Data Removal Services

Hey, we stole your data, got rich off of it and now we're charging you for the privilege of removing it. Temporarily. Also, we make no guarantees that any data will be removed.

You've seen the ads: Incogni, Delete Me, Aura, and a bunch of others. These services promote that they will act on your behalf to remove your data from data brokers.

Apparently the solution to runaway capitalism shitting all over your privacy is... Wait for it... More capitalism!

The real solution is pretty straightforward: government mandated data protections. However, this requires a functioning democracy and politicians that are actually accountable to their constituents, rather than whoever paid for the last golf retreat...

Reasons the Data Removal Industry is an affront to our humanity

Here's my two cents. Data Removal Services are:

• Ideally unnecessary
• Fundamentally untrustworthy
• Downright offensive

Reason #1: An industry born from abuse

The tech industry walks over your privacy rights, lobbies to chip away at those rights even more, and even when they do break the law there's no actual repercussions for them. They sell and resell your data, making bank, while we deal with scammers and stalkers.

Then a knight in shining armor comes along and says "for a minimal fee, I can keep those pesky data brokers at bay! Of course if you ever stop paying, the data brokers will come back."

Here's a kick in the nuts. Would you like to buy an ice pack?

This is a protection racket. It is absolutely insane.

In a democratc society where the government serves its citizens this would not be allowed to happen.

Reason #2: The only guarantee is you'll keep paying

These services have a clause in their fine print saying that if the data brokers don't do as asked, there's not really anything they can do about it. So I guess you're paying for someone to write a sternly worded letter, and hoping that the evil corporation will stop being evil out of the kindness of their own hearts. That's somehow the business model.

These data brokers police themselves. So they get a letter: "Hey, please remove Billy Bob's data form your site", and they go "Yeah sure, totally deleted now!". The data might even be gone for a few weeks. But then it reappears. It's very easy for these companies to claim that they got the data from new sources. Hell, it might even be true! Some of these data broker companies might just be circle-jerking the same data all over each other again and again, making these "deletion" requests completely ineffective and artificially keeping the data-removal industry alive and well.

There is no control. There are no guarantees. There are no real laws to protect us from the data brokers' abuse. So why the fuck would these companies play nice?

At the risk of peering into conspiracies: I'll wager quite a bit of money that if you start looking at share holders, you might find lot of overlap between data removal services and data brokers.

I see no reason to trust this industry. If they could be trusted we wouldn't be having this problem.

Reason #3: It's a protection racket in a pretty dress

A protection racket is where some organization will cause harm to you, unless you pay them. This is organized crime. And used to be illegal.

Wow, what lovely personal data you got here. Would be a shame if something were to... happen to it.

Stealing my shit and then trying to sell it back to me? Are you fucking kidding me? These services should inspire rage. This is an exploitative cycle. A protection racket. A fucking scam.

I feel like I'm the only one who's outraged by this. Am I crazy? This is not normal, right?

So what do we do, practically?

1. Be mindful of who gets what data. Companies should only have access to what they need to provide you their products/services, and you shouldn’t feel the need to give them any more. Make shit up! Use unique email addresses for everything! Use false names! Or just don't sign up!

2. Silo your logins. Don’t use Socials to log in. While they are convenient and theoretically secure, in practice they are just more avenues for companies to track you.

3. Demand more from brands and policymakers. Call out influencers who legitimize removal services, use services like DROP where they exist, and back open-source automated opt-out projects under development.

4. Use an ad-blocker. Get uBlock Origin. It's the gold standard.

And if you’re into #UnethicalLifeProTips…

Look. I'm not saying the ideas put forward from here on out are necessarily moral or good. And you should make sure they are legal. Don't do illegal stuff!.. Unless you're rich, then go nuts, the rules don't apply to you.

Buy some data, maybe let some politicians know

If you had a bunch of money lying around you didn't know what to do with, here's theoretically a thing you could do:

1. Buy a bunch of data. Legally of course.
2. See if I can find specific data from politicians and their direct family. Again this was legally acquired.
3. Start doxxing them. Not the politicians, they're already public figures. Their kids, their mother, their partner, their mistresses.
4. Make it very public.
5. Point out that this entire problem was allowed to exist by them and can be resolved by them doing their fucking jobs and create some privacy protections.

Unethical? Maybe. But for a good cause. If we're all getting fucked, it's only fair that those responsible feel some of that girth too.