Optery has been flagging the conflict of interest between OneRep and Nuwber for years and put a statement out with our position following the Krebs article:
For an alternative, take a look at Optery (YC W22). We've been flagging the situation at OneRep for years and put a statement out following the Krebs article (link below). We launched to the public as a Show HN in 2021 and as a Launch HN in 2022. Full disclosure, I'm one of the Optery founders.
Why don't you ask Google to remove pages, while you wait for the perpetrators to honor your page removal requests? I believe Google recently added tools to make this possible.
Optery hasn't addressed that yet, but right now starts at the source (the data brokers), and then submits removal requests to Google directly via their Outdated Content Removal Tool. Here's now it works: https://www.optery.com/optery-and-googles-content-removal-to...
Optery cancelation is 100% self-service from inside the app per the instructions on the Help Desk. And if you can’t figure out how to do it yourself, just send us an email and we’ll do it for you.
As feedback for the CEO, that "family pricing" landing page really does you a disservice by obfuscating your pricing (unless that was the goal). At a minimum, add a pricing calculator with a slider for "family members".
That's great feedback! We'll add more pricing detail to the Family page. For comparison, here is the Optery pricing page: https://www.optery.com/pricing/
Does this support adding family members on a single account? I have some non technical family members who I'd like to manage it for them and giving them their own account is most likely going to be a major headache.
Many data brokers will not permit third party services to remove the data without a signed limited power of attorney. Note that the power of attorney is limited to interactions for submitting removal requests and opt outs.
Optery founder here. We did a deep dive comparison between DeleteMe and Optery (https://www.optery.com/deleteme-review/). The biggest takeaway is you have to scroll to the bottom of the DeleteMe Sites We Remove From page and read the fine print on what is covered by the plan you are purchasing. The "750+ Data Brokers" written across the top of the page is misleading. The standard plan covers about ~90 sites.
I noticed that shortly after I posted and have included that info now (edited the comment). Classic dark pattern. That info should be more prominently displayed in their pricing information.
So your service will handle (up to) 305+ data brokers automatically? depending on how much you are willing to pay of course
Agreed on the dark pattern, and yes, Optery's Ultimate plan currently covers 300+ data brokers by default and offers unlimited Custom Removals. Optery has a team that's continually testing and adding more sites to the coverage defaults. There are several options, Free, Paid, Family, Business at different prices. For full disclosure, I'm one of the Optery founders, as mentioned previously.
Optery founder here. We did a deep dive comparison between Incogni and Optery (https://www.optery.com/incogni-review/). The biggest takeaway is Incogni, at this time, does not cover many of the most popular people search sites like Whitepages, TruePeopleSearch, Spokeo, RocketReach, ThatsThem, BeenVerified, TruthFinder, InstantCheckmate, and many others. Most Incogni reviews you'll find online are written by their affiliate partners.
beyondd, I've been reading through this thread and your comments about Optery and you got me to sign up for an account on your site vs Mozilla's service so good job. I was even going to pay for your Ultimate plan for a year. But.... you lost me when I got to the profile page. I have a handful of email addresses and a couple of phone numbers. I would want them all to be scanned for. I had previously been using experian's removal service and they allowed for 10 emails and 5 phone numbers.
Your documentation says:
"You can only select one email and one phone number for scans at this time. However, Optery's engineering team is actively working on providing more configuration options such as the ability to run scans on demand for multiple email addresses and phone numbers."
Any comments on when this will be an option? I would want automatic scans on all of my emails and phone numbers. Not very useful for me without this.
The core of Optery's search functionality is "person" centric. Meaning we start with searches by name, city, state, and age to find "you" regardless of which underlying email or phone number the data broker has on record for you. Because in many cases data brokers may have no email or phone on file for you at all (only home address), or they may have a really old phone or email you have forgotten about. When data removal service scans focus only on phone numbers and email addresses, a lot can get missed. Many people search sites are not even queryable by phone or email, and are only queryable by name, city, and state. Optery does search for phones and emails, but you are correct in that it currently limits them to just one each from the customer at this time. We plan to release the scan on demand feature you referenced in the next few months.
That said, Optery recursively searches through data exposed by data brokers to alleviate the need to input numerous old phones and emails by the customer. In PCMag.com review they said this of Optery's recursive phone number search functionality:
"It uses data found in data broker profiles to recursively expand its reach. For example, in my latest testing, I only gave it my current phone number, but it found records associated with an old number that I used for some 25 years."
Thank you for the reply! I suppose that does make sense, though it still doesn't give a warm fuzzy feel separating the functionality. While the average human might only have one email address they use, I'd venture to say people who would want a service such as this would skew more towards having many they use for privacy reasons.
I get what you're saying about how emails aren't the primary means of finding people, but it is a way, and something people often do have more then one of. I'd humbly request you reconsider and try to better incorporate support for automated scans on multiple emails/phones into the main product. For what its worth it looks like Mozilla's product supports 5 based on their docs.
That said, after submitting this comment I'm going to go ahead and sign up for the one year ultimate anyway in hopes that you will reconsider my request if I'm a paid user. :)
Thanks for the follow up! Scans for multiple phones and emails is something we're working on so stay tuned on that, and don't hesitate to contact customer support with any questions along the way!
Also, you mentioned using Experian's data removal service previously. Do you mind me asking how many exposed profiles the Optery scan located that Experian missed?
Your point is spot on. Data removal services have an aspect where a ton of value is obtained in the first 1 - 4 months as the majority of profiles are wiped away, and then after that you're sort of in maintenance mode where the service catches profiles as they pop back up, or when new data brokers are added to the system for coverage.
Optery generally has 2 types of customers:
- The first type are those that care a lot about their privacy and the cost of an ongoing subscription is insignificant to them, so they keep the service running on an ongoing basis for the ongoing automated scans and removals and for getting new data brokers they get coverage for immediately as they are added into the system.
- The second type of customer is more price conscious and is basically looking back and forth between their credit card statement and their Optery dashboard each month and then they either pause or cancel the subscription when they feel they're reached a good stopping point. Optery's pause subscription feature is very popular for this type of customer and you can use it to automatically re-start the service in 3, 6, 9 months, etc.
- Another thing to point out is many other services only offer Yearly subscriptions, Optery offers Yearly or Monthly. If you're price conscious, the Monthly is nice because you can turn it on and off, or pause it as you wish.
More detail on the topic of keeping Optery running on an ongoing basis is on the Optery Help Desk here:
This is a great suggestion and we would like to add this. Not because it would provide any revenue lift though, but because it is what some Optery customers have been asking for, e.g. can I have a lower cost subscription that runs every other month, or every three months, etc. Technically, you can do this today by cancelling and re-starting a Monthly subscription at your desired cadence, or pausing and re-starting your subscription periodically, but that requires manual effort. A configurable cadence is definitely on our backlog though.
https://www.optery.com/optery-statement-following-investigat...