Linus Torvalds Being Based

How Do I Remove Sensitive Information Online?

I made a post on Lemmy recently and received a lot of negative feedback for requesting on advice on how to remove my information or just straight up not use my physical home address and instead maybe a PO box. After all the feedback I got, I decided that this wouldn’t be possible. Also, it might not even be the bank that leaked my information but my government. Doesn’t matter too much to me but it got leaked by someone in the first place.

As I looked at my data online I noticed that every one of my adult family members also had their info leaked, so it very well could be the government voting and DMV databases needing to have public records and not banks themselves.

Choices

Knowing that every adult citizen has their info leaked online, how do I stop this? Obviously no sensible person wants their information out there even the most “I have nothing to hide so you can see my browsing activity, porn habits, text messages, audio recordings in my house, etc.” sympathizer. If you don’t want to fake your death, live out in the wilderness like Ralph Waldo Emerson, never sign up for a credit card, a bank, buy a house, or move to a privacy respecting country that doesn’t care what would you do? Maybe you heard of those sponsors on your favorite YouTube channel advertising DeleteMe or on the radio about Reputation Defender. Maybe you even looked them up and saw that they cost $129 a year and didn’t want to shell out that much money on something that you’re trusting another company that might leak your data even further.

Data Removal Services

I spent the entire day going through all the thoughts in my head like you guys might be doing right now. I then read the Reddit comment (I’m sorry lemmy people, yes, I still find information on Reddit. I still use Lemmy daily though) from EasyOptOut’s reddit account stating that if the information is out there, the company you’re handing over your information won’t benefit from anything since they could easily just find your information for free on the people finder websites. Of course, I could also do it for free, but I looked at California’s data broker list and found over 500 companies and started to feel defeated. In reality, you probably don’t have your information on all of them and if you maybe do a few dozen of them it will domino effect down and remove them for all the other services, still, I would rather have more experienced people to do this kind of thing.

Choosing EasyOptOuts

Alright, now that I’ve decided to wipe my stuff using one of these data removal services, which one do I choose. Over the course of my research I found DeleteMe, Incogni, Optery, Norton Privacy Assist, StackSocial, PrivacyBee, and EasyOptOuts. I went through each one of these websites to do a superficial test. As I do with any website, I always check for trackers and analytics and check some reviews from people online and on Reddit. I checked out all the sites and almost all of them except EasyOptOuts use Google trackers and analytics, they don’t respect the Do Not Track if you have it enabled in your browser. I even found a post on Reddit saying that after they used Incogni, they got spam email.

Now, as I was doing all this research, EasyOptOut’s account was by far, the most resourceful, even providing information on how to opt out on your own, citing multiple guides, one comment even gave a link to how to form an LLC when you buy a property in the first place to prevent this from happening. They even made a spreadsheet on comparing all the competitions (checkout their Google Spreadsheet or CryptPad Spreadsheet I Converted). So clearly, at only $20/year I went with EasyOptOuts. How bad could it be?

I read some comments saying EasyOptOuts removed them from 60 Data Brokers by the next day. Heck, they were right. Decided to registered last night and by this afternoon I got an email saying it opted me out of 60 data brokers already. I can’t find my information online anywhere. Oh, also, they don’t ask for your ID or anything so it’s pretty cool. So if you’re looking to erase some of this stuff, EasyOptOuts isn’t a bad suggestion.

 

⚠️ Disclaimer

I have NO affiliation with them whatsoever and YMMV but if you want to take a little risk like I did, you might be surprised.