

ShowHN: Identity.io, Opt-out of data brokers and regain control of your privacy - michaelaiello
http://www.identity.io

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michaelaiello
I’ve been concerned about privacy online for a while. There is an implicit
trade that occurs on most “free” internet sites, your private information in
exchange for some service – and it is not in the best interest of the sites to
be transparent with the trade.

Chances are, you’re already on a few data-broker lists, have shared something
embarrassing out of context online, and have no idea how many different
accounts you’ve signed up for.

I’m hoping to get some feedback on a site I’ve put together that is working
toward solving this problem. It’s called Identity.io and it tires to makes
privacy online automatic and simple for everyone. So far, the site does the
following.

1) Sends you an alert if a site you use materially changes the way the site
works which reduces your privacy (i.e. auto-opt-in on linkedin to using your
face in adds)

2) Detects all the online accounts you register for, or have ever registered
for in the past. It (optimally) does this by connecting to your gmail and
running lots of regular expressions against subject lines, sort of like
tripit.com.

3) Provides video tutorials and a checklist of what you should do to lockdown
your privacy online for all the account types you have + how to opt out of
data brokers and other spammers.

It would be great to hear your thoughts and feedback.

EDIT: We are aware we haven't posted up a privacy policy or an about page -
trying to get some feedback on the concept and technology at this point. For
the privacy policy, we expect to use one similar to our other site's
<http://www.privacyparrot.com/privacy>.

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freehunter
It looks good so far. It seems it found quite a few of my accounts, but when
it stopped scanning Gmail, it said it found 2 accounts. Going to the dashboard
shows it found 23.

I don't know if it's possible (or if it already does), but it'd be nice to see
why it thinks I have an account with a place. It says I have a Bank of America
account, but I use a local credit union.

Will this recognize if I've installed Ghostery? I have it installed, but have
only installed it just a few days ago, before I joined this site. How does it
know if you need to install it, or does it just say that for everyone? I also
have Adblock installed and have since 2007, but it's telling me to install it.

I like that I can add multiple email addresses, but it did seem like it hung
when I added new addresses, and no accounts showed up when I added my other
gmail accounts and it didn't ask me for authentication for them. I'm not sure
they got added properly. I'll check again when I get home.

Also, this:

>In August of 2011, professional social network Linkedin quietly introduced a
new feature called social ads. It allowed companies to use photos of any of
your contacts, with whom they, had a connection, in their adverts, effectively
allowing your contact’s to endorse their products.

Excessive number of commas, I think.

Overall, though, it's given me a list of things I would never have known
about. I have not followed any of the suggestions yet but I'll run through
them when I get home from work. Very nice design, it works quick, and it found
a good number of accounts. Are there plans to add more sites to the list or
more sources for scanning accounts?

*edit - formatting

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michaelaiello
Thanks for this.

We are likely saying you have a BoA account because of an email which they
sent you. Showing "how we know" is a good suggestion but would involve us
storing some info from your email (which I imagine people who care about
privacy are against)

no, it doesn't know if you have ghostery or adblock installed, just tells
everyone to do this

multiple addresses: we thought we had this bug squashed, apparently not.
Shouldn't be an issue in the future

Glad you find the suggestions useful. If there is pickup, we'll add more
account types (currently we scan for about 250) and tutorials.

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davekinkead
You may want to check your front page links. Having most of them direct to
<http://www.identity.io/comingsoon> while your virtualhosts file is out of
whack (so prompt to download a httpd/unix-directory) doesn't inspire
confidence that you will protect my identity.

~~~
martey
Personally, I think it's a huge problem that a service that claims to help
protect my online privacy _does not have a working privacy policy on its
site_.

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snampall
Looks good. Always wondered about all the sites that I have signed up for.

Signed up for it and added an email. The discovering part takes a lot of time
and I couldn't do much during this time. How about doing the discovery in the
background and let the user explore or do other stuff on the site?

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TamDenholm
I applaud the effort but the one thing that really irks me about things like
this is the same think that irks me about the no-call list, i have to put my
name on a list to prevent my name from going on a list.

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jt11508
Interesting in principle, but I couldn't open the About Me or FAQ, so hard to
tell. Won't give up credentials to who knows who the people are.

~~~
michaelaiello
Not sure why the FAQs didn't load for you =/ <http://www.identity.io/faqs/>

This one (is a start) to answer your Q

Who's behind Identity.io?

Identity.io is by run by computer security and privacy experts who are serious
about putting you in control of your information. We work out of the NYU-Poly
Bloomberg Technology Incubator in New York City.

~~~
omegaworks
My browser is not seeing that the content at that link is an html page, so it
downloads it instead of displaying it. This is a symptom of a MIME-type
misconfiguration on your webserver.

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michaelaiello
Thanks - we must have done something wrong with apache - number of concurrent
users we are having right now isn't something we've tested before...

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floatingatoll
Neither the Register nor Login links work for me in Chrome stable, view-
source: shows no bytes in the response from the server.

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ErrantX
Same; I get a blank page in Chrome, IE and Firefox.

~~~
michaelaiello
Should be back in business if you'd like to try again.

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useflyer
Clearly inspired by MelonCard.com

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michaelaiello
Thanks for the heads up, I actually haven't seen this site until now. We
haven't gone after the "search for your data out on the internet and send opt-
outs" piece of puzzle. Some of them require you to submit a copy of your
driver's license. Also, it seemed like the reputation.com service is on top of
this currently.

