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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

"Is there a trustworthy phone number version of https://haveibeenpwned.com?"

An "exact" google search excluding adjacent phone numbers seems to work well for my numbers, and culls a lot (not all) of the autogen pages. So if your number was 212-555-1239, search Google with these strings:

  "(212)555-1239" -1240 -1238

  "212-555-1239" -1240 -1238

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Dear god, fastpeoplesearch.com is a horribly obnoxious treasure trove of information.

Tried it, you're right. Got 6 of my past addresses, 9 past phone numbers, 8 relatives, all correct. Some incorrect info, but not much as a percentage.

If you reverse search the PO Box address listed on the site contact page, you'll find an Amateur Radio license listed to a person that is probably the owner of the site, based on his past experience.

Also, searching for their Adsense publisher id reveals some other sites they own: peoplesearchnow.com, fastbackgroundcheck.com, smartbackgroundchecks.com

Those sites have new and different PO Boxes in other cities, etc.

I am amazed and horrified at the fact data brokers like that are legal. and the hoops to which you must leap in order to get your information out of them, even with california privacy laws.

Yup. That's why I pretty much deleted all my social media with my real first name, last name etc.

Imagine getting into a facebook argument with someone and that person becomes so emotionally enraged with what you said that they go to your house.

I just tried it on myself and I felt violated reading how much info is out there.

Just submitted a removal request for myself, a flow full of dark patterns (in fact the Remove button didn't even show up until I disabled my Pi-Hole). Remains to be seen whether all I did was make the data more valuable by confirming my email address. The page recommends signing up at BrandYourself to prevent various other data brokers from showing the same data. How is this not extortion?

"The page recommends signing up at BrandYourself"

Is is a link? BrandYourself has an affiliate program, so they are probably making money on referrals.

so if I search my phone number, it brings me to my name and everything. But if I search my name it doesn't get my phone number right. Any ideas why it's like that?

This is just one of the websites. Here is a list of all the websites which have your information with easy links to opt-out from them.

I do not maintain this but don't know where I got this from, however I have notifications when this spreadsheets gets updated to remove my information from another website

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10wzyKEl-fAxjCD42u9HQ...

Yikes. That's the only one of those that was even close to being accurate for me. And I'm not sure I can get it removed because they don't have any of the right email addresses. I don't usually leave much of a trail on these sites, but the info that is correct vs incorrect makes me suspect they probably got it from one of my parents.

Good idea, I’ll give that a whirl later. Great tip to filter out those auto-generated list sites. Thanks.

you genius

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