beyondd

Extensive analysis of Optery and the topic of removing your personal info from the web on HN here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30605010

This is great, but removing the info from Google does nothing to remove it from the source. People search data brokers are one of the most common sources of unwanted posting of home address, phone number and email. If that's the info you want to remove, you can use Google as a tool for discovery to figure out who is posting the info, and then opt out at the source to have it removed. For more coverage you can use Optery's free crawl / scrape / scan of the people search data broker sites for you, and use that to have the listings removed from the source. Wherever possible, removing the info from the source is much better than just removing it from Google.

Optery's Policy States: "To delete your personal information. If you want it to be removed from our systems, you should delete your account from the Login & Security section of your Account page and all of the information we hold about you will be destroyed. If you make this request, we will delete the personal information we hold about you as of the date of your request from our records and direct any service providers to do the same. In some cases, deletion may be accomplished through de-identification of the information."

https://www.optery.com/privacy-policy/

Optery provides fantastic opt out guides with more on the way here:

https://www.optery.com/opt-out-guides/

To compare Removaly and Optery, the best thing to do is to sign up for each company’s free scan and compare the results. The quality of a data removal company’s free scan is a good indicator of the quality of its opt outs. A lot of the companies in the space have incredible marketing that creates high hopes, but their products are ineffective. The quality of the free scan is usually a tip off if the service is going to be a winner or a let-down before you turn over your credit card. Optery’s free scans produce an average of 70+ results per person (sometimes over 100+ results). I’m not aware of Removaly or any other company coming anywhere close to that number.

16 years ago there were no privacy laws and very little public awareness and enforcement for privacy, so it was easy for data brokers to ignore removal requests and they operated largely unchecked. But a lot has changed since 2006. Real privacy laws are being enacted, the public has become outraged, and several lawsuits have been prosecuted against data brokers successfully.

This has led data brokers to taking opt out requests much more seriously, with most of them investing in real technical infrastructure to handle and process opt outs successfully. Until the CCPA was passed, there was not even a standard requirement for a data broker to even have an opt out page.

Today, if you Google the name of someone using a data removal service like Optery, versus the name of someone that does not, you will see a night and day difference in the number of listings in Google from data brokers. Without Optery, you’ll find dozens of data broker listings with current and past home addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, age, family members names, etc. With Optery, that information will be almost impossible to find making bad actors much more likely to move on to the next person who has not taken steps to protect their privacy.

To compare Removaly and Optery, the best thing to do is to sign up for each company’s free scan and compare the results. The quality of a data removal company’s free scan is a good indicator of the quality of its opt outs. A lot of the companies in the space have incredible marketing that creates high hopes, but their products are ineffective. The quality of the free scan is usually a tip off if the service is going to be a winner or a let-down before you turn over your credit card. Optery’s free scans produce an average of 70+ results per person (sometimes over 100+ results). I’m not aware of any other company coming anywhere close to that number.

Like Abine’s DeleteMe, it does not look like Removaly offers a monthly billing option. Optery offers monthly or yearly billing options. If you’re really price sensitive, you could run the Optery Ultimate plan for a few months and then cancel, and likely have much better coverage than had you purchased an annual plan from Removaly or DeleteMe.

Optery also offers the strongest 30-day no questions asked money back guarantee: https://help.optery.com/en/article/how-does-your-30-day-mone...

DeleteMe covers 38 data brokers (https://joindeleteme.com/sites-we-remove-from/). Optery covers 200+ data brokers (https://www.optery.com/pricing/#data-brokers-we-cover)

Optery provides a free Exposure Report with screen shots of all the places your profile has been found online. If you already use another service like Abine’s DeleteMe, use Optery’s free Exposure Report to double-check their work and you’ll probably be surprised by how many profiles Optery finds (20 – 40 on average). For paying customers, Optery provides Removals Reports with before and after screenshots to prove its work. At the time of this writing, DeleteMe does not provide screen shot evidence of their removals work.

