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Is there a downside to online data removal?
After the shock comes the questions.
Once you discover that certain companies are selling personal information for profit, it’s hard to look at online privacy the same way ever again.
After the shock, comes the questions:
Is removing my personal information from the internet worthwhile?
Is data removal actually worth paying for?
And, what if something goes wrong? Is there a downside to trying data removal?
Questions: The downside of data removal.
These are the most common questions we hear about the potential backlash or negative repercussions in trying to get data removed from the internet:
- Can “people” tell if I’ve paid for data removal? (No.)
- Are there any unintended consequences of trying to remove my data? (No, not if done right.)
- Is it worth the effort? (More often than not, yes.)
- Is it better to just let sleeping dogs lie? (No.)
Answer: Don’t let sleeping dogs lie, we can remove data without waking them.
Since this gets a bit technical, we’re going to answer the big questions upfront and right now:
There are no major unintended consequences of paying for online data removal, people will not be able to tell you did so, and it is typically not better to “let sleeping data dogs lie,” when it comes to your personal privacy, since we can remove your data without ever waking them.
Now that we’ve hopefully answered your immediate questions, let’s look further at what data removal is and whether there is any downside to doing it yourself or paying a data removal company to do it for you.
To better understand the answers, we have to first understand the three major players involved in online data collection and sales:
- A private individual. This is you and I, and we mostly want our personal information protected and difficult for ill-intentioned people to access.
- Data Broker Companies. At least a dozen companies collect (aggregate) and publish personal information on hundreds of websites. Snippets of the data they collect are usually viewable without paying, but the bulk of it is available for view only after paying as little as $18-25 dollars per individual. Unfortunately, these sites are mostly legal, but they must also have a way for individuals to opt out of their data collection/publishing.
- Data Removal Companies. InfoRemover.com is one such company that specializes in online data removal but there are several others. Data removal companies provide an “automatic” process of removing data from the files and websites of Data Brokers. You could request and get your data removed on your own, but since there are hundreds of websites that make it available for purchase, most people find that paying a reasonable subscription fee is better than spending 100-200 hours manually opting-out of every data broker—and then continually monitoring for any new data that may have been collected and published.
First, meet the data brokers. They’re NOT your friend.
The problem starts with data brokers.
They serve a purpose and what they do is generally legal.
But even though it’s legal, it’s not in the interest of most people, like you and I, who wish to live relatively private lives—at least as far as our online identity and data protection are concerned.
What data brokers do is continually collect data from a huge number of public records, as well as by buying it from credit card companies, banks, insurance providers, and other similar organizations.
Social media companies, mobile app developers, and other businesses also usually offset their costs (or support themselves entirely) by selling the data of their users.
In most cases, this data is sold “privately” in that it’s not directly linked to a single individual.
In other cases, however, the data is linked to you specifically.
It’s a costly collection effort, but it produces a massive database of information on people that can then be further sold to other organizations.
For instance, you may have wound up on one or more bulk mailing lists if your data was ever bought and sold in this way.
Other signs your data may be changing hands include receiving unsolicited bulk emails, and unwanted phone calls.
Next, meet data removers.
In contrast with data brokers, are data removal companies.
Data Brokers buy, collect, and resell your data.
Data Removers demand that Data Brokers remove your information from their databases and websites.
Just as there are legal means of collecting and aggregating data, there are also legal ways of getting that data removed and taken out of circulation.
In fact, you can DIY your own data removal. It just takes an incredible amount of time.
Data Brokers must legally provide a way to get data removed from their databases and websites.
However, since data is what keeps them in business, they don’t give it up very easily.
Worse, there isn’t just one data broker, but several hundred of them.
And each one of them have slightly different requirements for the removal of information from their files/websites.
That’s why, more often than not, it may be faster and better to subscribe to a data removal service that automatically complies with the individual removal requirements for dozens if not hundreds of different websites, all on your behalf.
When removed data reappears: the downside of data removal.
Now that we’ve established the three key players in this game—You, Data Brokers, and Data Removers—let’s look at where this can go wrong.
A simple timeline will illustrate this best:
- In January, you sign up for a data removal service on a monthly subscription.
- In February, March, April, that company works to remove your data from dozens or hundreds of websites.
- Details about your personal life become less and less prominent and harder and harder to find online.
- In August, you decide all is well and that you no longer need Data Removal.
- In September, a Data Broker receives one brand-new piece of data about you from a credit card company, a bank, or an insurance provider.
- Not yet knowing which “John Smith” this data belongs to, they create an entirely new profile that, sooner or later, starts to look exactly like the one(s) you paid to have removed. Problem is, it’s all-new data, and it specifically was never ordered deleted—since it’s from a new source.
So the downsides of data removal are that if you cease either paying someone to do it for you by constantly monitoring data brokers, or if you stop monitoring them yourself, eventually your data will be all over the internet again.
So, is data removal worthwhile?
Data removal is worthwhile to most people, because it gets to the root of the problem and demands that your information is removed from a data broker’s website and files.
That prevents it from being sold forward to other people or companies.
And it prevents the Data Brokers from being able to sell your data to anyone who asks for or pays for it via data brokers’ websites.
