Here’s the inside story of what transpired when BeenVerified.com continued to repost personal information that our customers had requested be deleted.

You are for sale on people search websites.

You know the anger we all have against telemarketers?  Well, people search websites are like telemarketers, but of a far greater magnitude:  they post your private information online for everyone to see, and they sell it to whoever’s buying.  There’s been a groundswell of opposition to these data brokers, or as they’re referred to these days, people search websites.

After a 2011 Consumers Union poll found that 80% of surveyed respondents were “concerned that companies may be sharing their personal information with third parties without their permission,” HearUsNow.org launched a public initiative in September of 2011 to encourage individuals to contact their congressional representatives about people search sites.  94% of adults ages 45-54 think there should be a law that requires websites and advertising companies to delete all stored information about an individual.

BeenVerified.com, one of the people search websites from which we remove our customers’ personal info when they order our DeleteMe subscription, kept re-posting “deleted” listings.  We saw it time and time again, so we reported them on behalf of you, our customers, to the FTC.  You can download our complaint here.

A screenshot from BeenVerified's website.

Our customers have privacy concerns for all sorts of reasons.  Some have had their identities stolen.  Some are law enforcement officers who want to protect themselves from convicts who have sworn to come after them when they get out of prison.  Others have dangerous exes who try to make their lives miserable.  Others have stalkers.  Most of them simply want to be left alone.

The fact that your deleted information can be re-populated in rare cases shows us how important services like DeleteMe really are.  For most people, having to stay on top of your personal information all the time is just too difficult a task.  Trust us–we know it firsthand.  You should see the piles of letters we send out of here, the numbers of CAPTCHAs we type, our absurdly high eFax bills…and that’s not taking into account that people search companies are always changing their opt-out policies and mailing addresses.  But services like DeleteMe actually do work.  What isn’t workable, sustainable, or legal, however, are companies reversing repeated requests to remove personal data.

Removing yourself from online databases is a looooooong process.

We publicly post instructions for how you can delete your information from these sites yourself, but many people still choose to have us do it for them.  And we understand why:  very few people have both the free time and the knowledge required to decipher convoluted privacy policies and opt-out procedures, let alone vigilantly check and re-check multiple people search sites.  It’s a full-time job, and you have to stay on top of it.  But you have jobs, kids, bills, Facebook accounts, emails to return, dogs to walk–you have lives.  It’s unreasonable to expect the average person to crack the crazy code that is the people search industry.

Life was more annoying before the National Do Not Call Registry.

The best solution to the personal information problems posed by people search companies is a one-stop “unlist me” website, something like the Do Not Call Registry:  you’d go, click a button to state that you wanted your personal info removed from all the sites that are selling and displaying it, and that’d be it.  Presto.  And that’s precisely what we asked the FTC to create in our complaint about BeenVerified.  Of course the people search companies hate this idea, because it’d dry up their source of money:  your data.

Let us be clear:  there are some limitations.  As we’ve seen with BeenVerified, sometimes companies don’t follow their own removal rules (but we quickly catch them).  We also cannot delete your name by itself. The fact that you were born with a certain name is on your birth certificate, your driver’s license, and more.  It’s part of the public record, and we can’t wave a giant Men in Black flashy thing in front of the internet and make your name go poof.

When someone orders a DeleteMe subscription, we delete their contact information from this list of 18 people search databases.  This list, which we compile and maintain ourselves, represents the largest sellers of your data.  They’re the big players.  They supply hundreds of smaller sites, too, so when we delete you from the big sites, we’re deleting you from the small sites as well.  Our service is the most comprehensive on the market:  none of our competitors even come close to our success rate, and none of them cover the large number of sites that we do.

Erase your personal info from the web.

Until we have a one-stop “unlist me” registry, a DeleteMe subscription is the next best thing.  It’s not perfect, but it goes a long way to protect your information (and we have the testimonials of happy customers to prove it)!

Learn how you can take action against people search websites and spread the word about the danger they present to your friends and family by visiting our informational site about the people search industry, and check out journalist Julia Angwin’s Wall Street Journal article about the subject.  You’ll find out how to make your own FTC complaint online, file a dispute with TRUSTe, tell your state’s Attorney General, and more.

About Abine:   Abine provides consumers with online privacy solutions that are innovative, easy to use, and actually work. With proven tools, Abine enables people to both benefit from the Web and retain control over their most personal information. Abine is backed by premier venture capital firms Atlas Ventures and General Catalyst Partners. Abine: The Online Privacy Company ™. Abine.com.