If you want to compare services, the best thing to do is to sign up for each company’s free scan and compare the results. The quality of each company’s free scan is a good indicator of the quality of its opt outs. A lot of the companies in the space have incredible marketing that creates high hopes, but their products are ineffective. The quality of the free scan is usually a tip off if the service is going to be a hero or a dud before you turn over your credit card. Optery’s free scans produce an average of 70+ results per person that can be verified visually through screen shots (sometimes over 100+ results). I’m not aware of any other company coming anywhere close to that number. Most don’t even cover that many data brokers to begin with.

OneRep covers ~100 data brokers. Optery covers ~200 data brokers.

OneRep has affiliate partnerships with data brokers (https://imgur.com/a/juSC66b). Optery does not have any affiliate partnerships with any data brokers.

OneRep is based in Belarus. Optery is based in the USA.

Optery provides a free Exposure Report with screen shots of all the places your profile has been found online. If you already use another service like OneRep, use Optery’s free Exposure Report to double-check their work and you’ll probably be surprised by how many profiles Optery finds (20 – 40 on average). For paying customers, Optery provides Removals Reports with before and after screenshots to prove its work. No other service I'm aware of provides this level of verification.

If you want to compare services, the best thing to do is to sign up for each company’s free scan and compare the results. The quality of each company’s free scan is a good indicator of the quality of its opt outs. A lot of the companies in the space have incredible marketing that creates high hopes, but their products are ineffective. The quality of the free scan is usually a tip off if the service is going to be a hero or a dud before you turn over your credit card. Optery’s free scans produce an average of 70+ results per person (sometimes over 100+ results). I’m not aware of any other company coming anywhere close to that number. Most don’t even cover that many data brokers to begin with.

When comparing data removal services like DeleteMe, Optery, PrivacyBee, Removaly, OneRep, LifeLock, The Kanary, and Reputation Defender, you should:

1) Sign up for each company’s free scan and compare the results. The quality of each company’s free scan is a good indicator of the quality of its opt outs. If the company can’t produce a free scan, they probably shouldn’t be taken seriously. A lot of the companies in the space have incredible marketing that creates high hopes, but their products are actually very disappointing and ineffective. The quality of the free scan is usually a tip off if the service is going to be a hero or a dud before you turn over your credit card. Optery’s free scans produce an average of 70+ results per person (sometimes over 100+ results). I’m not aware of any other company coming anywhere close to that number. Most don’t even cover that many data brokers to begin with. You can learn more about the Optery Exposure Report (free scan) here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVUmjbOG9vY

2) Check the number of data brokers each service covers. Optery covers 200+ data brokers. Whereas, according to their web sites, DeleteMe covers 38, Removaly covers 47, and OneRep covers 94. Some companies don’t even list the data brokers they cover (that's a bad sign). Also, check to see if the company offers “Custom Removals” for when you find a data broker that their service does not cover. Optery provides Custom Removals, and here’s the full list of data brokers covered:

https://www.optery.com/pricing/#data-brokers-we-cover

3) Check to see where the company is headquartered and primarily based, and if it is being run as a corporation, or as someone’s side-hustle. A lot of people are surprised when they find out that OneRep is headquartered in Belarus, since they maintain an LLC, mailing address and a few employees in the U.S.A. Do some background research on each company and its leadership team before you give them any money. Where are they based? Are they professional? Can you take them seriously? Do they have financial partnerships with data brokers? Many of the companies in the space do not list their leadership team on their web site. This is often because the business is being run as a side-hustle for someone with a day job, sometimes from a different country. Optery is incorporated in the state of Delaware as a C Corporation, and is headquartered in California. You can learn more about the company’s mission and leadership here:

https://www.optery.com/about-us/

4) Ensure you are not inadvertently funding the very data brokers you’re trying to be removed from. Most of the companies in the space are high integrity companies with no ties or financial arrangements with the data broker industry. But some are not. OneRep and BrandYourself (parent company of Zoro Privacy and HelloPrivacy) are known for having ties into the data broker through affiliate partnerships. For example, here’s a screenshot of the data broker ClustrMaps directing you to their affiliate partner OneRep after your opt out is complete. Avoid these companies unless you want to fund the very companies you're trying to be removed from.

