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Comment by Scoundreller | Hacker News Reader

I want someone to start an opt-out service, where I send them $20, and they send a book of names by registered mail for opt-outs every month.

An online opt-out system is too easy for them. I want each one to get a phone-book sized list of opt-outs every month.

And the same for data requests. Someone that curates the data collectors, and sends them requests every month.

Do you know which country’s “do not call” list I want to be on? All of them! Get my number on the AU list, the UK list, the DE list...

Let’s crash the system.

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Would be a great idea and I bet it could be successful, but maybe at a lower price point and using lots of automation of opt-out forms. As far as opting out of many credit reporting agencies, check out https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0262-stopping-unsolici... https://www.optoutprescreen.com/?rf=t

Also it seems like theres a service like this called Delete Me, but it also seems like theyre a manual opt-out shop. Would be cool if you could find a way to not have humans doing it. Bet they're just having people on amazon mechanical turk fill these out or something like that. https://joindeleteme.com/how-we-work/

Easier to just send them your own template on paper instead of using theirs.

It should be like a doctor’s prescription in a lot of places: as long as it’s on paper and has the right elements, it’s valid.

Well then thats the trick. A legal research team that develops the form for as many sites as you could find, and then a mechanism to send that form filled with each users data to those sites.

Like, what more do they need than disambiguating identity info and a declaration that I'm opting out? E.g. name and DOB?

My only fear is that you're now sending this all to them, but in 2019, we can safely say your name+DOB+address isn't a secret. Or national identity number if that's a thing in your jurisdiction.

It's the metadata around it we want wiped out.

> I want someone to start an opt-out service, where I send them $20, and they send a book of names by registered mail for opt-outs every month

This exists but it's not cheap: https://www.abine.com/deleteme/

“DeleteMe experts find and remove your personal information.”

Blargh, let the data broker figure out if I’m in their DB or not.

Trying to determine that myself seems risky. Better to send the request to every broker in existence.

I'm not rich but $129/year isn't bad. I'd hesitate mostly because I assume such services are scams.

It's a legit service. I use them and they did ensure that my data was removed from the services they specified. Obviously I'm just some person on the internet so my statement has no intrinsic credibility, but I believe they were also validated in a nyt article awhile back.

Actually working on that project right now - www.thekanary.com. Super early stage but have a big list of brokers and opt out links that I'm automating. Would love early feedback.

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