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It’s not enough just
to opt-out - DeleteMe makes sure your online personal info is removed
When DeleteMe, an industry leader in digital identity and online privacy, launched in 2010, most people didn’t really care what they posted on the Internet. They would openly share sensitive detail about their personal lives on Facebook and Twitter posting with their real names. No one was overly concerned that those names, addresses, and phone numbers were online. Common phishing scams were considered trivially easy to spot – like a Nigerian prince popping up in your inbox begging you for money. Back then, the only personal information people thought needed special protection were things like your credit card and social security number.
Times have changed.
In recent years, governments in Europe and U.S. states like California have finally caught on and started passing consumer data privacy laws, some including universal opt-out provisions which give consumers stronger rights to control personal information online.
But regulatory agencies can’t move as fast as the tech-savvy fraudsters and the laws they pass are often toothless or have a delayed impact. Independent companies like DeleteMe, which has been at the forefront of this issue for more than a decade, are much nimbler when it comes to protecting consumers.
Everyone has had personal information breached by a 3rd party at some point in their lives. According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, 61% of Americans have reported experiencing personal data victimization at least once, and 44% have been victimized multiple times. But those only those which get disclosed.
In addition to the massive troves of data leaked on hacking forums, there’s a vast industry of commercial data brokers with detailed profile information of over 90% of the U.S. public — so everyone except toddlers is being documented somewhere on the internet.
Improvements in information technology have made it much easier for organized criminal organizations and lone-wolf individuals to combine out-of-date breached material, and cross-reference it with up-to-date info available from public records and commercial data brokers to make it exploitable.
The types of information used by modern fraud and identity-theft methods include:
“DeleteMe came into existence more than a decade ago because privacy expert and co-founder Rob Shavell became aware that companies were routinely mining personal information without disclosure or any consumer controls, and he saw that it was going to create risk in the future,” says Gilmore. “It took years before it really started becoming an issue, but now it’s a significant threat.”
Today, fraudsters routinely spoof people’s identities, breach sensitive accounts, and defraud co-workers or your family members using little more than your phone number.
An online photo of your face or GPS location-tracking data can be used to hack into your life. Your phone number and device ID can be used to bypass multi-factor authentication. Bad actors don’t even need new information from you — they merely need to get you to verify a username, password, or PIN that they’ve already acquired from accumulated years of commercial data-breaches.
“Consumer fraud and corporate ransomware has exploded, and forms of social engineering enabling them have gotten very sophisticated,” says John Gilmore, head of research for DeleteMe, which helps shore up digital privacy by helping clients find and remove personal data from online sources. “The generic phishing emails are now personalized, coming from people impersonating government agencies, colleagues, or family members, using readily-available personal information about you, the target.”
According to the FCI’s/IC3 2023 Internet Crime Report, reported financial damages from cyber scams more than tripled between 2019 and 2023, from $3.5 billion to $12.5 billion. And these reports represent only a fraction of what actually occur. FTC’s Consumer Sentinel, which tracks similar data, shows the same exponential growth in identity theft and fraud since the beginning of the pandemic period.
It happens to everyone
Basic personal identifiable information (PII) – your name, date of birth, address, phone and email addresses, family member data, and professional history
Sensitive personally identifiable information – like your SSN, driver’s license number, or taxpayer ID
Personal device IDs, and data being mined from these devices – like location data
And increasingly, next-gen forms of PII – biometric data, like facial recognition, voice identification, or behavioral fingerprinting
“Even the IRS not long ago tried to move to a facial-recognition based identity verification system, and a lot of banks were implementing voice recognition, but both quickly discovered that they could also increasingly be spoofed,” says Gilmore. “Many of them have had to limit the expansion of these things because of recent improvements in AI.”
The types of risk are growing too. We’ve all read how adversarial foreign governments can target individuals and groups during election years and periods of international tumult. It can also get personal with stalkers or doxxers or a social media interaction gone awry who already know something about you tracking down your family, your place of work, and your home.
And of course, what motivates most bad actors: money.
“You’d be surprised how many ways basic data can be turned into a form of monetization when done at scale,” says Gilmore. “Criminal rings have done things like steal “free pizza points” en masse. Tricking people into accepting charges to their phone bill via SMS generates millions. It’s always changing.”
But people still confuse the terms “victimized” and “targeted.” The truth is the perpetrators rarely set out to get you, personally.
“People think ‘they are being hacked’, but a majority of forms of fraud don’t involve anyone out to get you,” says Gilmore. “The reality is, they are just using any data that is conveniently available, low-hanging fruit. If enough detail about you is easily discoverable in a web-scrape, you can be targeted.”
Minimize yourself as a target
So, the key is to make yourself less discoverable. And that’s where the pros at DeleteMe are invaluable in saving you time, getting the right information, and enforcing your requests for privacy.
First, a customer creates a data sheet detailing the personal info they are most concerned about protecting — the more detailed the list is, the better. DeleteMe then continually monitors sources for your PII and executes the opt-outs. Customers will get a periodic report summarizing where the personal info was found, what kind of info it was, and whether it was removed.
What separates DeleteMe from industry peers is a continued reliance on a personal approach. Getting to know the client is more than just good customer service in this industry — it’s vital for optimal service. A lot of other services are completely automated, which will often miss when opt-out processes change, which they do frequently. DeleteMe has 200 employees who ensure that the requests are completed manually when necessary.
DeleteMe also has the institutional expertise of a company that pioneered this sector.
“We understand that the most at-risk info is that which pops up on the first page of Google,” says Gilmore. “That’s where people are discoverable. It’s not how many sites you scour for info — it’s the sites that people go to. Hackers are looking first at LinkedIn, Spokeo, and Facebook, not NewJerseyDentists.com.”
The people at DeleteMe are also passionate about protecting peoples’ digital privacy. After all, they were there before everyone else.
“I think the world came to us,” says Gilmore. “In the early days, removing personal information from the internet was all about preventing robocalls, spam and junk mail. Today, you have billions lost to identity theft, location data is being used for targeting ads, and social-media mobs dox people to ruin their lives. The data economy is affecting regular people in so many more ways and governments are only now starting to pass better privacy laws. But we’ve been here championing online privacy all along, helping our users fight back, identifying who has their data and deleting it across the web.”
For more information, DIY opt-out guides, or to sign up to protect your digital identity, go to www.joindeleteme.com.
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DeleteMe
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It’s not enough just
to opt-out - DeleteMe makes sure your online personal info is removed