https://imgur.com/a/juSC66b

5) Demand evidence in the form of screen shots or direct links. Most of these companies will tell you your profiles have been removed, and force you to take their word for it. Optery is the only company I am aware of that provides direct links to your profiles so you can verify at the source when a profile is removed, and also sends out a quarterly “Removals Report” with before and after screen shots proving the work that’s been done. You can also use Optery’s free Exposure Report and links to double-check the work of any other service to keep them honest.

6) Check to see if the service offers monthly and yearly billing options. Optery offers both, but many other services only offer yearly billing.

7) Review the company’s guarantee. Optery provides a 30 day no questions asked money back guarantee.

https://help.optery.com/en/article/how-does-your-30-day-mone...

8) Don’t put too much weight in the reviews you read online. The sad reality is that a large percentage of them are bought or just written using fake accounts by the company’s employees or founders to try to influence you or game their rankings in search engines. This is why my #1 recommendation is to sign up for a free scan to start vetting the company’s product yourself.

There are a lot of reasons why people submit opt outs beyond whether or not they can pay, e.g. victims of domestic violence, police officers, court order, public figures, government officials, members of the military, etc. The data brokers are aware of this and generally have processes to accommodate the requests.

If you do nothing, your information will continue to persist, multiply, and propagate unchecked. Those that take the time (or money) to remove the profiles, have dramatically reduced online footprints, which is why services like Optery are becoming more and more popular. Many companies are starting to mandate their employees use services like this to strengthen their security posture to reduce exposure to phishing, hacking, email spam, etc. Similar to being required to use a VPN or MFA at work to protect the security of the company.

Optery is opt out software. It uses a custom search technology to locate profiles being exposed and sold by data brokers online. It then automates the submissions and communications necessary to execute opt out requests to have the information removed. It monitors (re-scans), and re-submits and manages opt out requests as necessary on an ongoing basis when new profiles pop back up again. Optery is continually adding support for more and more data brokers.

Sorry. This was stated in the original post text above, but clearly many people did not see it. We do warn people before they submit any information. Many apologies.

Definitely. One of the main reasons Optery is only for U.S. residents at this time, is because the problem is at its worst here. We need a privacy law at the federal level with a strong right to opt out, and some teeth in the law for enforcement.

When a user signs up for Optery, the scanning / matching technology finds 70+ matched profiles at data brokers on average with a typical range from 50 to 100. You’ll find these results in your Exposure Report after the scan completes, typically within 1 hour from sign up. False positives in the Optery Exposure Reports are rare, but do happen sometimes. The most common reasons for false positives are:

1) The user either intentionally or accidentally inputs incorrect data when they signed up. For example, today we had a customer complain about false positives, and then when we looked into it, it turned out he had accidentally input his birth year incorrectly when signing up.

2) The user has a common name and lives in a big city. Optery looks at lots of data before its confident in the match, but false positives can slip through for example when there are multiple people named John Robert Smith, age 38, living in New York City.

The best way to reduce false positives, and the accuracy of Optery’s scans in general, is to add more information to your profile beyond the minimum required to sign up (e.g. middle name, past cities and states you’ve lived in, etc). This helps with our matching algorithms.

If what you’re referring to are the "View" links to data brokers in your dashboard, as mentioned elsewhere in the comments, the “View” links have limitations. After the comments here, we made a few quick cosmetic updates to reduce the confusion (the updates are described elsewhere in the comments) and we have several changes planned to make the dashboard more intuitive. More info on what’s going on is here:

https://help.optery.com/en/article/what-if-a-view-link-leads...

Sorry, this statement for citizens outside of the U.S. is buried in the middle of the original post so some people did not see it:

"Optery is only for U.S. residents at this time"

If you go to the Optery sign up page, after you select your country, we again warn non-U.S. residents of this before they submit their information.

