4 ms·

Show HN: PrivacyBot - A simple way to delete your data from all the data brokers

62 points by halfhalycon 5y ago

halfhalycon 5y ago
A free and open source way to delete your data from data brokers and people search services with one form. How Does It Work? 1. Fill in the required data fields on 1 form. 2. Data deletion requests are sent from your email. 3. Any replies/next steps are sent to your inbox.
- teitoklien 5y ago
  Just wanted to say Thank you, You’re awesome
  - james_carney_ 5y ago
    glad you like it - PrivacyBot is for the people :)
sebtoot 5y ago
if this works, holy shit
- halfhalycon 5y ago
  It works. Note: we made it to be locally hosted so you must download the app from Github and run from your machine. The idea is to ensure your privacy by not having any PII shared with us.
lookingforsome 5y ago
Wait this is huge for privacy rights. I can't wait to try this out, if this works I am sharing with all my fellow privacy nerds. How does it work?
- halfhalycon 5y ago
  Thank you looking! It works! Just go to the Github from the landing page. It is a locally hosted app for now as we want to ensure your privacy so that none of your PII is sent to us. Once you go to Github follow this instructions on running it on your machine, and then it's three easy steps from there: 1. Fill in the required data fields on 1 form. 2. Data deletion requests are sent from your email. 3. Any replies/next steps are sent to your inbox.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- james_carney_ 5y ago
  Heyyo - this is my capstone project for grad school. You can see a demo video here: https://youtu.be/B24EYAAXpAE https://youtu.be/B24EYAAXpAE And also visit our FAQ on the landing page basically its a locally run flask app + react UI that uses python logic + the gmail api to craft CCPA data deletes from your own email to a big ole' data broker list we made (~500+ services). If you have more questions I can drop our email and feel free to reach out :)
  - lookingforsome 5y ago
    Thank you! Looking forward to trying this out! Any plans on creating a web app for non technical people that don't know how to use Github?
    - james_carney_ 5y ago
      yeah we want to do an installer so that all the install stuff will be way easier- it will basically be a desktop app. In terms of webapp - no because we don't want to ever risk processing (even temporarily) user PII.
      - lookingforsome 5y ago
        Awesome, just downloaded the local version and it sent out all of delete requests successfully! I am still getting emails from all of the data brokers haha.
troydavis 5y ago
Congrats! This is a neat idea. 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. (Obviously their privacy policies claim that info from data deletion requests will only be used for deletion. Even if none are malicious, out of 500, it seems like some will have bugs or just not care enough to maintain that separation. Facebook's misuse of 2FA phone numbers as ad targeting metadata comes to mind.)
- james_carney_ 5y ago
  so in short no, but what you can do is only send bare minimum required (name + email +state) and then you can manually do any follow up if they require more. Hope this helps!
  - james_carney_ 5y ago
    Also the UI allows for different "options" so to speak so there is our top choices, all data drokers, and the exhaustive list. Our video (posted in other comment) talks about this a little more
bussierem 5y ago
This is such a fantastic idea and it seems like you put tons of thought into privacy for it. I have made my own small PR to it for some readme updates and already used it myself! Worked great. Huge congrats!
- halfhalycon 5y ago
  Thank you for your feedback and we hope to review your PR this week.
PenguinCoder 5y ago
>After starting the application, PrivacyBot initiates an OAuth authentication request with your Gmail account. You will be asked to allow PrivacyBot to read, compose and send emails from your Gmail account. Bummer. I don't use GMAIL.
- james_carney_ 5y ago
  So we didn't push it to the public repo but our previous version used python's SMTP module and could support any email client. Other's have asked for this so maybe I'll make a new branch with this on there. It might require a little extra work tho
james_carney_ 5y ago
For updates please see my twitter account @james_carney_ working on making an installer to hopefully avoid the CLI steps but I'm going to take a break this weekend and respond to PRs on Monday + hopefully push the installer
dqv 5y ago
Ah, this is a more California-centric service it seems. Maybe I'll try it and see what happens for people outside of California.

