Edit (9/21): While it doesn’t change our removal decision at this time, they have now changed these defaults, see Reply #15 below.
This AI feature is not used for the purposes of removing your data from the internet, it is only used to generate the reports of their service that are delivered to you.
We do not believe this functionality that is not core to the services offered by Optery warrants sending your personal information to OpenAI, arguably the largest data scraping and collection service of the 21st century.
The fact that Optery apparently sees no issue with sharing your data with third-parties for any reason other than to remove that data from the internet, and the fact that users are opted-in by default, are both very alarming.
That they justify it by saying the data is the “same information already posted on the internet by data brokers” leads me to severely question their judgement, seeing as the importance of removing that data is clearly worth upwards of hundreds of dollars per year to their existing customers.
We had tested Optery alongside EasyOptOuts beginning in February 2024, before both of their additions to the site 1 month ago, and we had no reason to expect they would decide to implement changes like this.
For the record, I am currently re-evaluating EasyOptOuts for the purposes of an upcoming blog review, but I so far have seen no indication to suggest the quality of their service has changed since earlier this year.
If you are an existing Optery customer, you can disable this functionality in your account settings:
I wouldn’t trust them with my PII after something like this, you basically have to tell them everything about you for the service to be useful, and they feed it into the biggest LLM as an opt-in, and then say “it’s what could already be found about you on data brokers” when their business model was to help you remove said data from data brokers.
The cynical part of me thinks they realized how much unique data they had and decided to turn an extra profit by selling everyone’s PII, almost like double dipping at that point.
Whether you want to continue using Optery is a personal decision, and if you do then I would recommend disabling this option, which is why I included instructions.
Personally, I am going to continue using Optery until my subscription ends in half a year assuming nothing else happens, but I will probably switch services or stop using a data removal service entirely at that point. To be fair, Optery has been successful at doing what it’s meant to do for me up until this point, so it is at least effective.
But it makes no sense to recommend a service to new customers that has now proven themselves to be, at best, completely unpredictable when it comes to their data privacy practices, and at worst potentially detrimental to deleting your data footprint.
Well, quality over quantity. I really do think most people are best served by EasyOptOuts anyways, it cuts down the manual work required from 15 major sites to 3 for next to nothing.
While Optery did have slightly better coverage at a much higher price, it was mainly recommended for their free scanning anyways, which is nice but I’d consider non-essential for people trying to do it manually.
I’m still pretty happy with our current recommendations, and the once-a-week strategy we now encourage for manual opt-outs.
same thing here @jonah. I just fail to see how this whole situation is (or can be) harmful. Given that this data transfer is not mandatory (meaning you can opt-out at any moment in time).
And therein lies the problem. You’re paying Optery to put opting out of data collection on autopilot, so it’s a bit unsettling that a new feature that sends your data to a third party is opt-out instead of opt-in. Though this is nowhere near as egregious as the practices of data brokers in the US, the failures of the “you can just opt out” model is exactly why a service like Optery even needs to exist.
That’s ok! I just think it would have been better for everyone involved for a potentially controversial feature like this to have been something that they let you know about without taking action on your behalf.
I’ve been an Optery customer for ~2 years. Very disappointed they went this route. I can understand the why from an operational standpoint but I think it should have been optional opt-in rather than optional opt-out. For me, my address/location is the one thing I keep the highest on my privacy hierarchy. I can easily get new phone numbers and email addresses. I can’t easily buy a new house. This alone won’t make me ditch their service, but it certainly has made me start to consider another service for my data removal needs. If poor decisions like this become the norm then I will be jumping ship.
Optery’s newest notification makes it sound like you get better removal service when they use OpenAI and (they claim) OpenAI deletes the info they share with them. (is that trust?)
Their notification states:
Below is a summary:
AI Processing provides greater accuracy, and has the added benefit of providing highly intelligent feedback for identifying exposed profiles, thereby also increasing removals effectiveness, which is Optery’s ultimate purpose.