The only benefit to signing up for Optery if you are from a non-U.S. country is we will notify you when we begin supporting your country.

Optery covers 200+ data brokers, whereas Removaly only covers 51 data brokers per their web site. Optery’s average scan results find 70+ profiles exposed and often top 100+ profiles exposed (scans are free by the way). Removaly is more comparable to Abine’s DeleteMe service whose “Sites We Remove From” page states they only cover 38 data brokers.

In world where Optery is finding 70 – 100 exposed profiles on a first scan, what use is a service like Removaly or DeleteMe that only officially cover 40 – 50?

Optery’s Ultimate plan also offers something called “Custom Removals”, which means if you find a profile the Ultimate plan does not cover, you can submit it and Optery will make a best effort to remove it: https://help.optery.com/en/article/ultimate-plan-offers-best...

Regarding easyoptouts, if you’re really price sensitive and looking for a super cheap option, just upgrade your Optery plan for 1 month. Let Optery’s opt out bot run for 30 days on 200+ data brokers and then cancel the plan before the next monthly payment is due. By cancelling the plan, you won’t benefit from the ongoing coverage and the new data brokers continually being added to the plans, but Optery’s Free Basic plan provides free quarterly scans and reports, so you could always turn it back on based on what your exposure reports are saying.

In the vast majority of cases Optery only submits the opt out (a) if we’ve already located your profile at the data broker, meaning they already have your information to begin with and (b) with the minimum information necessary to complete the out, generally First Name, Last Name, Age, Current City, and Current State, no more information than what’s already publicly available online.

At this price I believe Optery still provides more value than easyoptouts. For $9.99, half the price of easyoptouts, you could let Optery’s opt out bot run for 30 days on 100+ data brokers and then cancel the plan before the next monthly payment is due. For $24.99, about the same price as easyoptouts, you could let Optery’s opt out bot run for 30 days on 200+ data brokers and then cancel the plan before the next monthly payment is due.

By cancelling the plan, you wouldn’t benefit from the ongoing scanning, monitoring, and removals from companies that take longer than 30 days, or the coverage for the new data brokers continually being added to the plans. But Optery’s Free Basic plan provides free quarterly scans and reports, so you could always turn it back on based on what the reports are saying.

Optery is only for U.S. residents at this time. Sorry, this statement is buried in the middle of the original post so some people did not see it.

If you go to the sign up page, after you select your country, we again warn non-U.S. residents of this before they submit their information. The only benefit to signing up if you are from a non-U.S. country is we will notify you when we begin supporting your country.

If you are a dual citizen, just select your primary city and state in the U.S. There's no functionality to support non-U.S. citizens at this time.

Thank you for trying out Optery!

Thanks again for pointing this out. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, this is a product experience defect, and is not intended to be deceptive. We made a few quick cosmetic updates to mitigate until we can re-work our dashboard more meaningfully. For example:

1) We changed the data broker dashboard title from "Websites exposing your personal information" to "Websites that expose personal information"

2) We changed the data broker dashboard subtitle from "Discover where your personal data is exposed..." to "Explore where your personal data might be exposed..."

3) Within the data broker dashboard subtitle, we added the text "Links frequently lead to empty pages" with a "learn why" link to the post on our Help Desk titled "What if a "View" link leads to an empty or not found page?" that goes here:

https://help.optery.com/en/article/what-if-a-view-link-leads...

We have several more changes we're working through to address this issue. Thank you again!

Thanks again for pointing this out. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, this is a product experience defect, and is not intended to be deceptive. We made a few quick cosmetic updates to mitigate until we can re-work our dashboard more meaningfully. For example:

1) We changed the data broker dashboard title from "Websites exposing your personal information" to "Websites that expose personal information"

2) We changed the data broker dashboard subtitle from "Discover where your personal data is exposed..." to "Explore where your personal data might be exposed..."

