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

Apathy Tree
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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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Apathy Tree
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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?

@LWD@lemm.ee
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techwooded
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This is interesting. I’ve been wanting to sign up for something like this, Incogni, or DeleteMe for a while, but haven’t done any research yet

I have aura for credit and data privacy stuff. My brother actually got it, I’m just a hanger on in his family plan, but I recently learned they do this data broker deletion automatically. I just started using their spam call blocker, which at first seemed like garbage, but then after it really started working properly, has been great. I just get a notification instead of my phone actually ringing, and it’s a silent notification.

My brother is in IT, so I’m just trusting that he’s done the legwork, which he always seems to do. He warned us about the Lastpass breach before I learned about it in the news. Now I use bitwarden for password stuff.

I’ve been wanting to get serious about my privacy, I’ve always been overly conscious about it, avoiding social media, trying to make my phone as safe as possible, reading privacy policies and reversing course on apps I wanted to use when their shit sucks…i want to get into more technical…hosting whatever…tech-mumbo-jumbo keeps my home network safe—is that self-hosting? Custom firmware…whatever. I’m not super technically proficient, but whenever asked I choose the most strict settings and go into all settings I can find to lock down my shit. To the point that it constantly breaks so many functionalities that I’ve just learned to live without lol

fmstrat
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If your brother shifted to Bitwarden, and is likely a lemmy user, I’d trust his opinions, too.

iMastari
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In general, shudder at the thought of supporting the anti-broker industry. Data brokers can play both sides. Guest the only solution is legislation?

Not end to end encrypted afaict. The only way id ever consider a service like this is if it was e2e.

Also incogni is owned by surfshark which i think is more important than their partnership with nordvpn

SUPAVILLAIN
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What’s the tea on surfshark?

Few years ago they killed their killswitch . I believe it was technically still an option but they reduced it’s capabilities so that it wasn’t functionally a reliable killswitch.

They also got heat for installing root CA certs. https://www.techradar.com/news/new-research-reveals-surfshark-turbovpn-vyprvpn-are-installing-risky-root-certificates

I believe both issues are “fixed”, but they were some questionable decisions

What’s the problem with Nord? I have never used one of their products so I’m not informed

The only thing I know about them is how well advertised they are, which is a turn off.

Pretty cool. I’ll consider subscribing

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