The companies selling your personal info don’t ask you first if it’s okay, and you don’t make any money from it.  At the very least, it should be easy to remove yourself from these databases, right?  Not quite:

• There are over 180 websites like this, and most of them have different deletion procedures you have to follow, each one more complicated than the next.
• They say you can delete your info, but only if you send them more recent info.
• The worst part: if you try to delete your listing, they’ll tell you it’s gone and then put it back up without telling you.

So much for privacy...

This is what happens all the time in the people search industry, and we’re sick of it.  That’s why we filed a Federal Trade Commission (FTC) complaint against BeenVerified.com, “America’s largest background check” website, because it wasn’t treating consumers fairly.  We’re going to summarize our argument here, but the full PDF is available here if you’re interested.  The FTC stands up for consumers’ rights.  If a company is ripping you off, defrauding you, or deceiving you, reporting them to the FTC is a good place to start.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) hears your complaints about companies.

We have a subscription service called DeleteMe that removes people’s personal info–addresses, phone numbers, etc.–from the web.  We started noticing a pattern with BeenVerified where it would put our customers’ information back up online pretty quickly after we’d removed it.  We thought this was, to put it bluntly, crap.

To delete your own information from BeenVerified, info you never approved to be published on the site, you have to send BeenVerified an email with all of the following:

• Your name as shown on their site
• Your age
• Current address
• Previous addresses
• Listed relatives

If you take the time to write this email and trust this company with your personal info, you’d expect them to follow through with deleting your listing, right?  Well, that wasn’t what was happening.  Even though BeenVerified tells you that “This information will no longer appear in the results when a search is run on your name,” it was back in about 3 months.  We saw this over and over, and we took pictures, saved emails, and documented it.

An email from BeenVerified claiming that a listing was removed. Sure.

Here’s the basis of our argument:  it’s deceptive for BeenVerified to say they’ll remove your listing if you follow their opt-out process, then remove your info temporarily and put it back up only a few months after and without telling you.  Not only is this unfair and unexpected, but it can be harmful, especially to those who are at risk of identity theft, domestic violence, stalking issues, or other threats.

There are some people you just don't want knowing where you live.

We’re also worried that BeenVerified is using the info you send them in your opt-out request to update their databases.  In other words, your request to be removed feeds them information, which they then sell.  The people search industry as a whole needs to be much more open about where they get their information.  Simply saying “it’s public record” doesn’t cut it.  As the big corporations in this equation, the burden should be on them to explain the sources of their data, not you, the consumer, to figure it out.  We think some of it doesn’t come from public sources at all:  things like data breaches, marketing databases that aren’t open to the public, and other sources.

We’re asking the FTC to investigate these and other inconsistencies.  We want something like the Do Not Call Registry, but for your personal info:  like Do Not List Me, for example.  It’ll be a 1-stop shop to unlist yourself from all people search sites, once and for all.  Until this happens, we’re offering the next best thing:  our DeleteMe subscription service, which finds and removes your personal information from over a dozen databases and checks back throughout the year to make sure it’s gone.

It shouldn’t be this hard to be private, and companies shouldn’t be able to get away with deception.  To learn more about the people search industry, how you can make a quick online complaint of your own, and how you can spread the word to the people you care about, please visit our advocacy site and read journalist and author Julia Angwin’s Wall Street Journal story on the subject.

About Abine:  Abine provides consumers with online privacy solutions that are innovative, easy to use, and actually work. With proven tools, Abine enables people to both benefit from the Web and retain control over their most personal information. Abine is backed by premier venture capital firms Atlas Ventures and General Catalyst Partners. Abine: The Online Privacy Company ™.  Abine.com.

DNT+: valiantly protecting your personal information online!

Do Not Track Plus (DNT+) peels back the cover on invisible online tracking and targeted advertising, stopping you from being followed online.  And yes, you are being followed:  online tracking is a very real thing, even though you can’t see it.  It’s time to stop sharing your private information with people you don’t know!

The benefits of using DNT+

• Stop advertisers from knowing what you do online, including your site visits, shopping interests, hobbies, clicks, and geographic location
• Load certain websites up to 4 times faster
• Block 580 different tracking technologies from over 215 tracking companies (and that list is always growing)
• Get the good parts of Facebook and social networking without the bad:  block tracking but still voluntarily share and post (and DNT+ is the only available blocking tool that still lets consumers see and use social buttons)
• See a total count of how many times you’ve blocked tracking since you started using DNT+
• Browse in true privacy, far beyond what built-in “private browsing modes” offer
• Easily see which companies and technologies are trying to track you on each site you visit

There must be a catch, right?  How could DNT+ be free?

No catch.  We have a freemium model, meaning that we offer a free base service (DNT+) and separate paid upgrades, such as our DeleteMe service that removes our customers’ personal information from public websites.  We are also working on another software offering called PrivacySuite that’s currently in beta, but it will have premium upgradeable features like forwarded emails and phone numbers.  The business model is to make awesome products that people love, have lots & lots of free users (and DNT+ will always be free), and then if some of our users want to support us by buying some sort of premium upgrade down the line, we’re good.

