DeleteMe (From the Internet)

[myrdale]

I came across a service the other day called DeleteMe. They claim for a fee to be able to remove your presences from data brokers on the internet.

While I am generally careful with my personal information, and I have had my identity stolen before, up till now I haven't been to concerned over what information is out there.

Over the past year though I have received phone calls (on my cell phone) from people wanting to purchase my house. I've also received numerous emails where they have the photo associated with my gmail attached as their photo. I've gotten a bit more paranoid than normal over the past couple of weeks, the more I've looked at it all.

Does anyone have any experience with DeleteMe or a similar service?

Most of what they offer, I think I could do myself, but there is a lot of work involved. One example that might be related is I am trying to get the Wayback Machine / Internet archieve to remove copies of my old personal web page which date back to 2003. I sent request in a few months ago, and then forgot about it. I've sent in another round of request, and I guessing a DMCA is next.

I am still going to have a cell phone with gmail, Facebook, etc. so I know I can't get to 0% exposure, but I'd like to reduce it where I can.

[disneysteve]

I’d say it’s largely a farce trying to remove your personal info from the internet. We’ve been online since 1994. I’m sure our data is present in tens of thousands of places. I can’t image any service could meaningfully wipe that clean. And even if they could, unless we stop using technology completely, which is impossible, it would all be back in no time.

[Thrif-t]

I don't know if this will be of any help to you. It tells you how to delete your data from google

https://clark.com/protect-your-identity/delete-google-data/

[ua_guy]

I don't fear identity theft because a legitimate broker might have my data. It's all the underground brokerage that goes on. Stuff that actually took work or a big risk to steal. There's no way to pay the bad guys to remove your data. You can only make the data they have on you unusable, i.e. changing your credit card number, or password, etc. If I was considering one of the services mentioned like Delete Me, I'd want to deep-dive to figure out exactly what they would be doing--and how does it help?

More annoying are inconvenient search results. Google your name, and the first result that pops up is your name connected with your address and how much you paid for your house. Or maybe you have a unique name, and googling it brings up unfavorable search results for someone else with the same name, but no easily discernible way to tell it's not actually you. There are services which will "bury" those results, basically use the search engine's algorithms against itself. Additionally, Thrif-t posted the link above where you can "request" results containing actual pii to be removed.

[myrdale]

I signed up for the service last week. It took several days for them to process the first report, but it yielded my information on 44 different sites that they are in the process of having it removed from. This may take a few weeks. There are other legitimate sites, but then again there are the underground sites that ua_guy mentioned.

For the scammers that continue to call me, I suspect they get their information from the underground sites which means this probably isn't going to help.

[disneysteve]

I signed up for the service last week. It took several days for them to process the first report, but it yielded my information on 44 different sites that they are in the process of having it removed from. This may take a few weeks. There are other legitimate sites, but then again there are the underground sites that ua_guy mentioned.

For the scammers that continue to call me, I suspect they get their information from the underground sites which means this probably isn't going to help.

44 sites? What a joke. And they're charging you for this supposed service? Your data is on thousands of sites with more being added every day. Even if they can somehow actually remove your data from those 44 sites, chances are it will be back in no time. Our information is all electronic at this point. Anybody who wants your information can get it. What a great scam they've got going convincing people that they can remove their info from the internet. And don't forget that this company now has all of your data, too.

Just for fun, I just googled myself. My name came up on 34 sites just on page 1 of the search results. I didn't go any farther than that.

[crazyliblady]

I signed up for the service last week. It took several days for them to process the first report, but it yielded my information on 44 different sites that they are in the process of having it removed from. This may take a few weeks. There are other legitimate sites, but then again there are the underground sites that ua_guy mentioned.

For the scammers that continue to call me, I suspect they get their information from the underground sites which means this probably isn't going to help.

Are you able to specify that you don't want to delete information from sites that you want to continue to use?

[ua_guy]

One of the issues with scammers/spammers on cell phones is they dial random numbers. You don't have to have information on the internet. Just a phone number in the regular US format xxx-xxx-xxxx. While I'm hopeful your effort is successful, the truth is, not all unwanted calls can be stopped. Cell carriers are getting better about preventing spam calls but they're not perfect either.

[myrdale]

One of the issues with scammers/spammers on cell phones is they dial random numbers.

