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This sure seems like a scam to me. In order to remove data they wan't me to give them a ton of information about myself that they supposedly don't have otherwis

This sure seems like a scam to me. In order to remove data they wan't me to give them a ton of information about myself that they supposedly don't have otherwise they wouldn't be asking for it. If they don't have any of this then they already don't have anything useful about me that I'd care to have removed. They would probably just take this info to create a more complete profile about who I am.

cshimmin 12y ago
All they're asking for is name, number, meatspace and email addresses. Presumably, it's so some guy named "John Smith" doesn't prevent them from collecting information on the thousands of other J.S.'s out there. Not saying I feel comfortable filling out the form myself, but still. It's silly to expect that just a name or email tells them everything about you.
- spaznode 12y ago
  That's the point, both of them in fact. It's likely that to error on side if caution they rarely in fact do find and purge all your associated "identities" / records.. So why are they even bothering? Especially since they could collect much less while greatly increasing safe purge of your records if they wanted to. Targeting people for advertising is not a cursory half assed random thing to advertisers. It's their bread and butter. Why is this link even on hn?
spaznode 12y ago
I'd have to concur. I have a lot of experience and first hand knowledge targeting and identifying unique us voters(for good, or at least not republicans)and the big tell that this is bullshit is the one crucial piece of data they don't ask for other than name: DOB. I can't get too detailed with things but they're either a scan or they're going to do a very poor matching job and likely not remove very many people successfully. Not enough for this to not kind of feel very wasteful. I'm under impression advertising data middlemen or "wizards of" are quite a bit more sophisticated than their questions would lead you to believe.. So yeah scratch that. My conclusion now this is either a scam or done in bad faith for some reason that we aren't aware of yet.

cshimmin 12y ago

All they're asking for is name, number, meatspace and email addresses. Presumably, it's so some guy named "John Smith" doesn't prevent them from collecting information on the thousands of other J.S.'s out there. Not saying I feel comfortable filling out the form myself, but still. It's silly to expect that just a name or email tells them everything about you.

spaznode 12y ago
That's the point, both of them in fact. It's likely that to error on side if caution they rarely in fact do find and purge all your associated "identities" / records.. So why are they even bothering? Especially since they could collect much less while greatly increasing safe purge of your records if they wanted to. Targeting people for advertising is not a cursory half assed random thing to advertisers. It's their bread and butter. Why is this link even on hn?

spaznode 12y ago

I'd have to concur. I have a lot of experience and first hand knowledge targeting and identifying unique us voters(for good, or at least not republicans)and the big tell that this is bullshit is the one crucial piece of data they don't ask for other than name: DOB. I can't get too detailed with things but they're either a scan or they're going to do a very poor matching job and likely not remove very many people successfully. Not enough for this to not kind of feel very wasteful. I'm under impression advertising data middlemen or "wizards of" are quite a bit more sophisticated than their questions would lead you to believe.. So yeah scratch that. My conclusion now this is either a scam or done in bad faith for some reason that we aren't aware of yet.