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PaperclipPerfector  27d ago (text post)   2852 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 27, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Have any of you tried those "protect your personal info" sites, that promise to 'remove your data from the web' and stop spam calls etc?

I don't get a huge amount of spam calls, but always a few per week. I hesitate to provide my info to some company on the web so that they can stop others from getting that info. Unless the company is trustworthy...

I've done one before, forget which one. Did a bit of research on them beforehand.

They basically emailed a bunch of places and requested that my name and personal data be removed.

Not sure what effect it had if any. I still get the occasional spam call.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=AXfZ8remiDE

This video is exactly about this. The guy is promoting his (future) business, but what he’s saying still holds true.

I wouldn’t trust data broker removal services.

For these services to remove your information from the internet, you first have to give them all your details.

Then, they either spam companies with emails requesting that the pages be removed or outsource the form filling to Indians or Pakistanis.

They also usually take down your info from completely irrelevant websites that Google doesn’t even index. To actually get the results you want, you’d have to pay for their more expensive tiers or whatever.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I assumed. It feels a bit paradoxical to give out sensitive info in an attempt to reduce sensitive info.

They don't (as far as I know) "stop" others from getting that info, but they try to take it down from various places that are obligated for one reason or another to honor takedown requests. I have never used such a service.

How would they do that?

I don't know! Hoping someone will enlighten me.

My baseline assumption is "they don't do that, it's a scam".

You could pretty easily automate a Euro "right to be forgotten" request and call it a day I guess?

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