That has not been my case. They call and ask for me by name. There are three groups that have hassled me over the past couple of years:

#1 Car maintenance warranty

#2 Sheriff's association donations

#3 Real estate investors

The real estate investors have my name, phone number and address. The name and address are easy, from public records, I don't know how they matched my cell phone up though.

The car warranty have name and phone number, a few years ago when they called about "my" jeep, I told them I had a Corolla. Now every time they call they ask about the Corolla.

The sheriff's association I got into it with them last week, the phone call went like this:

Scammer: Hello, is this Myrdale.
Me: No, you have the wrong number, this is John how may I help you?
Scammer: I need to speak to Myrdale.
Me: There is no Myrdale here, you have the wrong numner.
Scammer: No I don't this is Myrdale's number.
Me: Umm no this is my number

..... and their bs went on from there.

I don't know if there are only a couple of groups that call me over and over or if there are hundreds of groups out there. Sooner or later you would think they would realize I am not going to bite, and they would mark me off their list. No such luck yet.

[disneysteve]

Myrdale, one thing you need to do is stop answering their calls. We constantly tell this to my mom. She doesn't understand that by answering the call and speaking to them, she is making the problem worse. They now know that her number is a live person who is gullible enough to talk to them. They exploit that information as much as possible and likely sell her info to other parties to do the same.

People think they're being clever by engaging in sly conversation, but you're not. You're actually aggravating the problem. The best course of action is to let the calls go to voicemail and only return the call if the message indicates it's a legit caller. 99% of the spam calls won't leave a message because they are auto-dialed.

As for how they get your number, that's readily available info. A few years ago, I had lost track of an old friend. I paid a few bucks online at one of the "white pages" websites and got her address, phone number, and email address and was able to reconnect with her. All of that stuff is public info and easy to find.

[myrdale]

Myrdale, one thing you need to do is stop answering their calls.

I've went the better part of 6 months of letting the calls go to voice mail, and it makes absolutely no difference.

I paid a few bucks online at one of the "white pages" websites and got her address, phone number, and email address and was able to reconnect with her. All of that stuff is public info and easy to find.

This the exact purpose of DeleteMe, is removing that exact information.

A perfect example of how this information gets out into the wild is when you sign up for a store's loyalty card, and you provide your name, address, phone number and then they sale it off. At least that is hopefully going to the legitimate sites. The other method is when that store gets hacked and their records of your information is stolen. Not much to do about that.

[ua_guy]

The "extended car warranty" is a fun one. I dealt with that when I lived in Minnesota, and the calls started when we moved our vehicle registrations to that state. Turns out, vehicle registration information is "public" in Minnesota, so I really had no good way to stop those calls, other than ignore unknown numbers. How they got my cell phone, I'm not sure, but they did correctly dredge the year/make/model of my vehicles from the state's DMV (which is actually run by the MN Dept of Public Safety....seems counter-intuitive for a "safety" department to give out people's address and vehicle information, but whatever.....)

[disneysteve]

The "extended car warranty" is a fun one. I dealt with that when I lived in Minnesota, and the calls started when we moved our vehicle registrations to that state. Turns out, vehicle registration information is "public" in Minnesota, so I really had no good way to stop those calls, other than ignore unknown numbers. How they got my cell phone, I'm not sure, but they did correctly dredge the year/make/model of my vehicles from the state's DMV (which is actually run by the MN Dept of Public Safety....seems counter-intuitive for a "safety" department to give out people's address and vehicle information, but whatever.....)

And that’s a perfect example of why services that claim they can scrub your data from the internet are scams. It can’t be done. Way too much of your info is public and easily accessible.

[ua_guy]

And that’s a perfect example of why services that claim they can scrub your data from the internet are scams. It can’t be done. Way too much of your info is public and easily accessible.

Burying search engine results can be helpful for employment purposes, but I agree, it's pretty much impossible to remove information from the internet once it's out there.

On our next home purchase, we'll be putting that home into a trust so it can't be immediately linked to us. Same with our vehicles, they'll register to the trust. We don't have people we need to hide from, we just think this is a good practice going forward with the changing nature of the internet - and the number of truly crazy people out there with easy access to PII.

[disneysteve]

On our next home purchase, we'll be putting that home into a trust so it can't be immediately linked to us.

I got a call on my cell phone a couple of weeks ago asking if I was interested in selling my mother-in-law's house. I have no idea how I got associated with that property. That was a new one.