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I read that a single data broker can have up to 1,500 data points on one person
Found that in an article last week... it was talking about how they track everything from your car loan to your magazine subscriptions. Makes me miss the days when junk mail was just from the local hardware store. How do you even start to clean that up?
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taylor6681mo ago
That magazine subscription detail is wild. It makes you wonder where they even get that stuff. Have you looked into those data broker opt-out sites, or does that whole process seem totally hopeless?
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uma4091mo ago
Actually taylor668, those opt-out sites can work better than people think. I got my name removed from a few big ones like Whitepages and Spokeo last year. It took maybe an hour total to fill out the forms. Sure, new brokers pop up, but it cuts down on the junk mail and random calls. It's not a total fix, but calling it hopeless is giving up too easy. A little effort makes a difference.
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james_singh71mo ago
Yeah, uma409 has a point about it not being totally hopeless. I read a whole thing last year about how these data brokers basically play whack-a-mole, but hitting the big ones like Whitepages first does slow things down. It's like taylor668 said, the info comes from weird places, so cutting off one source helps. Sure, your data is probably in some other spreadsheet already, but at least you're not making it easy for every random person to find you.
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