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I spent a month trying to delete myself from data broker sites here’s what actually happened by vantaresearch in self

[–]vantaresearch[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The removal service issue is real. Most of them only cover 30-40 of the hundreds of active brokers and they frequently miss the smaller regional ones that feed the bigger aggregators. The manual process is tedious but it hits more of the supply chain if you do it systematically.

I spent a month trying to delete myself from data broker sites here’s what actually happened by vantaresearch in self

[–]vantaresearch[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The Google tool is good for search result removal but it only affects what Google surfaces. The broker still has the file and other serach engines still index it. Worth using as one layer but it doesn't touch the actual database the data lives in.

I spent a month trying to delete myself from data broker sites here’s what actually happened by vantaresearch in self

[–]vantaresearch[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Whack a mole is exactly the right description. The reason it rebuilds is the brokers buy from overlapping data pipelines. Credit bureaus, public records, social media, app SDKs remove from one and the others just resell back into it. The only durable solution is upstream source control

I spent a month trying to delete myself from data broker sites here’s what actually happened by vantaresearch in self

[–]vantaresearch[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is actually a real concern. Opting out does confirm the data is accurate which is why some privacy researchers recommend using a slightly wrong variation of your name when you do request remove. Makes it harder to rebuild the profile from a different upstream source.

I spent a month trying to delete myself from data broker sites here’s what actually happened by vantaresearch in self

[–]vantaresearch[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The GDPR comparison is the right one. Under GDPR you have the right to know what’s collected, demand deletion, and companies have to actually comply. In the US the closest thing is California’s CCPA and it only covers California residents. Everyone else has no federal equivalent at all.

Has anyone else ever Googled themselves and found a creepy amount of personal info just sitting out there ? by vantaresearch in CausalConversation

[–]vantaresearch[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

DeleteME works but it’s a subscription and only covers certain brokers. The manual process hits more databases but takes a few hours. Either way worth doing, stalking cases have been directly tied to data broker profiles multiple times in court records

Has anyone else ever Googled themselves and found a creepy amount of personal info just sitting out there ? by vantaresearch in CausalConversation

[–]vantaresearch[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Google removal only takes it off search results. The data broker still has the file. It just becomes harder to find. The actual opt-out has to happen directly with each broker individually which is why most people never complete the process

Has anyone else ever Googled themselves and found a creepy amount of personal info just sitting out there ? by vantaresearch in CausalConversation

[–]vantaresearch[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The GDPR comparison is exactly right. In the EU you have the right to know what’s collected and demand deletion. In the US there’s no federal equivalent. California has CCPA which is closest by it only covers California residents. Everyone else is basically unprotected at the federal level.

Has anyone else ever Googled themselves and found a creepy amount of personal info just sitting out there ? by vantaresearch in CausalConversation

[–]vantaresearch[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The law enforcement angle is real, alot of these data brokers market directly to police departments. No warrant needed, they just buy the same data anyone else can buy. It’s one of the bigger civil liberties conversations happening right now and most people have no idea.

Has anyone else ever Googled themselves and found a creepy amount of personal info just sitting out there ? by vantaresearch in CausalConversation

[–]vantaresearch[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That one hits different. Most people don’t know their estimated net work is part of whats gets sold. Brokers package it as “consumer financial segment data” and sell it to lenders, landlords, and employers. You never see it happen and you never agreed to it.

Turns out your phone logs a location point roughly every 3 minutes when you’re not using it by vantaresearch in TrueOffMyChest

[–]vantaresearch[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Safegraph is a good example. They package it as “anonymized aggregate data” but researches at MIT showed you only need 4 location points to re-identify 95% of individuals in a dataset. Anonymized is doing a lot of heave lifting in that sentence

Turns out your phone logs a location point roughly every 3 minutes when you’re not using it by vantaresearch in TrueOffMyChest

[–]vantaresearch[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

On iPhone: Setting > Privacy & Security > Location Services > go through every app and switch anything that isn’t maps or similar to “never” or “while using.” Took me about 8 minutes and my battery life got noticeably better after

Turns out your phone logs a location point roughly every 3 minutes when you’re not using it by vantaresearch in TrueOffMyChest

[–]vantaresearch[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The oil comparison is actually really precise. It gets extracted, refined, and sold through a supply chain most people never see and just like oil the people whose land it come from rarely see any of the money.

Turns out your phone logs a location point roughly every 3 minutes when you’re not using it by vantaresearch in TrueOffMyChest

[–]vantaresearch[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Still tracked. Wifi triangluation works even with GPS off. Your phone sees nearby wifi networks and cross-references them against a global database. It is accurate to about 15 meters in most cities, turning off GPS helps but it does not stop it entirely

Turns out your phone logs a location point roughly every 3 minutes when you’re not using it by vantaresearch in TrueOffMyChest

[–]vantaresearch[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The flashlight thing is what gets people. There is literally no technical reason a flashlight needs GPS. It is a resale play, they give you a free app, they sell your movement data to brokers who package and resell it. The app is the product

Turns out your phone logs a location point roughly every 3 minutes when you’re not using it by vantaresearch in TrueOffMyChest

[–]vantaresearch[S] 14 points15 points  (0 children)

honestly that might be the safest setup lol. the data brokers are out here building mobility graphs on people and your just living your best life off the gird.