3 ms·

There's almost no real privacy online in the US. When I search for my name my phone number and almost every address I've ever lived at it is publicly retrievabl

by anonu 5mo ago

There's almost no real privacy online in the US. When I search for my name my phone number and almost every address I've ever lived at it is publicly retrievable - on multiple sites. Even with a private WHOIS I get spam from various companies via my registrar asking to speak to me about making a website.

ZeWaka 5mo ago
It's worth sitting down for an hour and filing a bunch of information redaction requests.
- EduardoBautista 5mo ago
  There are services that will submit this information to hundreds of sites for you. I used incogni and it seemed to have a positive result. https://incogni.com/ https://incogni.com/
  - bragr 5mo ago
    Or if you're in California: https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/ https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/
    - Barbing 5mo ago
      Thank you! How’d you find out about this?
      - bragr 5mo ago
        It was in the news when it went into effect at the beginning of the year.
- edot 5mo ago
  Might help with phone numbers, but addresses are trivial to find and cannot be removed, if you own property in the United States. Every county publishes property records, searchable by name. Unless you own your house with an LLC, if someone knows or can guess the state you live in, they can 1) search on the property records website of the top 10 counties by population, and if that fails 2) expand to searching other counties until you pop up. Not sure how to mitigate this, other than the LLC method.
  - ZeWaka 5mo ago
    Addresses can also be trivially found via voter records.
rootusrootus 5mo ago
You can get some of the major sources to remove you with a service like Optery [0]. Costs a few bucks, but if you let them work at it a few months you can drop the subscription and the effects will linger for a while before you start finding yourself on public databases again. I used it myself and I have trouble finding information about myself, even with my inside knowledge. If someone is determined enough you probably can't really hide from them, especially if they have any connections to law enforcement or one of the big data sinks. But you can definitely make it harder for casuals. [0] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/optery https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/optery
- yieldcrv 5mo ago
  I just can't get myself to pay for this problem that's ultimately a failure of the government and relies on another corporation behaving with my data fortunately I'm a California resident so looks like that government has passed a solution that's free, thanks for sharing that guys
  - tuwtuwtuwtuw 5mo ago
    Here in sweden, personal data such as name, address, income, birth date, personal number, car ownership, etc. is public by design. I find it interesting how the view on this differs depending on country and what people are used to.
    - yieldcrv 5mo ago
      The issue is the spam All of our personal identification data is available, not by design, but it is available
      - tuwtuwtuwtuw 5mo ago
        What kind of spam is that? All my info is available online, but I don't really get much spam. Of course, I get spam to my email but my email address is everywhere (also by design) so that's no wonder.
marysol5 5mo ago
"And now a segue to our sponsor, offering a service utterly unique to the USA"

by anonu 5mo ago

ZeWaka 5mo ago

It's worth sitting down for an hour and filing a bunch of information redaction requests.

EduardoBautista 5mo ago
There are services that will submit this information to hundreds of sites for you. I used incogni and it seemed to have a positive result. https://incogni.com/ https://incogni.com/
- bragr 5mo ago
  Or if you're in California: https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/ https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/
  - Barbing 5mo ago
    Thank you! How’d you find out about this?
    - bragr 5mo ago
      It was in the news when it went into effect at the beginning of the year.
edot 5mo ago
Might help with phone numbers, but addresses are trivial to find and cannot be removed, if you own property in the United States. Every county publishes property records, searchable by name. Unless you own your house with an LLC, if someone knows or can guess the state you live in, they can 1) search on the property records website of the top 10 counties by population, and if that fails 2) expand to searching other counties until you pop up. Not sure how to mitigate this, other than the LLC method.
- ZeWaka 5mo ago
  Addresses can also be trivially found via voter records.

rootusrootus 5mo ago

You can get some of the major sources to remove you with a service like Optery [0]. Costs a few bucks, but if you let them work at it a few months you can drop the subscription and the effects will linger for a while before you start finding yourself on public databases again. I used it myself and I have trouble finding information about myself, even with my inside knowledge. If someone is determined enough you probably can't really hide from them, especially if they have any connections to law enforcement or one of the big data sinks. But you can definitely make it harder for casuals. [0] https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/optery https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/optery

yieldcrv 5mo ago
I just can't get myself to pay for this problem that's ultimately a failure of the government and relies on another corporation behaving with my data fortunately I'm a California resident so looks like that government has passed a solution that's free, thanks for sharing that guys
- tuwtuwtuwtuw 5mo ago
  Here in sweden, personal data such as name, address, income, birth date, personal number, car ownership, etc. is public by design. I find it interesting how the view on this differs depending on country and what people are used to.
  - yieldcrv 5mo ago
    The issue is the spam All of our personal identification data is available, not by design, but it is available
    - tuwtuwtuwtuw 5mo ago
      What kind of spam is that? All my info is available online, but I don't really get much spam. Of course, I get spam to my email but my email address is everywhere (also by design) so that's no wonder.

marysol5 5mo ago

"And now a segue to our sponsor, offering a service utterly unique to the USA"