Ask HN: My personal info was on the Internet, and so is yours | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: My personal info was on the Internet, and so is yours

5 pointsmancerayder6 comments

Some colleagues just alerted me to some sites that aggregate your full name, address, phone number, e-mail addresses, and personal associated with you, and past location.

Go ahead and look yourself up, if you have the misfortune of living in the United States, where no legislation exists to prevent this unethical behavior.

https://www.usphonebook.com/ - saw my name, father's name, e-mail addresses, and several addresses. Luckily, they screwed up relatives.

I opted out easily after agreeing to TOCs I didn't read (criminal bastards, what choice did they leave me with).

https://www.spokeo.com

I opted out after googling the link. This was sleazier: they wanted an e-mail address (used mailinator), and then promised me that the info might come back because they can't control the aggregators.

So we're not allowed to force these companies to opt us out, we're not allowed to physically beat up their CEO's and we're not allowed to hack these places to smithereens. So essentially, what ARE we allowed to do other than beg legislators?

ASK HN: What other places exist like these for those of us who want privacy, and want to opt out of all of them?

I wouldn't bother opting out. You'll just get added back in. They don't care.

In fact, opting out may end up giving them more information about you that will end up in their databases.

I routinely use all of these tools for OSINT-type investigations.

I myself tried to opt-out, got a confirmation, and soon ended up back in again. I've talked with many others who've gone through the same fail.

These businesses don't care. There's no legal protections in place. There's no benefit for them to care what you want.

I wanted to try the first one but did not feel comfortable entering a phone number (it seemed counterproductive and kind of ironic).

As for the second link, it turned up nothing for me. I’m not sure if that says more about my online habits or the websites service. I would the former.

I was pretty shocked by how the first link found the first (or second?) email address I ever had. I was trying to remember what it was, and they knew!

privacy on the internet is a farce

Sure. So what?

Yeah there is this information out there, but so what?

Google "online identity cleansing"

That's too extreme, though. Also some of the top links are useful but a bit old. I do love how the WaPo says to give the middle finger (figuratively) to the Terms and Conditions of sites and lie about your birth date.

Definitely change you birthdate on Facebook and family associations (remove the 'this is my relative' type of status)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com