Paying To Be Removed From People-Search is 'Largely Ineffective,' Says Study 18
Privacy removal services fail to effectively scrub personal data from people-search websites, a Consumer Reports (CR) study [PDF] revealed Thursday. The four-month investigation found these services eliminated only 35% of volunteers' identifying information profiles across 13 people-search sites. Manual opt-outs proved most effective, removing 70% of profiles within a week.
Confidently Incorrect (Score:3)
I just love the stats on the service called Confidently. Doesn't do anything right (only a 4% success rate over 4 months). It is basically just confidently incorrect.
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Who would have guessed?
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What a surprise!
Hint: Data companies don't remove data just because you ask them nicely. It takes at least a lawsuit.
no lasting removals, too many brokers (Score:4, Interesting)
The industry is a bit incestuous, you can get a deletion by they will buy your data again and have it again later. There are tons of data brokers and when I looked at removal services a couple of years ago no one removal company seemed to cover them all. Some companies would not accept removal requests from a third-party, so even with a removal service you still need to do some of them yourself.
If you want to remove your data and keep it removed you are going to be playing a game of whack-a-mole that will be an on-going adventure. That is to say nothing about all of the black market data that seems to be available, like this shit https://www.kiplinger.com/pers... [kiplinger.com].
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This is why you need something like GDPR. Then they can't collect it in the first place, and if they do you just tell them to delete it and never collect it again. If they do, they get fined, and you personally can take them to Small Claims Court for your nice payout.
I know someone who called the FBI one day (Score:3, Insightful)
Ask to have yourself erased from the Internet and you're probably just signing up to never be forgotten.
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Yeah kind of light putting your phone number on the Do Not Call list. Or like "unsubscribing" from spam emails.
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That reminds me of something Arlo Guthrie once said.
The Pause of Mr. Claus [youtube.com]
This next song we're going to dedicate to a great American organization. Tonight I'd like to dedicate this to our boys in the FBI. .....
During these hard days and hard weeks, everybody always has it bad once in a while. You know, you have a bad time of it, and you always have a friend who says "Hey man, you ain't got it that bad. Look at that guy." And you look at that guy, and he's got it worse than you. And it makes you feel better
Well, if I had to guess... (Score:2)
Scams, duh (Score:1)
These services are the same as the ones that say they can recover your stolen Bitcoin or they're from "Microsoft" to help you recover your "hacked" computer.
It's simply not possible to do what they advertise.
Privacy legislation is needed (Score:2)
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Right, because these sites are so concerned about compliance with the law.
Most of them aren't even based in the US, so why would a US law affect them?
No shit. It's called a protection racket. (Score:2)
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Case in point, Mozilla's embarrassing lack of due diligence with this lowlife:
https://krebsonsecurity.com/20... [krebsonsecurity.com]
Could you use an AI to do the opt-outs for you? (Score:2)
Have it constantly sending opt-outs to every data broker.
Unsubscribe! (Score:2)
Does this work like the "Unsubscribe" links they sometimes still have on spam? You just get pushed to a more valuable "verified information" list?
It's for the rich. (Score:2)
Paying to opt-out does work but it doesn't work for long. The people who it is effective for are the rich people who pay a service to constantly monitor their online exposure and have it taken down. So, if you can afford to pay $10K/year to have a litigious company keep your info off the net then it works.