3) Within the data broker dashboard subtitle, we added the text "Links frequently lead to empty pages" with a "learn why" link to the post on our Help Desk titled "What if a "View" link leads to an empty or not found page?" that goes here:

https://help.optery.com/en/article/what-if-a-view-link-leads...

We have several more changes we're working through to address this issue. Thank you again!

Thanks again for pointing this out. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, this is a product experience defect, and is not intended to be deceptive. We made a few quick cosmetic updates to mitigate until we can re-work our dashboard more meaningfully. For example:

1) We changed the data broker dashboard title from "Websites exposing your personal information" to "Websites that expose personal information"

2) We changed the data broker dashboard subtitle from "Discover where your personal data is exposed..." to "Explore where your personal data might be exposed..."

3) Within the data broker dashboard subtitle, we added the text "Links frequently lead to empty pages" with a "learn why" link to the post on our Help Desk titled "What if a "View" link leads to an empty or not found page?" that goes here:

https://help.optery.com/en/article/what-if-a-view-link-leads...

We have several more changes we're working through to address this issue. Thank you again!

This is a product experience defect, and not intended to be deceptive. Several comments have cried “foul” on this one and we hear it loud and clear. We apologize this has persisted in the product, and can definitely see how this can be misleading.

To explain what’s happening from the inside, immediately after the sign up, we retrofit the profile data you’ve input at the signup process into our URL templates for each data broker. This provides an immediately actionable link you can click on to see if your profile is present on the other end at the data broker. Meanwhile, our automated scanner starts running to see if it can actually find your profile at each data broker. After about 1 hour, a PDF report is emailed with ~70 (on average) places on the web that your profile has been found.

What’s often really confusing, and that we definitely need to fix in the UI, is when the user starts clicking on the links and they find “no profile found” they think that something’s gone wrong, or that we’re trying to be deceptive. Even more confusing is when a dummy name like "Notareal Personxxx" is input, the links are still there for you to click through.

The defect in the product is that the UI assumes a large number of matches for each user will be found, typically 50 – 100 on average. Everything in the UI is framed up with that assumption. However, when there are only a few results, or in the extreme case where a fake name is input, and there are no results at all, the UI still frames everything up as if it were for a typical user with 50 – 100 matched profiles. The other reason this product defect has persisted is because our Free Basic users use the links to QA their own self-service opt out work. So after they’ve submitted their own opt out, they want to be able to click through the link and see that the profile is gone. This is why most people use the product with glee, but when a link leads to a “page not found”, at best people are confused, and at worst they cry “foul” of deception.

I love Show HN and Launch HN threads because the builders get so much rich feedback like this on how to improve the product. This is the best feedback that we’ll take with us and start hammering away on immediately. Thank you!

We do have a Help Desk post describing what’s happening with these links, but we need to update it and make it more clear based on this feedback. You can find a little more information on how these links work here:

https://help.optery.com/en/article/what-if-a-view-leads-to-a...

This is a product experience defect, and is not intended to be deceptive. Several comments have cried “foul” on this one and we hear it loud and clear. We apologize this has persisted in the product, and can definitely see how this can be misleading.

To explain what’s happening from the inside, immediately after the sign up, we retrofit the profile data you’ve input at the signup process into our URL templates for each data broker. This provides an immediately actionable link you can click on to see if your profile is present on the other end at the data broker. Meanwhile, our automated scanner starts running to see if it can actually find your profile at each data broker. After about 1 hour, a PDF report is emailed with ~70 (on average) places on the web that your profile has been found.

What’s often really confusing, and that we definitely need to fix in the UI, is when the user starts clicking on the links and they find “no profile found” they think that something’s gone wrong, or that we’re trying to be deceptive. Even more confusing is when a dummy name like "Notareal Personxxx" is input, the links are still there for you to click through.

