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Hello fellow hackers - I work with the Permission Slip team closely (on a related and partly overlapping team) at Consumer Reports Innovation Lab. Happy to ans

Hello fellow hackers - I work with the Permission Slip team closely (on a related and partly overlapping team) at Consumer Reports Innovation Lab. Happy to answer any questions or get answers if you stump me. My own work is on the connected initiative called Data Rights Protocol which is aimed at providing a common open source API so processing the legally required data rights requests by Consumer through the Permission Slip app can be faster, cheaper, and better. That’s at DataRightsProtocol.org I think that protocol addresses some of the questions and ideas expressed in this thread.

schneems 3y ago
I would probably pay a thousand dollars if you could get NPG Van, Action Network, and Act Blue to never text or email me again. I’ve aggressively replied STOP and “delete and report spam” and unsubscribing from all communication for literally years and they keep coming. I’ve emailed action network several times and they: 1) Claim they don’t have the capability of putting me on a global “do not contact” list. (Just because they refuse to build such a feature doesn’t mean it is impossible to build) 2) Claim it’s their clients that are emailing and texting me, not them (but they control the infrastructure, and allow their clients to add me to campaigns I’ve not opted into and they’ve not verified my participation) 3) Cannot give me any contact information about the people directly messaging me because that would “violate trust” (literal lol, their business model is founded on trust violation) Anyway. I have given up all other hope. I get multiple texts a week, sometimes multiple a day. It’s very disruptive to my life and there’s nothing I can do to meaningfully stop it. Any tips? Any advice? I’m kind of desperate. I want to donate money again, but I also want to not be constantly digitally harassed.
- xp84 3y ago
  Yeah, definitely do not donate money to Democrats (or Republicans, I assume), at least not with any real contact info whatsoever, as they will spam and worse, sell your info forever. Even still I still get occasional random requests like “I’m Mike Bobson, and I’m running for state assembly, 4th district in South Carolina.” Like, wtf, no I’m not going to fund literally every race in the country. I did find a way to get NGP VAN to F off though! From the email response I got from them: > … If instead, you would rather not receive email from any of our customers, we can offer to add your email address to our "blocklist." This will prevent an email sent by our customers, using our email product, from being delivered to you. This will not completely eliminate our customers' ability to email you, and it will not delete your data from their systems. For instance, if our customer uses another system to send bulk email, then our “blocklist” would not stop them from emailing you through that system. Please note this is an all or nothing approach – we do not have the ability to apply the “blocklist” to individual customers using our email tool. If your email address is added to the “blocklist” you will not receive communications from any of our customers using our platform. Then there was a link which unfortunately seems to have my email embedded in it so I can’t share it directly. I started this process via making a request on yourdigitalrights.org. Best of luck and lmk if I can be of any help.
  - karlzt 3y ago
    The fact that you donated money to politicians is a disgrace already.
    - moshun 3y ago
      Amen, you should leave donating to corporations instead.
- tpowell 3y ago
