Long story short. I work for a large company. We’re asking a small startup to work with us on something and being a large company things moooove slowwww.
So I get a whatsapp on my personal phone number from somebody at this company, I question how they got my personal number, curious if i’d accidently exposed it via the company/teams/workday etc.
Nope they use an AI Broker company for sales leads and found me through there, it had built a profile that had kind of merge my personal and professional life.
5plus years ago I wasn’t very private so I kinda guess why but it freaked me out a little.
What options do I have that aren’t just a waste of money. Incogni for example, I don’t really understand the business model, why wouldn’t I pay for 1 month and get all my data deleted then unsubscribe, what’s the hook… Kind of thinking they keep you there somehow where your data mysteriously comes back (based on nothing but my own intuition)…
I haven’t used any services but I am also considering it because I have recently noticed that my data is on a lot of these sites. Privacy guides recommends EasyOptOuts: Data Removal Services - Privacy Guides
I think the reason why these services are a subscription model is that when data brokers get your data from different sources they will add you back to their database. If it was a one time removal, customers would be upset when their data is added back to these sites over time and they have to pay again for a service that they thought was a one time thing. Making it a subscription sets the expectation in advance that your data may reappear on these sites over time if you stop paying. But I definitely think that some services abuse the subscription model, because some are very overpriced
Not sure but that happened to me a bit ago, one of mannnny sales people wanting in on some IT contracts called my personal mobile. Spooked me that he got hold of it. It seems my mobile was leaked and they had this browser plugin that automatically came up with it when they went to my LinkedIn profile.
It was one called Kaspr. I put a request in to them explaining it was my personal number and asked them to remove it. They did, I verified by creating an anonymous account with SimpleLogin to check.