Optery does not provide any screenshots or any data for training AI models, and after a Removals Report is created with AI Processing, all screenshots and accompanying data are immediately deleted from OpenAI.
Internal Processing provides a closed environment inside Optery’s proprietary systems for processing Removals Reports and does not utilize third-party systems such as OpenAI. The tradeoff is reduced accuracy and removals effectiveness as compared to AI Processing.
We’ve been carefully considering feedback following Thursday’s update regarding the use of AI processing technology for creating Removals Reports.
We remain committed to extending our product leadership through industry-leading innovation, but in retrospect we should have released the new AI Processing feature as “opt in” rather than “opt out”. In our eagerness to provide the benefits of this new feature, we overlooked the fact that many of our customers have significant concerns with AI, and with companies such as OpenAI. We sincerely apologize for this mistake.
In the early hours this morning we reverted all accounts back to “Internal Processing” for Removals Reports, and going forward all customers must manually opt in to “AI Processing” from their Account page. We believe this approach strikes the right balance between those customers who prefer AI Processing with those who do not.
If you would like to opt in to AI Processing for your Removals Reports, please navigate to the Removals Reports Preferences section of your Account page.
If you would like to opt out of AI Processing for your Removals Reports, no action is required as all users were reverted back to Internal Processing this morning.
AI Processing is for the Processing of Removals Reports for Extended and Ultimate plan customers only. Core and Free Basic customers are not eligible at this time.
AI Processing provides greater accuracy, and has the added benefit of providing highly intelligent feedback for identifying exposed profiles, thereby also increasing removals effectiveness, which is Optery’s ultimate purpose.
Optery does not provide any screenshots or any data for training AI models, and after a Removals Report is created with AI Processing, all screenshots and accompanying data are immediately deleted from OpenAI.
Internal Processing provides a closed environment inside Optery’s proprietary systems for processing Removals Reports and does not utilize third-party systems such as OpenAI. The tradeoff is reduced accuracy and removals effectiveness as compared to AI Processing.
Our customers are at the center of everything we do at Optery. We value the trust you place in us when signing up for our services, and we take that responsibility and your expectations very seriously.
This is a required policy update sent to all Optery account holders, which is why you are receiving this message even if you have previously opted out of marketing and promotional emails.
I am internally speculating if this Open AI inclusion was malice (so as to sell training data to OpenAI or some other more nefarious reasons) or just stupidity in trying to catch AI FOMO?
Do you guys still think its safe to do a subscription (for Optery or any opt-out service) especially for non-US residents (specifically Southeast Asia) @jonah?
This isn’t going to reverse our decision, that would require a whole separate discussion, but good nonetheless.
I’m really curious to know what their unsubscribe rate was for them to notice, I know I unsubscribed and linked to this post when it asked why
If it wasn’t that many people it’s cool they took the feedback from those who did seriously, but… I suspect it was a lot of people lol
This is what I’m leaning toward.
What is especially wild to me is that they’ve launched other features that potentially share your data extraneously before on an opt-in basis, so they clearly know better.
Like they have an “Extended Reach” feature for Ultimate customers that opts you out of databases they can’t search, which is neat, but it means they’re sending your data in an opt-out request to companies who may not even have it yet. That feature is opt-in though, so that you can decide whether the benefits outweigh the risks yourself.
It’s good that public outcry changed this policy and the actual harm was probably minimal, but it’s a real shame they just didn’t think it through in the first place.
I’m not aware of many services that work outside the US, and I’m not aware of any that work outside North America and Europe.
I’d be curious to hear — in a separate discussion or privately — what PII leaks you’re facing or data broker databases your data is contained in as a resident of a Southeast Asian country, to do more research into that topic.
Because they’re an independent outlet supported by their readers, which I don’t think is a problem. You can read more about their business model here. If you take issue with that, you might want to start adding user-supported companies like Proton and Mullvad to your firewall as well
