Data Removal Services: A Costly Myth?

[@microbroadcast]

I like the fact that you are willing to change your minds if new evidence comes to light!

[@Technopath47]

You should cover the GDPR Cookie Banners now having either "Accept All" or "Reject and Pay" options now. I'm pretty sure this is a GDPR violation, and even if it's not it's insane.

[@PremiumGerman]

That's a violation yes GDPR requires a usable site without accepting cookies

[@ChainReactionPodcast]

I applaud y'all for the podcast-style format, and the back and forth discussion. I am a fan of your content and I've watched a lot of your videos. I would humbly suggest either picking up the pace of your discussion and/ or editing the segment to accelerate the pace a bit bc the episode feels longer and slower than the ideal. Also, I would like to hear more about the reasons one would NOT purchase XMR by first buying BTC, and then swapping it for XMR, especially any privacy concerns around the permanent, public record of the first transaction on the BTC blockchain. I have heard some folks say they wouldn't touch BTC at all due to chainalysis and the permanence of the info on the BTC chain. I've also heard an XMR developer advise people NOT to mix KYC XMR with non-KYC XMR. I would value a deep dive into these topics. Love your show and sincerely appreciate your work on behalf of privacy advocates everywhere.

[@a.randomjack6661]

"We have no clue of how easily we are manipulated' -Marketing 101

[@a.randomjack6661]

I would recommend "The Century of the Self" documentary on KZbin. It's a good starting point.

[@Youtube207user]

What do you guys suggest people do after the social security hack? Other than freezing with the credit bureaus. Thanks in advance

[@Disaurae]

Probably best to make real life changes. Once it is on the darkweb don't believe the idea that it can be removed from there. You have to make real life changes.

[@techlore]

That's a loaded one for a comment, but 1000% make sure your credit is frozen. That's the #1 thing you can do right now

[@MiKEY_SANZ]

@@techlore Please review OneRep!

[@tylerduval2186]

I've been suspicious of these services since I saw them

[@tod3273]

Nice info but i can’t find the links to the data removal research or the interviews mentioned.

[@I.____.....__...__]

So Google will check (read "google" 😒) if your personal information has been leaked... if you give them all of your personal information? 🤨

[@iptaylor]

Any suggestions for "Opt out" services for non US citizens. E.G. EOO asks for a US address only.

[@caseyeverett5246]

What about consumer reports own free service, permission slip?

[@jordank249]

In the full report, CR notes that they do not offer what these firms claim, so the "permission slip" service was not evaluated.

[@DriftingMonkeyx]

1:05:00 I'd say the reason because they removed right click to open unsigned apps is because some apps prompts the user to do that without them knowing why

[@Damariobros]

9:13 That other state would be Nevada - although, you can only force them to stop _selling_ your data, you can't make them delete it under Nevada's laws.

[@XSpImmaLion]

