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Is there a “opterouter” project that just spiders all these and opt outs? Navigating the dark patterns of one site is a pain, much less 120+. But seems like a

Is there a “opterouter” project that just spiders all these and opt outs? Navigating the dark patterns of one site is a pain, much less 120+. But seems like a good opportunity for 120 to script one path each. Hard to do a service as I don’t want to enter my private info into another third party.

chris_f 5y ago
As an exercise I once went through the process of manually requesting my information removed from most of the top brokers. It would be difficult to automate because the opt-out processes usually aren't straightforward like unsubscribing from an email list. Many sites make it purposely difficult and involve going through multiple steps, providing verification like a drivers license, and email confirmations. Here is a really good check list of different brokers: https://inteltechniques.com/data/workbook.pdf https://inteltechniques.com/data/workbook.pdf
- OminousWeapons 5y ago
  I also tried to do this manually using the same resources from Bazzell and eventually just got tired of dealing with it and paid for Deleteme. To their credit, they did a pretty solid job removing my public data from data broker sites.
- unishark 5y ago
  Any online process that endeavors to be secure will be indistinguishable from a malicious system that tries to make your task purposefully difficult. I just got refused by a govt site recently because of the six different forms to info they wanted in order to sign in again, one of them wasn't accepted. Namely my cell phone number was prepaid which apparently isn't acceptable anymore. So now I need to mail in forms and wait for return mail taking weeks.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  And youre not worried that all youve done is fill in the gaps of their data with your drivers license, etc? "Delete" is a boolean tag in a databse that never actually gets deleted.
  - meowster 5y ago
    And if your information is truely deleted, then when they come across your information again, they'll have no record of you, so they'll just fill in the missing gaps. For them not to share your information, they need to know what information not to share.
  - chris_f 5y ago
    They key is to only submit information that they already have, not anything new. For documents that need to be uploaded in some cases, the options are either to use a heavily redacted real document with everything blacked out except for the essential info, or just upload a random file because most of the time no one checks and it is just a required field to submit a form. You are correct it is not actually "deleted", but it will stop your information from showing up on the website. IMO, the "best" free people search is https://www.truepeoplesearch.com/ https://www.truepeoplesearch.com/. Their opt-out process is also pretty easy.
_gtly 5y ago
Yes, check out https://privacybot.io https://privacybot.io It's a graduate student project from the University of California, Berkeley. It's open source project and you execute its code from your own computer so you can have confidence in it keeping your data private. It was also written up in Consumer Reports[1]. 1. https://digital-lab.consumerreports.org/2021/05/12/new-open-source-project-automates-data-deletion-requests-by-email/ https://digital-lab.consumerreports.org/2021/05/12/new-open-... edit: Privacybot was also previously discussed on hn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27146828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27146828

chris_f 5y ago

As an exercise I once went through the process of manually requesting my information removed from most of the top brokers. It would be difficult to automate because the opt-out processes usually aren't straightforward like unsubscribing from an email list. Many sites make it purposely difficult and involve going through multiple steps, providing verification like a drivers license, and email confirmations. Here is a really good check list of different brokers: https://inteltechniques.com/data/workbook.pdf https://inteltechniques.com/data/workbook.pdf

OminousWeapons 5y ago
I also tried to do this manually using the same resources from Bazzell and eventually just got tired of dealing with it and paid for Deleteme. To their credit, they did a pretty solid job removing my public data from data broker sites.
unishark 5y ago
Any online process that endeavors to be secure will be indistinguishable from a malicious system that tries to make your task purposefully difficult. I just got refused by a govt site recently because of the six different forms to info they wanted in order to sign in again, one of them wasn't accepted. Namely my cell phone number was prepaid which apparently isn't acceptable anymore. So now I need to mail in forms and wait for return mail taking weeks.
fartcannon 5y ago
And youre not worried that all youve done is fill in the gaps of their data with your drivers license, etc? "Delete" is a boolean tag in a databse that never actually gets deleted.
- meowster 5y ago
  And if your information is truely deleted, then when they come across your information again, they'll have no record of you, so they'll just fill in the missing gaps. For them not to share your information, they need to know what information not to share.
- chris_f 5y ago
  They key is to only submit information that they already have, not anything new. For documents that need to be uploaded in some cases, the options are either to use a heavily redacted real document with everything blacked out except for the essential info, or just upload a random file because most of the time no one checks and it is just a required field to submit a form. You are correct it is not actually "deleted", but it will stop your information from showing up on the website. IMO, the "best" free people search is https://www.truepeoplesearch.com/ https://www.truepeoplesearch.com/. Their opt-out process is also pretty easy.

_gtly 5y ago

Yes, check out https://privacybot.io https://privacybot.io It's a graduate student project from the University of California, Berkeley. It's open source project and you execute its code from your own computer so you can have confidence in it keeping your data private. It was also written up in Consumer Reports[1]. 1. https://digital-lab.consumerreports.org/2021/05/12/new-open-source-project-automates-data-deletion-requests-by-email/ https://digital-lab.consumerreports.org/2021/05/12/new-open-... edit: Privacybot was also previously discussed on hn: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27146828 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27146828