Has anyone ever done this by going to the website of a data broker and using their opt out form?
Obviously to do this they ask for information so they know what not to include, but it feels like I’m just giving my data to them or confirming what they already have.
Just wondering what other people think since I haven’t heard anyone talk about this yet.
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I have had a lot of success.
First I went through this list and filled out lots of opt-out forms: https://github.com/yaelwrites/Big-Ass-Data-Broker-Opt-Out-List
Then I emailed everyone on this (dated) list: https://github.com/privacybot-berkeley/privacybot/blob/master/app%2Fservices_list_06May2021.csv
I got a lot of follow up emails suggesting that my requests were honored, or having me do follow up steps to have my request honored. Only two pushback emails suggesting that they don’t have legally respect my opt out, to which I provided them a strict do-not-contact request that hopefully encourages them to do nothing with any data they might have on me.
It was a huge amount of effort (~50 hours), but my private info was nearly ungooglable a couple of weeks after I finished.
After seeing a huge difference, I then signed up for DeleteMe, and compared to a few friends of mine who never did their own work before signing up, my quarterly reports are extremely sparse. Hopefully it’s easier for them to play whack-a-mole with my data since I did lots of the initial work.
So far I can’t find anything about myself I wouldn’t want to see on any search engine. If I did, I would just find the opt out page and try to nip it in the bud.
They seem like a scam. Their “Free Scan” gives the same results on a 20 year old email address as it does on a 2 years old address.