-consent
calling. Your call should only go through on my phone if you have my number
_and_ I've added yours to my address book. Otherwise you should go straight to
voicemail.

~~~
optimusclimb
Emergency situations. "Sir, we found your wallet...", etc., etc.

~~~
overcast
So leave a voicemail. No one answers their phones anymore anyhow, because it's
99% of the time a spammer.

~~~
JohnFen
That's what I do. If a call comes into my phone from a number that isn't in my
address book, it just gets sent straight to voicemail. My phone won't even
ring.

The only reason I don't just drop the call completely is to cover situations
where a someone not in my address book might be calling me for something
important.

That has never actually happened yet, though.

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gketuma
So Equifax is still out here data mining folks huh? :(

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alkonaut
Someone make a form that submits to all at once

~~~
soared
[http://optout.aboutads.info/?c=3&lang=en](http://optout.aboutads.info/?c=3&lang=en)

[http://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1](http://optout.networkadvertising.org/?c=1)

~~~
dcendum
These just opt you out of browser options, cookies, etc. I'd like to see a
tool that actually removes real PII from these co's databases. Know of a tool
around that does it?

~~~
casefields
We need to update the fair credit reporting act with a data retention and opt
out section for online activities. The key would be making the violations
punitive enough that only crooks, and not these supposedly respectable
corporations, would be willing to abuse.

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sys_64738
Who is this person and what do they have to hide?

