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Comment by SippinLean | Hacker News Reader

There are at least 50 data brokers I've had my information removed from. They will say whatever they can--"we need proof," "it's just public information anyway."

Every time I insisted they take it down, right now. Every time they have complied.

There's so many it's basically pulling weeds at this point.

The scarier companies are the ones collecting pictures of your face to train their private facial recognition software.

(Hell I'm hesitant to post HERE because you can't manage the privacy, content or existence of your comments)

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Some data brokers are threatening you with "if you get removed from our database you will be marked as high risk of fraud and your transactions/orders you do online like hotel reservations will get rejected/put on hold for screening".

Well played. Absolutely legal but totally immoral

But is it true? If not then I'm pretty sure in the UK at least there's some law against it.

There are certainly rules in the GDPR about automated decision-making that might be relevant.

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-22-gdpr/

https://gdpr-info.eu/recitals/no-71/

I don't know, but I'd think it's slightly true I'd guess you'll be marked in THEIR database, so if the hotel happens to use that company's lists, you might be marked, but not be high risk in anyone else's books...

That's not legal, because that is still personal information being stored. They have to delete it all, upon request.

The implication (whether true or false) is that some company might treat the absence of a record in their database as suspicious.

> There's so many it's basically pulling weeds at this point.

...and they are often run by the same people. They use shell companies to basically avoid take-down requests.

Their goals is to make it sufficiently annoying to take down your information, that most people give up. While at the same time removing it (regardless of the process) for anyone that occupies them too much time - because your individual data isn't valuable enough to waste defending against a take-down.

I suspect a (faux) lawyers letter is easier to get these takedowns processed than the calls/emails that most people try.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has had success with any legal measure that would enjoin them or any other entity they're in any way affiliated with or that shares common ownership.

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