Privacy-focused company DuckDuckGo is launching a tool to remove data from people-search websites, a VPN, and an identity theft restoration service.

Curious about everyone’s thoughts on this.

Archive link : https://archive.is/Ql81V

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I think Mozilla has something like this as well (also a subscription).

I’m of the opinion that, at this point, one of the best infosec things a company could do is include a subscription like this (assuming they are safe and work as intended) for all employees as part of their compensation package, much the way they sometimes provide financial consulting services or gym memberships. Maybe one of the providers will start offering enterprise packages.

If we could purge large quantities of data on employees, it would be that much harder to use social engineering for hacking. As a bonus, if enough people got themselves purged, it would entirely disrupt the data harvesting and selling models, potentially making them worthless. That would be a huge win.

But I don’t think many people are going to pay for it themselves. They just won’t care that much. So as a work perk, it incentivizes them to use it by being free.

I’m not in IT or anything, but my close friend is in security, so it’s something I consider quite a bit.

Edit to add: obviously I’d rather see it illegal to collect data and sell it and all but that’s not going to happen any time soon, and this could be a lot faster. And if it becomes a business expense, businesses might just push for legislation…

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Well shit.

Good to know, thanks.

When you say they reversed course, do you mean they scrapped the project entirely, or went back to the model they were going with when they announced it?

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