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The EU fall under the GDPR and is an “opt in” regime. The U.S. falls under a makeshift patchwork of privacy laws and guidelines, and is an “opt out” regime. In an “opt in” regime (e.g. EU), the onus is on companies to obtain a user’s consent before they can use your data (i.e. they need to get you to “opt in” before they can legally use your data). In an “opt out” regime (e.g. U.S.), the onus is on the consumer to “opt out”, and companies basically have a free-for-all on a user’s data, unless the user exercises their right to “opt out”. (What's crazy is in most U.S. states, consumers have no legal right to opt out, which in the year 2021 is insane. Hopefully a federal privacy law will get passed soon.)

Given this, there is not as strong of a need for an “opt out” tool such as Optery in the EU because the GDPR is already doing a lot of work for you. However, in the U.S. (i.e. an “opt out” regime), the need for an opt out tool such as Optery is much greater because U.S. residents don’t have a privacy law in place like the GDPR to protect them. They either need to submit the opt outs themselves, or use a service like Optery.

That is why there is no EU option.

In order to opt out of a data broker, you have to submit PII to them to tell them who you are, otherwise, they won't know who to opt out. The exception to this is if the data broker is using an anonymous identifier, like that stored in a browser cookie, in which case you would need to submit that anonymous identifier to them, or somehow give them access to it (e.g. via a browser request).

The People Search Sites we submit opt outs to all transact in raw PII, therefore, if you want to opt out, either you have to submit your own raw PII to them (or a hashed version, where you and the data broker share the key so the underlying profile can be matched) to the data broker so they can identify you, or you can utilize a third-party opt out service (such as Optery) to do this for you. In either case, submitting raw PII to the data broker for them to identify you and opt you out is required.

We only submit to data brokers the minimum amount of information necessary for them to locate your profile, and then remove it, which, in the majority of cases is: First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, City, State, and an email address. If you do a few manual searches at data brokers, you'll see all of this information is already out there.

Note that we never share our customers private email addresses with any third party, including the data brokers we submit opt outs to.

Co-creator of Optery here. Thanks for the good vibes.

The data broker industry is large, and there are hundreds of players across different sub-categories (e.g. people search, email, phone, audience targeting, geolocation, past purchases, TV content viewed, data enrichment, identity graph, etc). Personally, I worked in the audience targeting sub-category for delivering personalized online advertisements. I left the space ~5 years ago when I left Oracle Data Cloud (BlueKai). What we did was anonymized audience targeting for large consumer brand advertisers (i.e. not people search, email, phone, nor anything PII based).

A lot has changed since I entered the space in 2011, and indeed, since I left the space in ~2016. Data has become more weaponized, data brokers have become more brazen in the liberties they take with our data, and the ends they’ll go to circumvent consumer preferences and even privacy laws. Fortunately, a lot of progress is being made. People are becoming more aware, stronger laws are getting passed, technology is being put to better use, and privacy tech is emerging as a more important category.

We felt like we had a lot of inside knowledge of how the industry worked and felt called to put that knowledge to work helping people. This is why providing a Free Basic account that provides a lot of value for free was core to what we wanted to do. Trust is earned over time and we have a lot of work ahead of us given the distrust so many bad actors have established with people’s personal data. We are a new product and company we’re working hard to build trust with our users and customers every day.

Thanks for the good vibes, and glad you found the deep links useful!

To your second point about introducing "noise" into your profile at data brokers to make it more useless. That's an interesting idea, but unfortunately, not something we would touch at Operty. Data brokers have hundreds of upstream partners who supply them with information to enrich their profile on you. We send opt out requests to data brokers, and nothing else.

Hi! Co-creator of Optery here.

Regarding our pricing. It is true that most of the opt out submissions and removals happen up front. If someone wanted to go this route, I'd recommend keeping the subscription active for a minimum of 3 months, and then cancelling the subscription. Some data brokers process opt out removals within 24 hours, but others take several weeks to comply. Also, the majority of data brokers honor opt out requests on the first try, but others require retries or follow ups over several weeks. In our experience, it can take up to 2 - 3 months of effort for the longtail to disappear.

The other consideration is that data brokers are inconsistent in how long they will honor an opt out. The California Consumer Privacy Act (the most strict privacy law in the U.S.) actually permits data brokers to stop honoring an opt out request after 1 year. Some data brokers honor opt outs indefinitely, but others require annual effort to ensure your name and personal info stays removed.

Like antivirus, the landscape is very dynamic. New data brokers come online regularly, data broker databases are constantly being updated and refreshed (sometimes overwriting prior opt out request flags), and we (Optery) are continually expanding our list of data brokers we cover for each paid subscription plan tier. So if you want a service that's continually scanning for your profiles and opting you out on an ongoing basis when new results turn up, that would be a good reason to keep a subscription active on an ongoing basis. But you are free to cancel, or delete your account entirely at any time!