We’re also completely dedicated to your privacy, so don’t collect or track anything when you get DNT+ (unlike *cough cough* those other companies with shady ties to marketing people) .  The only thing we can see is that a download took place by a certain IP address so we can figure out how many users we have.  There are no forms to fill out and no tracking of any kind.  In fact, the only connection we ever have to the software is when it asks our servers for updates on new trackers to block.  That’s it!

Why should you care about online tracking?

Online tracking is a lot like this scenario:  you’re browsing online like you always do, but there’s a guy you don’t know standing behind you, looking over your shoulder.  He’s watching everything you do and keeping notes, notes that he’ll use to build a profile of you:  the pictures you upload, the things you like on Facebook, the sites you visit most, the things you like to buy, where you live, and more.  He’s going to sell this profile of you, with all your browsing information, to other guys you don’t know.

You wouldn’t be okay with this guy peering over your shoulder in real life, so why should you put up with it on the internet?  Don’t!  Stop giving advertisers, identity thieves, and spammers the advantage by blocking online tracking.  All this tracking & data collection creates a “double you,” a virtual you that advertisers & trackers built and try to target ads to.  But unfortunately, a lot of their data is inaccurate, out of date, or out of context, and the real you suffers because of the virtual you. Some of the real, demonstrated harms include:

• Lowered credit scores and credit limits
• Denial of insurance coverage, or more expensive coverage
• Lost job opportunities, whether you aren’t hired to begin with or you’re fired because of something online
• Identity theft (one particularly harmful example happened in 2005, when identity thieves pretending to be small businesses were given access to ChoicePoint’s database of over 163,000 consumers’ financial records)
• Filter bubbles (to sum up this concept, we all see different things based on our targeted advertising profiles, which means we’re losing a collective understanding of the news and the world, things that are key to the democratic process)
• Censorship of speech and association due to fear that what we do online will come back to haunt us
  
• Erosion of the 4th Amendment right to privacy, particularly society’s collective understanding of when an expectation of privacy is “reasonable”

You’ll be shocked to see how many different companies are monitoring you on a single website.  Check out our “Top in Tracking” below for a preview of what you’ll come across.  And because loading all of these tracking companies’ data takes up your computer’s resources and your time, blocking them with DNT+ lets you load certain websites up to four times faster!

More about how DNT+ works

Although it is a powerful privacy tool, DNT+ is simple, user-friendly, and free.  Its icon sits in the corner of your browser and displays a number on each site you visit, which represents how many companies are attempting to gather information about you.

DNT+’s icon

By expanding the DNT+ window, you can see more details on the specific companies and technologies attempting to track you, as well as an all-time count of blocked tracking attempts.

Download DNT+ today and take charge of your personal privacy once and for all.  It’s available today for Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and Safari browsers.

Learn more about how DNT+ works here, and check out what people are saying about it. Don’t hesitate to say hello if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions!

You can tell from his body language and sulky shoulders that he's upset about this issue.

We got Abine t-shirts today–the back says “STOP FOLLOWING ME (on the internet)”–so naturally we decided to put one on the dog.  No dogs were harmed during the taking of this photo…only mildly inconvenienced.

He was a good sport.

Sorry, Jeff Jarvis.

Google wants to educate you about privacy with a website and campaign called “Good to Know.”  They’ve spent tens of million to get the word out about Good to Know, which has great information on things like how to shop online safely, choose a smart password, and actually understand what an IP address is.

We applaud them for providing a helpful resource, but we still think that Good to Know doesn’t do quite enough.  The info in Good to Know is, well…good to know.  But to truly protect your privacy, you need actions and words.  Restoring your privacy is about more than a public service announcement:  it’s about real people having their most personal information being exposed for all too see.  This is a cause for concern for many people.  It can feel like a real violation, and it requires a strong and effective response.

Anti-tracking software gives consumers a choice,  makes a statement, and takes a concrete and effective action:  that enough is enough, and easy and effective technology can start empowering everyday people who don’t want their every move online available for all to see.

So what should Google do?

3 main things, actually.

1.  Google’s brief mention of Incognito mode, the Chrome browser’s private browsing mode, doesn’t mention its limitations.  Although private browsing mode has some helpful features, such as not recording your browsing history, it really doesn’t do much to protect your privacy.  Private browsing mode was designed for a bygone time when we were more focused on our own computers than on the internet. Today, where we do almost everything online, erasing our browsing history doesn’t cover our tracks on the internet.

Is it just us, or does this guy have a really small head? Not just us? Okay.

