• Nicro@discuss.tchncs.de
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    13 hours ago

    In reality they do help superficially, but they very much inflate their numbers on a shiny dashboard, showing you how much they’re helping. All while only hitting a small fraction of databrokers.

    I also think, that as a subscription solution to a problem, they could turn into the online version of turbotax any second now. Lobbying for harder self-optouts so that their service stays relevant.

  • belluck@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    IIRC, they’re not a scam, but they also aren’t doing anything you couldn’t do yourself. They’re just sending opt-out requests to data brokers on your behalf.

    • Steve
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      1 day ago

      There are hundreds of those data brokers. And new ones opening as others close every week. Doing it yourself, and keeping up with it on a regular basis? That’s nearly a full time job. Nobody does that.

      • lattrommi@lemmy.ml
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        16 hours ago

        I used to spend one day each year doing all the opt outs and data delete requests i could find. it was going well for me until this year. i averaged about 2-3 spam emails a day, combined across 5 different emails, one was made all the way back in 1997 and two of them were made when gmail first started.

        someone got breached this year, i don’t know who, and now i get a lot more.

        i also used firefox monitor to check for info on breach websites and darkweb lists, around the same time i started getting more spam, my list of breached info went from ~16 to 600+.

      • MoonMelon@lemmy.ml
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        23 hours ago

        I’ve tried, it sucks. Each broker has their own process, often several steps, and often a step is broken (like server errors, can’t get past a captcha, “try again later”, etc). You end up not just having to do the process, but also follow up with many of the ones that are ambiguous or returned server errors or whatnot. I did the top 8 or so brokers and then stopped.

      • Sunsofold@lemmings.world
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        24 hours ago

        Quite. Some of them make it as difficult as possible, requiring the request to be physically printed and sent in via the post. Some hide the information regarding how to make the request as obscurely as possible. And essentially none of them treat it as a ‘and don’t collect any more’ request so they just start up a new collection on you the next time you do basically anything with one of their ‘business partners.’ Allowing people to request deletion is just the excuse they use to keep collection legal when it shouldn’t be.

  • 🌞🌞🌞@sopuli.xyz
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    23 hours ago

    If you want that service, don’t consider anything else besides EasyOptOuts, it’s both the cheapest and most effective option.

    • bl4kers@lemmy.ml
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      16 hours ago

      How is it the most effective option? They seem to cover less sites than others

  • ashughes@feddit.uk
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    1 day ago

    Reject Convenience did a pretty good breakdown of DeleteMe, Incogni and the data broker industry on their YouTube channel a while back. It’s a good overview but, fair warning, it might send you down a bit of a rabbit hole after watching.

    video

  • Buffy@libretechni.ca
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    1 day ago

    If you have a Discover card, they offer a service like this for free. I’m not sure how good it is, but since they already have my information I figured it was fine to use their service instead of increasing my footprint by passing my info to another company. It also hasn’t found anything since I started using it because I did what they do manually, years ago.

  • Steve
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    1 day ago

    There are several companies that do this.
    Even Mozilla did until this month.

    DeleteMe seems not to be the best. They might sell data to places while getting it removed from other places.

    I just signed up with Incogni which is one of the biggest.

  • SlicedPotato@feddit.dk
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    11 hours ago

    Several of the big privacy people have recommended them online, e.g. Techlore, so I’d say yes. Though it’s been a couple years since I saw those reviews, and I haven’t read up on them recently.

    EDIT: Grammar.

  • Cassa@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    heard that stuff like deleteme and incogni sell your data to other places so if you ever stop subscribing so I’d avoid it myself 🤷

    you can do it yourself, find a list of brokers and send the same mail/pdf or whatever to them all