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

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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?

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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 :)

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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.

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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.

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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.

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TheBlerch
Another account created an hour ago. And quite a reputable user name to
choose...

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987lnuipeuq7
DeleteMe - I have been a customer here for last 5 years. Very fast in deleting
and provides awesome service.

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TheBlerch
Care to elaborate?

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TheBlerch
Another account created today...

