Show HN: Remove your data from 100 platforms without signing up | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Remove your data from 100 platforms without signing up

offlist.me

Hi HN,

I run a cold email agency. Over the years, I’ve received a lot of replies like “Where did you get my data?”

That made me look deeper into how personal data is scraped, bundled, and resold across dozens of platforms. What surprised me most was the irony: most privacy tools require you to create an account, submit ID, or start a subscription just to remove your data.

So I built Offlist.me, generate opt-out emails in one click to remove your data from 100+ sites. Emails are drafted directly in your email client(website or app).

NO SIGN UP, NO DASHBOARD, NO EXPENSIVE SUBSCRIPTION

I’m mainly looking for feedback from the HN crowd: Is this something people would pay for?

I really appreciate any honest feedback (positive or negative).

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Is there any way that a potential customer for this service could be convinced that their data was actually removed from these 100+ sites and that they can be convinced what that really actually accomplished? Are there other sites that provide similar services and you could present a comparison showing the pros and cons of each service? If you could do those things then this might more interesting to me. But I have seen some data collection/data search sites that have an opt-out feature down at the bottom along with a disclaimer that yes, if you ask us to remove your data we will do that, BUT you must realize that does not remove your data from the other thousand or billion sites on the net that also have your data and this opt-out is going to do nothing to remove your data from any of them.

I really appreciate your response. Most companies are legally required to honour the data removal email request.

Offlist is just a tool to make opt out process easier.

Btw, I will be definitely looking more in to your feedback and update the app accordingly in the future.

I wouldn't use this. First of all, you are asking for my information to generate the emails, so saying "no sign up" is one of those things that is technically true, but you are getting my data anyway. Secondly, it might not be an expensive subscription, but it is not free. So with those two stretches of the truth, I already don't trust you. And not trusting you, there is no way I'm letting anything you create run scripts in my mail clients.

If you are really wanting to provide this service, you would provide templates and let people fill in their own info.

I can understand your feedback. You’re right that “no signup” can still feel misleading if the app asks for name/email, even if nothing is stored. The intent was purely to pre-fill templates locally, but I agree that trust-wise, that distinction may not matter.

One change I’m actively considering based on feedback like this is removing personal info inputs entirely and defaulting to: select platforms > generate email directly on your own email app/website.

On pricing: the goal wasn’t to hide that it isn’t free, but to avoid subscriptions and data lock-in. The app is free to use to generate email removal requests for up to 3 platforms (+3 if you share with your social media). So the free user can generate email removal requests for 6 platforms(any 6 from the 100+ available platforms according to their priority).

That said, I agree that even a small payment raises the trust bar significantly for a privacy tool.

This feedback is helpful, and I really appreciate it. Feel free to let me know if you have any questions.

Edit: I have updated the app so it now asks for nothing and generates the removal email request directly. It made the user journey simpler. Thank you so much for your valuable feedback.

One thing that surprised me while building this was how much manual effort is involved if you try to do this carefully. Finding the correct contacts and writing compliant data removal requests. It takes around 29+ hours for 100+ platforms.

I’m curious how people here handle this today: fully DIY, scripts, or any tool?

Was this written with ChatGPT lmao

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