A family member was the victim of highly damaging identity theft which took them forever to correct. Some of the information used by the thieves came from one of the many data brokers out there which thrive without meaningful data privacy laws in the U.S. Removing information from data brokers looks like a time-consuming and slow process, and some of them require you give other personal information to “claim” your account, such as a photo of your driver’s license (note you can black out all the info except your name, something they won’t tell you). What’s the best data protection service out there? And what measures should you take to keep your data from data brokers?
co-founder of DeleteMe here.
removal from myriad numbers of top data brokers is a onerous process but it can be done free. our service, DeleteMe - www.joindeleteme.com (NOT sadly the obvious url) has both a FREE option which guides you through each removal OR our paid annual "we do it all for you" service. some of the data brokers make it pretty easy, others display criminal-esque behaviors. it is a shady business, and privacy laws are going to be important in controlling it better.
@PangurBan is right to use separate emails when possible (Abine has a freemium product for this called Blur). also, Onerep is a competitor to DeleteMe - it is newer, cheaper and the team is in Eastern Europe but we believe they're a legit service. Happy to answer any other questions from HN.
Looking for the same. I’ve heard of DeleteMe, based in Boston, which looks reputable but says it can’t remove from certain sites, such as Radaris, and says you have to handle those. Also found a company called Onerep.com listed as a DeleteMe competitor, which claims to remove from more sites at a lower cost, but it looks sketchy (company appears to have an all-Russian or Eastern European team yet listed in McLean, VA with telephone number in upstate, NY and reviews by supposedly American customers are all in stilted English). Keep in mind that it’s important to remove info from all or as many data brokers as possible, as they scrape each other so data left on one will repopulate others.<p>As far as measures to keep info from data brokers, I use a separate email for all ecommerce and any forum postings; never give your phone number to companies unless you absolutely have to, and when you do use a fake number or only share a Google number when you need a callback; avoid putting any personal info on any public forums and give out as little personal data as possible.<p>Some other general privacy measures: Firefox for browsing with all privacy protections (same for Chrome and Safari); use ad blockers; all privacy settings on mobile and services turned on and highly limited location sharing only when needed to use an app; use Google and Facebook (very sparingly) on Firefox using Containers and with VPN.
I have been a fan of DeleteMe now for almost 6 months. It promised to be the best product available, and they delivered. Great service (does exactly what it says it will), customer service, and easy to use. Big thumbs up.
The cross sales are the scariest. When I receive ads that are focused on me that could not possibly come from my account; it is gets very concerning. It's the point where you know your data has been resold.<p>We are a European company and we need to comply with GDPR. The right to be forgotten is basically a human right.<p>DeleteMe works best where we have seen the worst re-sellers, which are often the hardest to remove completely.