You know, I commented about this before, but I'll make another long winded comment just to leave my thoughts out there. I had written this whole comment on another Techlore video previously only to wrongly click on something and lose the whole thing, but I made another comment on this months before... so it's already out there, but I like to keep revising and properly exposing the subject because I think it's overall important for communities. First of all, I'm very surprised how it seems people in this community, by which I mean security and privacy conscious people who are hyperaware on how Big Tech operates and all the shady schemes we've seen over the years regarding parallel markets for private data and other shady anti-consumer crap in general, I'm very surprised how it doesn't seem that many people see the fundamental issue here. Or perhaps they see, and chose to ignore, or thought that the benefits out weighted the problems. This isn't about single companies, the recent research findings, or something specific to it. This is broadly about the concept itself. About the general idea of paying subscription for services like those. The questions I'm posing here should be done for any other service or product you intend to pay for. And while not being perfect predictors of anything, at least they should give you some measure of evaluation. So, let's go. What is the basic revenue mode of data removal services? You pay them for the service, they'll do thorough researches for your data, and then get in contact with multiple online based websites/portals/services and whatnot asking for them to remove it, right? Ok, this seems like the only thing people are seeing in the entire relationship here. Let's get into it further. How can you evaluate their service? As far as I understand, it's mostly self-reporting, unless you as a costumer spends even more time than manual removal processes checking if services and websites have indeed been contacted by the service and removed your information from their publicly accessed services. Which is something most people won't do, because they are paying for the service because they don't have the time for all that, right? So, it's ultimately a matter of trust. Do you even know of any standard that you can use to measure performance for what you are paying? How much is your money worth of getting in contact with, or removing data from websites, portals, databases and whatnot? What mechanisms do they have to do their job efficiently? Number of employees working on your case? Persistence? Some sort of direct contact inside several different services and companies famous for exposing private data of people? "Specialists" who have been doing this for a while with good results? A proven track record? By which measure? Can you evaluate any of those companies based on anything? Would a nicer ad, or talking points, add more to the value? Is what you are trying to achieve with your payment the same as the company is trying to achieve for itself? This is a major one, so I'll explain it better. The way data removal services operate, supposedly, is by going around asking for other companies to remove your data from them, right? Your ideal scenario is not having to do just that by yourself. You don't want to do it manually yourself, you hire a company to do it for you. Can you see how the way the company makes money gets directly in conflict with what you are paying them to do? Because if not, you should. This isn't about greed, about evil corporations, about late-stage capitalism, or anything that can be seen as patently bad - we're not there yet. But can you see that an honest and clean as heck operation will still need for this scenario to never change so they can keep paying their employees to do a service that you feel necessary? Can you see that there is no end game here? There is no need for a data removal service if the data isn't there in the first place, right? Can you ever see a data removal service company telling you that you don't need to pay for their services anymore because they already got in contact with all businesses they know about, they forced those companies to comply with data removal requests, and promise they won't do it again? If not, do you plan to pay for their services eternally? As a cost of business? If you understand where I'm getting at, we're halfway there. At the best possible hypothesis for these companies, the scenario will never change, so they can keep doing business with you. You'll continue paying them for the rat's race of other businesses exposing your info, and them asking those to remove your info. It's ok to admit that this is the reality nowadays, and it has become cost of business or privacy to you - but as I already said, this is only half the way there. We're assuming the best possible scenario, with only the best intentions from those companies, which I'll also add is unrealistic as heck. Now, let's step into the darkness for a moment here. What can happen in a scenario like this, if ever those companies feel they need to raise more money, feel the money is getting tight, if they have a CEO or investors who are profit driven, if they need to fiercely compete with other businesses that are also vying for subscription money, or if someone in the company is just a plain asshole who doesn't actually care about your data at all? Again, I'm not talking about complete evil here, I'm talking about realities of the market. Do note that what I'm describing up there is not a case in the market, it's the market itself. It's how businesses operate these days, which is why I'm talking about being hyperaware of how Big Tech works, with how privacy is valued these days, with how several companies these days operate.

[@XSpImmaLion]

There are a million plus one bad ways this can go, and you likely have heard most of them. One of those businesses could simply generate false reports. You don't have a way of measuring them, there is no standard to doing it, and apart from a few investigative journalists and whatnot that couldn't care less about your troubles, unless you are willing to put in more effort into looking at what exactly they are doing, which you already don't because that's why you hired them in the first place, they could just generate bogus reports and you'd be none the wiser. What makes this particularly insidious is that since it's a personal service made for you only, regarding your personal data, any sort of evaluation by third parties, auditing and whatnot will be obfuscated for the fact that other people are not you. These businesses will always have plausible deniability by saying that ill reported cases are not the rule. Or, they could submit a bunch of requests, which they know businesses won't comply with, and show you reports on what ineffective measures they took, for you to be satisfied. Any measure of ineffectiveness could be blamed straight at companies that refuses to comply. It's not our fault that the businesses won't take our requests seriously - our job is only to make them. So you can direct your frustration and anger for your data still being there to the company that didn't comply with the request. Nothing is solved, but you are still paying for the data removal service, and they are arguably still doing their job. Or, they could send takedown requests to some, while also sell your data for others to include in them, since that would guarantee that they have a steady stream of work which you'll never be free from. Or, they could negotiate with a bunch of companies for easy direct access to their systems, and even perhaps some profit sharing to keep the business going. A B2B deal to keep the B2C going. I'll submit a request to you guys, you guys comply with it for now, I'll submit a report to my costumer so he/she sees we do our jobs, then after a while you can put out their data once again, so we tell them they have to keep subscribed to us. I can think of countless other schemes to make this market a sustainable one. Depending on how big or small they go, because of the entire opaque and obfuscated nature of the service, there are countless ways to make this work. What I'm getting to here is that data removal services is a market that cannot have good outcomes in the current state of things. And if the current state of things were to get better, those services would not have a reason to exist. Because the only logical way for businesses like those to exist, is for the current scenario to be self perpetuating. And so, the larger this market gets, the less likely it is for you to have regulations and laws created around privacy to stop businesses from collecting or sharing the data you don't want to be there in the first place. You are in this very case ultimately paying for the continuation of bad practices, whether you like it or not. It might sound like a convenience service, but it really isn't. I dunno if I can explain this better, and perhaps I've done a poor job at it, but I personally cannot see how this makes any sense, particularly for this community, who should already be callous from the effects of this economy. You are giving your money away monthly for a service that you cannot evaluate, that cannot give you any definitive proof of work, that cannot be independently audited since it works in a case per case basis, that is extremely new, and that has a revenue mode that directly goes against what you are paying for. We're skipping the stage of a former industry CEO getting hired into a regulatory body to act as a shill for it, and paying directly for a market that needs bad practices to continue so they can keep having a profit mode, can keep their business going, can have a raison d'etre. This should be immediately clear for anyone thinking about this. So it's quite absurd that it doesn't get raised to question here. You are not paying for lawyers to go against companies that exposes your data, you are paying for people who will get their salaries ever lowered so they can keep being competitive to politely ask for businesses to take down information they have on you. It's a further step down in reliability, credibility and effectiveness if you were asking for this yourself, which you already know has low chances of actually happening. There is no collective bargaining power there since the request is backed by nothing, and in some of those services you are actually putting yet another company that will store your information so that they can do their jobs. One more company to leak, get hacked and that could potentially sell your data too. There is nothing actually there. It's security and privacy theatre. You have no guarantees of anything, there is no evaluation method for this, there is no standard for efficacy, there is nothing. So what are you putting your money in? How can this community, of all communities out there, be this gullible? I just don't get it.

