1y ago

What is a well known 'public secret' in the industry you work in that the majority of outsiders are unaware of?

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It is virtually impossible to remove yourself from advertiser's rolls.
Thanks to the new CPRA regulation, you can ask companies to delete everything they know about you. Great!
Except that the way the law is written, that often includes deleting the fact that you asked to have your data removed. So the next time they get your data from a broker, (or the next time a broker gets your data), you're right back at square one.
In theory, if you managed to send simultaneous requests to every company that's holding your data, you could wipe the slate clean...until the next time you used a website.
There are so many data sets out there that we are all a part of. And if your data is in just a single one that didn't get wiped, everyone will end up with it again as a matter of course.
- So, someone just needs to create a service to send these requests. Surprised someone hasn't at least tried to make something like that.
  
  There are a number, actually! But there are way more companies that hold data than everyone can integrate with.
  Everybody (well, in the US) has to comply with the law, and there are standards for API-driven requests, but there are hundreds of thousands of companies out there. Everybody from your bank to your email provider to whatever POS software your mechanic uses is hoovering up data. And a lot of SAAS platforms for small businesses package up their data and sell it onward.
  The major unsubscribe-y services, (like incogni mentioned by someone else) are integrated with all the major data brokers and even a large number of smaller ones, but if you're using any modern service at all, your data trail is going to be built back up and probably reconnected with some obscure dataset that didn't get purged.
  I'm not saying it's pointless, just that its A) impossible to be sure that you got it all and B) that every scrap that can be linked to you eventually will be, by somebody.
- So Incogni is a scam? Or at least pointless?
  
  Its a sisyphian effort saddly...
  
  This is why I love the adnauseum route. Offer such vast sums of believable bunk information that all of it is worthless.

661 comments