The defect in the product is that the UI assumes a large number of matches for each user will be found, typically 50 – 100 on average. Everything in the UI is framed up with that assumption. However, when there are only a few results, or in the extreme case where a fake name is input, and there are no results at all, the UI still frames everything up as if it were for a typical user with 50 – 100 matched profiles. The other reason this product defect has persisted is because our Free Basic users use the links to QA their own self-service opt out work. So after they’ve submitted their own opt out, they want to be able to click through the link and see that the profile is gone. This is why most people use the product with glee, but when a link leads to a “page not found”, at best people are confused, and at worst they cry “foul” of deception.

I love Show HN and Launch HN threads because the builders get so much rich feedback like this on how to improve the product. This is the best feedback that we’ll take with us and start hammering away on immediately. Thank you!

We do have a Help Desk post describing what’s happening with these links, but we need to update it and make it more clear based on this feedback. You can find a little more information on how these links work here:

https://help.optery.com/en/article/what-if-a-view-leads-to-a...

Thanks for trying out Optery! It sounds like you got the same “Wow” moment most new Optery users describe. Glad to hear!

1) We do see some people activate their subscription for a few months, and then cancel their plan to downgrade back down to the Free Basic tier. The Free Basic tier sends ongoing Exposure Reports (currently every 3 months), so if they start to see more profiles pop back up, they re-activate. There are significant benefits to keeping the subscription running on an ongoing basis though. For example, we are constantly adding new data brokers, so if you keep the service running, you get covered for new data brokers automatically as we add them to your plan. Sometimes we struggle with a data broker for many months, and then get a breakthrough and are able to get a waterfall of profiles removed at that data broker. We do ongoing monitoring and scans, to find and remove your profiles if they pop back up, so they are removed immediately.

2) The Ultimate plan is our most popular plan by far. It’s not even close. Second most popular is our Core plan. And Extended is our third most popular plan. PCMag recently did a deep dive into our space and named Optery their coveted “Editors’ Choice” as the most outstanding product on the market. Here was their summary quote “Optery’s handling of the core data removal task outshines the rest, and its free tier brings privacy protection to those who can’t afford expensive subscriptions. In the realm of personal data removal, Optery is our Editors’ Choice.”

https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/optery

Optery is the premium product in the space, so it’s natural that our customers would gravitate to the highest tier plan.

3) Thank you!

We haven't built family plans into our product yet, but in the interim, we have been providing 20% off discount codes for households of 2 to 3 people, and 25% off discount codes for households of 4 people or more. Similar applies for members of vulnerable groups and public servants. At this time a separate account needs to be created for each household member to ensure everyone is covered. This applies to both free and paid plans. Feel free to reach out directly, and we’ll send you the correct code: https://www.optery.com/contact-us/

We don’t cover the professional ratings sites and directories that people tend to cultivate presences on consciously. We are 100% focused on stopping the unwanted posting and selling of personal information by data brokers. The full list of sites we cover can be found here: https://www.optery.com/pricing/#data-brokers-we-cover

If someone signs up for Optery using a fake name, they almost certainly will get garbage results. The Exposure Report will most likely be empty, and the data broker links will most likely lead to “profile not found pages” or incorrect profiles (garbage in, garbage out). One thing to clarify is that we list out each data broker we cover, regardless of whether your profile was found or not. We do this partly to support our Free Basic users that use the data broker links in the dashboard to QA and verify their own opt out work (or the opt out work of other services). However, based on yours and others comments here, this is definitely confusing peoples, so we need to fix this and make it more clear. Thank you so much for this great feedback.

To prevent abuse, to change the name on your account, you’ll need to reach out to our customer support. We have more info on this on the Optery Help Desk here:

https://help.optery.com/en/article/how-can-i-edit-my-name-1t...

You’re welcome to use any email you want when you sign up for Optery. Email is not a primary key for us when submitting opt outs. We do not use the private email address you use when you sign up with Optery to submit opt outs. Optery creates our own private emails for you that we manage behind the scenes when submitting the opt outs.

The modal spawns when the user has just clicked through to a data broker and is about to leave Optery. We have a lot of warnings we're trying to convey on this one modal, most critically, strongly advising users to never share their personal email or pay any money to any data brokers ever.