  I think every PAC is legally required to list its officer(s) in their public incorporation documents. I tracked down the officer for one spamming me and publicly asked the guy (on Twitter I think) along with a screen-cap of the email to remove me from their lists. I never heard back, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been harassed. It might have to hit their doorstep…
- sneak 3y ago
  Change your phone number, and block their email netblock at the mailserver. I change my phone number every 90 days, it de-links tracking like this. Your phone number is like your primary key for data brokers these days.
- majkinetor 3y ago
  I have the number of mail rules for the stuff like this. While you can do this in any client, I also keep thunderbird client open constantly on one of my media servers because it provides some features other rule machine engines do not, like an option to block by any header. I successfully blocked legitimate spam that way, the one that was somehow passing gmail. This works perfectly. Another way is to use throw away email address per subscriber. You can for example use mailcare :)
- anon373839 3y ago
  > Act Blue to never text or email me again. I have been tearing my hair out over the Act Blue spam. I would crawl naked across hot coals to make it stop.
- dazzaji 3y ago
  I got this response from a member of the Permission Slip team: “this has definitely come up in discussions. Non-profits were initially exempt from complying with data requests, but are set to kick in. We’re keeping a close eye on it.”
- beaugunderson 3y ago
  I set up a monthly task in Todoist to remind me to check this Action Network URL which shows every list you've been added to and lets you unsubscribe: https://actionnetwork.org/subscriptions https://actionnetwork.org/subscriptions ...but as of this month, it's a 404. Great. Edit: False alarm! You have to be logged in.
BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
Can you address the concerns raised down-thread about the privacy policy terms?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Timshel 3y ago
What's up with this privacy policy filled with selling to ad networks ? https://permissionslipcr.com/privacy.php#Data%20Processing,%20Disclosure,%20Sale,%20and%20Sharing https://permissionslipcr.com/privacy.php#Data%20Processing,%... Edit: soneone mentionned yourdigitalrights, had a look at their policy : https://yourdigitalrights.org/privacy https://yourdigitalrights.org/privacy Honestly yours make your service look like a honeypot ...
- gs17 3y ago
  When I unsubscribed from CR I found they had a (not selected by default) opt-out "don't sell my information to third parties" checkbox in the account settings which you wouldn't know exists unless you log in (an uncommon act for a print subscription). It's weird, it feels like the kind of thing they would have had an article about.
bradknowles 3y ago
So, I've looked at Permission Slip, and I'm a long-timer CR subscriber. I didn't see anything there that wasn't better done by DeleteMe or Optery, and I saw a lot of improvements that needed to be made. I like that CR has interests that are more aligned with mine, and that this is a space they're working on, but they need to do better. Much better. I've also looked at Incogni, and it came much closer to what I get with DeleteMe and Optery. But they're still better. Between DeleteMe and Optery, the former has been around for a while, but doesn't provide nearly as much coverage. Optery has a baseline level that is free, but not as good as DeleteMe. Optery also has more expensive options that include human processing to delete your data off way more sites, but is much more expensive. So, I'm kinda torn between DeleteMe and Optery. I'm leaning towards the latter, but I don't have any final conclusions yet. I need to wait and see how they both do over the longer term.

