Digital Identity Protection; Data Broker Removal Feature

Learning4

Within Digital Identity Protection of my Total Security is a list of how to check and remove data from 8 data brokers. Each broker requires different steps. Here are a few obstacles I've encountered so far, so I thought I would see if anyone wants to discuss this.

#1 None of the provided "Look Up" and "Remove Data" links work within SafePay. I see the "Popup Blocked" message, but can't figure out how to unblock it, so I'm following the steps outside of SafePay.

#2 When using the Remove Data Link for https://www.beenverified.com/app/optout/search, I received an email to confirm the Opt-Out with a link. When I clicked on the email link, Bitdefender Total Security warns me “HTTPS-Only Mode Alert Secure Site Not Available”. This makes me wonder if the Remove Data Link is legitimate.

#3 To delete my records for the data broker radaris.com, I had to create an account and they required a phone number for the confirmation code. I tried using a Google Voice number but got the message “SMS send failure: VOIP number, please enter real phone number”. So I risked using my real phone number, a new number that is not widely published and is, believe it or not, spam-free.

Your thoughts on giving a data broker a phone number for me that they didn’t have?

Also, Radaris has 2 listings for me, as I sometime go by my middle name. Without logging in to Radaris, my photo, education, and work history including location is from a LinkedIn account I deleted FIVE years ago. Is this typical?

#4 The Remove Data link for PrivateEye goes to PeopleFinder. For https://www.addresses.com/, data removal goes to  https://www.intelius.com and the confirmation email is from OneTrust. Your thoughts on this?

Considering how many Data Brokers there are beyond the list of 8, is removal worth it? Or am I doing more damage than good by providing a valid current email and phone number to all these businesses?

Note: Spokeo was easy, although I had to spread out my removal requests for multiple accounts over a few days. They accused me of "abuse" when I tried to do 3 in a row!

Alexandru_BD

Hello @Learning4 and welcome to the Community!

I shall do my best to address each point, however, the first and second scenarios presented, would require a more detailed research and I'll get back to you on these subjects.

#3 All you have to do is fill in the form given by the respective website/system to make a Verifiable Consumer Request. A “verifiable consumer request” is defined by the CCPA as “a request that is made by a consumer, by a consumer on behalf of the consumer’s minor child, or by a natural person or a person registered with the Secretary of State, authorized by the consumer to act on the consumer’s behalf, and that the business can reasonably verify.

A data broker is a company that collects personal information about you from multiple sources, processes that information, and then sells it to other companies that have an interest in knowing more about you, usually for marketing or risk mitigation reasons.

#4 Data brokers are required to provide users with the ability to delete personal data but not all companies make this flow easy to use, so they appear redirected to various integrated data deletion services.

It is worth the effort to delete such data to minimize the risk of the the data being sold to other marketing companies or to bad actors who may use it for fraudulent purposes.

I hope this helps.

Stay safe.

Learning4

Alexandru, thank you for the comment. Your wrote "All you have to do is fill in the form". I have now made attempts at all eight data brokers. Each broker has a different method and requires different new data to complete the request, with most of them requiring an account to be created (that I will never need again), which means giving them a new phone number and a new email address that they don't already have.

I'm not feeling good about this. Have you personally tried removing yourself from all of these data brokers? To complete their form, one of the brokers lists 20 other data brokers, cautioning the user that the other brokers will still be publishing their data. (I assume they are doing this to discourage the person to complete the form.) How did Bitdefender decide which 8 brokers to start with?

I look forward to your answers for my questions #1 and #2.

Alexandru_BD

Hi,

In regards to point #1, Safepay was not designed to be used in conjunction with Digital Identity Protection.

Safepay is a secure browser designed to keep your online banking, e-shopping, and any other type of online transactions private and secure. It protects against all e-threats that target your banking data such as hacking, phishing, packet analysis, “man-in-the-browser” and “man-in-the-middle” attacks, Trojans, system changes, etc.

Keyloggers can’t record what you type on your keyboard and send reports over the Internet to hackers. Safepay also prevents malware to take screenshots and detects fraudulent websites. The web-filtering technology ensures that you never land on a harmful website.

Concerning point #2, the notification can be triggered due to the page https://www.beenverified.com/app/optout/search not having an opt-out option. But further details are required to find out the exact cause. For this, I would recommend reaching out to our Support Teams for further investigation. You can contact our engineers by choosing one of the contact methods available here:

https://www.bitdefender.com/consumer/support/

If I'm not mistaken, according to the law, there must be a Verifiable Consumer Request to remove data from a data broker. A “Verifiable Consumer Request” is defined by the CCPA as “a request that is made by a consumer, by a consumer on behalf of the consumer’s minor child, or by a natural person or a person registered with the Secretary of State, authorized by the consumer to act on the consumer’s behalf, and that the business can reasonably verify.”

The 8 data brokers are a starting set and in the future we will come with more such sets. There are 2 types of data brokers: a) in which you can see the stored data; b) which do not show the stored data, priority is given to those which show the data from point a).

Best wishes.

Learning4

Alexandru_BD admin in your reply for #1, you wrote "Safepay is a secure browser designed to keep your online banking, e-shopping, and any other type of online transactions private and secure." OK, I will work on removing our family from data broker accounts outside of Safepay. However, considering how much information they request to identify me (including birth date, etc.) I had assumed making this "private and secure" through Safepay was appropriate.

Regarding #2, I requested email support for further investigation. 

Thanks.