I can definitely see how this is confusing though to see all the links for all the data brokers regardless of whether the user has been found or not, and we have a Help Desk article on the topic:

https://help.optery.com/en/article/what-if-a-view-leads-to-a...

The primary reason we have this is for our Free Basic users who use the links as a mechanism to explore where their profile might be exposed and do their self-service opt out work. This is great feedback that we need to address this and make it more clear in the product. Thank you for the feedback.

Below is the full text of the modal:

================

You Are Leaving Optery

Optery is not affiliated with the site you’re being redirected to.

External links help with self-service opt outs and provide visibility into where your info is posted online, but are not always perfect.

When visiting data brokers, we recommend never sharing your personal email or paying any data brokers any money.

We then link into our Help Desk article advising users to never share their personal email or pay any money to data brokers: https://help.optery.com/en/article/do-not-share-your-persona...

We then give the user the option to click "Back" and return to Optery, or to "Continue".

Here's the exact text from Section 1798.135(a)(5) of the CCPA: "For a consumer who has opted-out of the sale of the consumer’s personal information, respect the consumer’s decision to opt-out for at least 12 months before requesting that the consumer authorize the sale of the consumer’s personal information."

Data brokers can often have a very liberal interpretation of what it means for the consumer to "authorize" the sale of their personal information. I would guess 99% of data sales were never actually “authorized” by the consumer to begin with, and are usually done through some backdoor implicit authorization that the consumer has no knowledge of whatsoever.

> Does this mean users have to keep opting out every 12 months? If yes, that sounds...dumb, isn't it? Maybe I am not understanding this correctly, is there a reason behind this 12 month period? Even if they wanted to let data brokers add the data back, 12 months seems too short a time. What am I missing?

Although it often causes harm and is often considered evil, there is a lot of economic value that results from the free flow of data. U.S. lawmakers recognize this and its partly why they’re so reluctant to pass strict privacy laws like they have in Europe. The other reason is that lobbyists for deep pocketed tech companies water down privacy laws significantly before they can pass. Even with the 12 month expiration, the CCPA is the strictest privacy law in the U.S., and most U.S. citizens have basically no data privacy rights whatsoever.

How long a data broker honors an opt out is highly variable by the data broker. But yes, in general, you have to continue monitoring these companies and re-submitting opt out requests over time, that's what Optery does with its ongoing scanning and removal technology. We have a little more info on this topic here:

https://help.optery.com/en/article/when-my-data-is-removed-f...

Yes – Optery definitely helps with this, but it’s not a silver bullet yet. If your phone number is already out there circulating, I would recommend:

(a) Start by opting out of as many of the data brokers as you can, in particular the B2B contacts data brokers that are most likely the source of these unwanted phone calls like RocketReach, ContactOut, Clearbit, Hunter.io, LeadIQ, ZoomInfo, etc. Many of these data brokers Optery already covers, but others we are still in the process of adding to coverage.

(b) You can use Optery to opt out of a large chunk of these data brokers (200+ as of today), but you might need to supplement that with your own effort until we can catch up to the rest of them. We’re constantly adding more data brokers to our list of covered every month.

(c) Update your visibility settings on LinkedIn. A lot of information gets leaked out onto the web from LinkedIn, and in particular into the B2B contacts data brokers mentioned above: https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/a523134/visibi...

(d) Do not include your phone number or title on your email signature – many of the B2B contacts data brokers have data co-ops where all of their millions of customers share contacts and they parse through the email signatures in your email

(e) After you have done all of the above, and have reduced the footprint and presence of your phone number in these different places, change your phone number.

We submit complaints to the FTC and state attorney generals offices for non-compliant data brokers all the time. They don't move very fast, but its so great when they finally take action. I highly recommend anyone experiencing pushback from data brokers to submit complaints to the FTC and your state attorney general's office immediately. It does help. We have a little more information about this on the Optery Help Desk here:

https://help.optery.com/en/article/coverage-limitations-for-...