schneems 3y ago

I would probably pay a thousand dollars if you could get NPG Van, Action Network, and Act Blue to never text or email me again. I’ve aggressively replied STOP and “delete and report spam” and unsubscribing from all communication for literally years and they keep coming. I’ve emailed action network several times and they: 1) Claim they don’t have the capability of putting me on a global “do not contact” list. (Just because they refuse to build such a feature doesn’t mean it is impossible to build) 2) Claim it’s their clients that are emailing and texting me, not them (but they control the infrastructure, and allow their clients to add me to campaigns I’ve not opted into and they’ve not verified my participation) 3) Cannot give me any contact information about the people directly messaging me because that would “violate trust” (literal lol, their business model is founded on trust violation) Anyway. I have given up all other hope. I get multiple texts a week, sometimes multiple a day. It’s very disruptive to my life and there’s nothing I can do to meaningfully stop it. Any tips? Any advice? I’m kind of desperate. I want to donate money again, but I also want to not be constantly digitally harassed.

xp84 3y ago
Yeah, definitely do not donate money to Democrats (or Republicans, I assume), at least not with any real contact info whatsoever, as they will spam and worse, sell your info forever. Even still I still get occasional random requests like “I’m Mike Bobson, and I’m running for state assembly, 4th district in South Carolina.” Like, wtf, no I’m not going to fund literally every race in the country. I did find a way to get NGP VAN to F off though! From the email response I got from them: > … If instead, you would rather not receive email from any of our customers, we can offer to add your email address to our "blocklist." This will prevent an email sent by our customers, using our email product, from being delivered to you. This will not completely eliminate our customers' ability to email you, and it will not delete your data from their systems. For instance, if our customer uses another system to send bulk email, then our “blocklist” would not stop them from emailing you through that system. Please note this is an all or nothing approach – we do not have the ability to apply the “blocklist” to individual customers using our email tool. If your email address is added to the “blocklist” you will not receive communications from any of our customers using our platform. Then there was a link which unfortunately seems to have my email embedded in it so I can’t share it directly. I started this process via making a request on yourdigitalrights.org. Best of luck and lmk if I can be of any help.
- karlzt 3y ago
  The fact that you donated money to politicians is a disgrace already.
  - moshun 3y ago
    Amen, you should leave donating to corporations instead.
tpowell 3y ago
I think every PAC is legally required to list its officer(s) in their public incorporation documents. I tracked down the officer for one spamming me and publicly asked the guy (on Twitter I think) along with a screen-cap of the email to remove me from their lists. I never heard back, but it’s been a long time since I’ve been harassed. It might have to hit their doorstep…
sneak 3y ago
Change your phone number, and block their email netblock at the mailserver. I change my phone number every 90 days, it de-links tracking like this. Your phone number is like your primary key for data brokers these days.
majkinetor 3y ago
I have the number of mail rules for the stuff like this. While you can do this in any client, I also keep thunderbird client open constantly on one of my media servers because it provides some features other rule machine engines do not, like an option to block by any header. I successfully blocked legitimate spam that way, the one that was somehow passing gmail. This works perfectly. Another way is to use throw away email address per subscriber. You can for example use mailcare :)
anon373839 3y ago
> Act Blue to never text or email me again. I have been tearing my hair out over the Act Blue spam. I would crawl naked across hot coals to make it stop.
dazzaji 3y ago
I got this response from a member of the Permission Slip team: “this has definitely come up in discussions. Non-profits were initially exempt from complying with data requests, but are set to kick in. We’re keeping a close eye on it.”
beaugunderson 3y ago
I set up a monthly task in Todoist to remind me to check this Action Network URL which shows every list you've been added to and lets you unsubscribe: https://actionnetwork.org/subscriptions https://actionnetwork.org/subscriptions ...but as of this month, it's a 404. Great. Edit: False alarm! You have to be logged in.

BugsJustFindMe 3y ago

Can you address the concerns raised down-thread about the privacy policy terms?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Timshel 3y ago

What's up with this privacy policy filled with selling to ad networks ? https://permissionslipcr.com/privacy.php#Data%20Processing,%20Disclosure,%20Sale,%20and%20Sharing https://permissionslipcr.com/privacy.php#Data%20Processing,%... Edit: soneone mentionned yourdigitalrights, had a look at their policy : https://yourdigitalrights.org/privacy https://yourdigitalrights.org/privacy Honestly yours make your service look like a honeypot ...

gs17 3y ago
When I unsubscribed from CR I found they had a (not selected by default) opt-out "don't sell my information to third parties" checkbox in the account settings which you wouldn't know exists unless you log in (an uncommon act for a print subscription). It's weird, it feels like the kind of thing they would have had an article about.

bradknowles 3y ago

So, I've looked at Permission Slip, and I'm a long-timer CR subscriber. I didn't see anything there that wasn't better done by DeleteMe or Optery, and I saw a lot of improvements that needed to be made. I like that CR has interests that are more aligned with mine, and that this is a space they're working on, but they need to do better. Much better. I've also looked at Incogni, and it came much closer to what I get with DeleteMe and Optery. But they're still better. Between DeleteMe and Optery, the former has been around for a while, but doesn't provide nearly as much coverage. Optery has a baseline level that is free, but not as good as DeleteMe. Optery also has more expensive options that include human processing to delete your data off way more sites, but is much more expensive. So, I'm kinda torn between DeleteMe and Optery. I'm leaning towards the latter, but I don't have any final conclusions yet. I need to wait and see how they both do over the longer term.