62 points by halfhalycon 5y ago

A free and open source way to delete your data from data brokers and people search services with one form. How Does It Work? 1. Fill in the required data fields on 1 form. 2. Data deletion requests are sent from your email. 3. Any replies/next steps are sent to your inbox.

teitoklien 5y ago
Just wanted to say Thank you, You’re awesome
- james_carney_ 5y ago
  glad you like it - PrivacyBot is for the people :)

sebtoot 5y ago

if this works, holy shit

halfhalycon 5y ago
It works. Note: we made it to be locally hosted so you must download the app from Github and run from your machine. The idea is to ensure your privacy by not having any PII shared with us.

lookingforsome 5y ago

Wait this is huge for privacy rights. I can't wait to try this out, if this works I am sharing with all my fellow privacy nerds. How does it work?

halfhalycon 5y ago
Thank you looking! It works! Just go to the Github from the landing page. It is a locally hosted app for now as we want to ensure your privacy so that none of your PII is sent to us. Once you go to Github follow this instructions on running it on your machine, and then it's three easy steps from there: 1. Fill in the required data fields on 1 form. 2. Data deletion requests are sent from your email. 3. Any replies/next steps are sent to your inbox.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
james_carney_ 5y ago
Heyyo - this is my capstone project for grad school. You can see a demo video here: https://youtu.be/B24EYAAXpAE https://youtu.be/B24EYAAXpAE And also visit our FAQ on the landing page basically its a locally run flask app + react UI that uses python logic + the gmail api to craft CCPA data deletes from your own email to a big ole' data broker list we made (~500+ services). If you have more questions I can drop our email and feel free to reach out :)
- lookingforsome 5y ago
  Thank you! Looking forward to trying this out! Any plans on creating a web app for non technical people that don't know how to use Github?
  - james_carney_ 5y ago
    yeah we want to do an installer so that all the install stuff will be way easier- it will basically be a desktop app. In terms of webapp - no because we don't want to ever risk processing (even temporarily) user PII.
    - lookingforsome 5y ago
      Awesome, just downloaded the local version and it sent out all of delete requests successfully! I am still getting emails from all of the data brokers haha.

troydavis 5y ago

Congrats! This is a neat idea. 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. (Obviously their privacy policies claim that info from data deletion requests will only be used for deletion. Even if none are malicious, out of 500, it seems like some will have bugs or just not care enough to maintain that separation. Facebook's misuse of 2FA phone numbers as ad targeting metadata comes to mind.)

james_carney_ 5y ago
so in short no, but what you can do is only send bare minimum required (name + email +state) and then you can manually do any follow up if they require more. Hope this helps!
- james_carney_ 5y ago
  Also the UI allows for different "options" so to speak so there is our top choices, all data drokers, and the exhaustive list. Our video (posted in other comment) talks about this a little more

bussierem 5y ago

This is such a fantastic idea and it seems like you put tons of thought into privacy for it. I have made my own small PR to it for some readme updates and already used it myself! Worked great. Huge congrats!

halfhalycon 5y ago
Thank you for your feedback and we hope to review your PR this week.

PenguinCoder 5y ago

>After starting the application, PrivacyBot initiates an OAuth authentication request with your Gmail account. You will be asked to allow PrivacyBot to read, compose and send emails from your Gmail account. Bummer. I don't use GMAIL.

james_carney_ 5y ago
So we didn't push it to the public repo but our previous version used python's SMTP module and could support any email client. Other's have asked for this so maybe I'll make a new branch with this on there. It might require a little extra work tho

james_carney_ 5y ago

For updates please see my twitter account @james_carney_ working on making an installer to hopefully avoid the CLI steps but I'm going to take a break this weekend and respond to PRs on Monday + hopefully push the installer

dqv 5y ago

Ah, this is a more California-centric service it seems. Maybe I'll try it and see what happens for people outside of California.