Regarding your second point. We are not a data broker. We do not sell data. We do not publish data. We do not have any financial relationship with any data broker. We are not affiliated with any data broker. There are some opt out services out there that have financial partnerships and affiliations with data brokers – Optery is not one of them. We only submit to data brokers the minimum amount of information necessary for them to locate your profile, and then remove it, which, in the majority of cases is: First Name, Middle Name, Last Name, City, State, and an email address. Note that we never share our customers private email address with any third party, including the data brokers we submit opt outs to.

Hi! Co-creator of Optery here.

This is a great question. There are hundreds of data brokers across different categories (e.g. people search, email, phone, audience marketing, geolocation, past purchases, TV viewing, etc). Many data brokers operate across categories.

We've started off with the People Search Site category first because that's where we sensed the most pain from the users we spoke with.

We are constantly expanding our coverage, and will be adding more data broker categories in the near future. ZoomInfo is high up on the list to be added soon because we get asked about them a lot.

This is great! A lot of people prefer to submit the opt outs themselves. Our Free Basic account can be used to help people do-it-yourself faster by helping with the discovery process.

If you choose to sign up for Optery, next to each data broker listing we provide the opt out link and opt out email address to make it easy to navigate to.

When submitting your own opt outs to these companies directly, we highly recommend creating a disposable email address, and Not using your primary email address, as just reaching out to them with an email often adds you to their email lists.

Hi! Co-creator of Optery here.

We do not sell data. We are not a data broker. We do not have any financial relationship with any data broker. We are not affiliated with any data broker.

We are privacy enthusiasts who believe consumers should be in full control of their data. You can learn more about our mission, background and values here: https://www.optery.com/about-us/

There are some bad actors out there unfortunately. The most well-known is OneRep, which has an opt out and removals business, but are owned by an ownership group that simultaneously runs the People Search Site data broker Nuwber. It's almost certain that they run off the same data spine, meaning your data is co-mingled. Another one is BrandYourself, which includes data brokers as part of its affiliate program. So if you pay them for removals, you are indirectly paying the data brokers. There are others that I have a strong suspicion of, but don't know for certain, so I won't risk sharing their names.

But please don’t lump the rest of us working hard to protect people from data brokers into that same bucket. Along with us, DeleteMe, PrivacyDuck, and Kanary and a few others are above-board with no affiliation or financial relationship with any data broker (to the best of my knowledge). Just working hard for consumer data rights.

The data brokers most likely already have info on you. There is a catch22 where in order to opt out, you have to tell them who you are. Other services use your own private email address to submit the opt outs. We do not share your private email address with any third party, including the data brokers we submit opt outs to.

We do not sell data. We are not a data broker.

People sign up with us to see what information data brokers are posting about them online, and then are provided with free and paid options to opt out and have themselves removed.

Yes - you could manually look up your info at each site listed under "which data brokers are covered by each plan?" - which would take you many, many hours, or you could create an account with Optery and have us do it for you automatically.

The data brokers most likely already have info on you. There is a catch22 where in order to opt out, you have to tell them who you are. Other services use your own private email address to submit the opt outs. We do not share your private email address with any third party, including the data brokers we submit opt outs to.

That's a great question. This is our first time sharing publicly, and this is great feedback that we might we need to change that.

The intention is to tier the paid version of the product in terms of price and value, but that may not be the best place to do it.

That said, as soon as you receive your Exposure Report by email (typically within ~24 hours), it will include screen shots for the data brokers covered by the Ultimate plan, so you will have some visibility there for help deciding.

Sorry about that. We just updated our sign up page to make this more clear.

Sorry about that. We just updated our sign up page to make this more clear.

Hi HN,

After many years working at data brokers such as BlueKai, Lusha, and Oracle Data Cloud, we've spent the last few months building a tool that provides granular visibility into the private information posted about you online by people search sites like TruthFinder, MyLife, Radaris, CellRevealer, Spokeo, WhitePages, etc.

After sign up, we provide deep links to your profile at over 100 of these sites, as well as an Exposure Report with screenshots so you can see exactly what these sites are posting about you. There are typically 40 - 60 matches for each user that signs up.

The top comment in another data privacy Show HN shared recently illustrates the gap our tool fills: "Does it take into account whether or not a given data broker currently has my data? Since the deletion requests contain my personal info (for some, a fair amount of it), I'd rather not have that sent to 500 brokers if only 10 or 20 of them actually have me in their database." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27146828)

Full disclosure, signing up is free and provides the visibility into what data brokers are posting about you described above, but we also have paid subscription tiers where we submit and manage the opt outs and removals.

If you want to skip the overview content, you can go straight to the signup here: https://app.optery.com/signup

(We only support U.S. residents at this time.)

More information on the Steamtunnels / Facebook guys' story has been archived here: http://steamtunnels.org