[@hiddenknowledge3275]

Great one guys, hope y’all are doing well.

[@deconstruct1]

Opting out does not = deletion. These services keep your data and just note that you requested an opt out. Data breaches will still include your information. When they are bought, merged, or otherwise transformed into another data broker company, your data goes with them and the new entity doesn’t have to respect the former opt out. In other words, don’t bother.

[@hiddenknowledge3275]

This is not necessarily always the case. I have noted that in some breaches it is stated that people who used data removal services are not affected. Regardless of the semantics of opt out or deletion it appears these services do help.

[@CeoLogJM]

As a multi-trillionaire, my enemies are mostly randos online who seek to find out information about me and I am less offput by intelligence agencies or corporations having that info as I own all of them, but at least the common man won't get anything on me, you hear??

[@Damariobros]

Whenever I eventually get my first laptop, I hope to get a framework laptop!

[@tiagotiagot]

BTC isn't used, people just let banks handle it for them. It's not the original Bitcoin, it just stole the branding. The Cash one is the one you're looking for, there are wallets with decentralized mixing, with fusion. I wonder if the Yt filter will let this comment stay up; been disappearing lots of innocent comments lately... And it was a bit tricky to think how to say things here in a way that wouldn't upset the filter... Let's see if I avoided bad phrasing.... edit: Looks like the comment survived so far....

[@savannahesposito9307]

Any thoughts on Aura vs delteme and others?

[@blogdesign7126]

This is a bummer given that every pro-linux and pro-privacy videos have been talking about data removal services as the best move to reduce data leaks for some time and even here on Techlore. Yes I subscribed to multiple data removal services to test out or search for people search sites and did some manual removals too. But then again the best way for now is to do both manual removal and automated at the same time.

[@etziowingeler3173]

yeah well. I'm not surprised at all, but as they say in the video, the finding is not that all those services are ineffective. Only a couple were investigated. etc.etc.

[@Manstrual]

After using some Sennheiser openbacks for a few years now, I despise the audio quality of the Surface headphones. That said, man I miss the circle sliders. Some of coolest hardware I've ever used. They look sick too.

[@shoop9274]

proton stated they cant accept monero because of legal reasons and you go on for almost an hour compaining about protonmail not breaking the law and using monero...

[@studiously__]

Can somebody in the chat paste the report link pls or mask it

[@George2647g]

Hey were you on a 'hacking' show from canada I think it was online as like maybe under the alias 'glitch' or something.. You look very similar but so young still for a show that was around so long ago, maybe before even early youtube.

[@ben_west]

Huh, Element hasnt been slow for me. Interesting.

[@tiagomoraes1510]

everyday a different loss

[@Casey2262]

Jonah looks super young.

[@jonaharagon]

thank u

[@DOOM11777]

Such a waste of a video without waiting for deleteme to respond.

[@techlore]

This happened last week and we want to be sure people are in the loop of what’s known so far. We are already planning a follow up guide to dealing with data brokers once all information comes to light for us to have proper takeaways for everyone. This isn’t the final video on the topic.

[@MiKEY_SANZ]

@@techlore Please also review OneRep. Why make a video comparing these services and not include OneRep?