And private browsing doesn’t protect you from viruses, phishing, online tracking, keyloggers, spyware, your employer…the list goes on.  In fact, we put together this cartoon to show you that list and get across the point that private browsing mode isn’t very private.

2.  Good to Know doesn’t make it easy enough for people to stop targeted advertising and tracking.  Their page about advertising is full of quotes about how this type of advertising “makes sense for you” and “makes websites more useful.”  Pardon us, but we think it’s your decision whether targeted advertising makes sense for you:  Google shouldn’t make that choice for you.

They don’t tell you how to opt-out in a particularly noticeable place in their privacy guide; it’s several paragraphs deep in a link.  We’ll make it easy for you:  here’s where you want to go to opt-out.  In fact, Chrome is still the only browser that doesn’t have a Do Not Track preference built into its preferences.  For quick and easy instructions on how to turn on pro-privacy settings in whatever browser you’re using, check out our visual, step-by-step guide.

3.  Google has a slant: they want to convince you of how your data makes Google services better for you.  Literally.  Check out this screenshot from their site:

Google is pretty open about wanting your data.

They compare targeted advertising to the friendly imagery of a barista knowing you you like your cup of coffee because you’re a repeat customer.  This is a pretty no-harm way of putting it when google can read every email you’ve ever written, see every search you’ve ever made, and know everywhere you’ve been online that has analytics.  Overexposing your data makes you more vulnerable to identity theft, phishing scams, embarrassing harm to your reputation, missed job opportunities, annoying ads that follow you everywhere you go online, and turns you into a product that’s literally bought and sold among companies for a price.

*       *       *

If Google really wants to be privacy-friendly, what they can do–and something that would truly revolutionize the internet–is to make all targeted advertising and collection of your search history be under your control.  Despite giving you more insight on what they’re doing with Good to Know, they’re still doing it.

We’ve been educating you on privacy tips and threats for a long time, and although it’s nice to see one of the big guys get behind the privacy cause, we think you deserve better.  That’s why we’re here to fill in the gaps and give you the real scoop from privacy experts.

What do you think about Google’s Good to Know?  Is it something you’d consult for help on privacy issues?  Would you share it with your friends?  Why or why not?  Post your thoughts in the comments below.

As it stands, the Do Not Track Header is mostly smoke and no substance.

Here’s a good privacy-related quote to start off the week:

“It’s like sending a smoke signal in the middle of Manhattan; it might draw a lot of attention, but no one knows how to read the message.”

- Mike Zaneis, senior vice president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, on why sending the Do Not Track Header doesn’t really accomplish anything

That’s why our privacy software actively blocks tracking requests from ever being made:  we don’t just rely on asking nicely.  When it comes to your personal privacy, you have to stand up for yourself!

To learn more about the Do Not Track header, check out our visual guide to browser privacy settings.

The glitch

I like to review which photos and posts people tag me in before approving or rejecting them.  It’s a failsafe called Tag Review–you should try it (here’s how).

So I’m going over the things I need to review, and one of them is a picture in which I’m tagged from Christmas vacation.  Looks fine, nothing embarrassing, so I approve it by clicking the check box next to it. You can see all this below:

These are the things I was trying to approve.

Except that doesn’t approve the picture.  Instead, that launches a window that says, “Enable ‘Friends can check you into Places?’”  Umm…no thanks.  “Places” is the Facebook equivalent of Foursquare.  I don’t want to broadcast where I am, and I certainly don’t want other people broadcasting where I am for me.

No thanks. Seriously. Stop asking.

So I hit “Not Now.”  But the picture still isn’t approved.  Even hitting the “Approve all” button for all my pending tags does the same thing:  it launches a prompt for me to enable my friends checking me into Places.

Why is Facebook forcing me to say where I am in order to approve a photo tag?

Let me get this straight:  is Facebook saying that I can’t review tagged photos of me unless I enable check-ins?  Because that’s what it’s forcing on me.  And the craziest part about this is that check-ins and Places have nothing to do with photo tags.  Or at least this particular photo tag, which isn’t connected to any location.

So. Frustrating.

I took steps to protect my privacy by reviewing my tagged items.  Now Facebook is giving me an ultimatum:  either I opt-in to their Places functionality–which I will never do–or I’ll have my pending photos stuck in review purgatory forever.  I guess it’s a standoff, Facebook.  I’m not going anywhere.

So let me know, readers:  is this just me, or is this happening to you too?

From left to right: Brian, Rocko, Andy, and James

He also has to howl at sirens and other high-pitched things, which is cool for conference calls.  You can see it in his face as he tries to fight his inner wolf and then utterly fails, letting piercing howls rip through the room.  We love him, though.  Every startup should have an animal friend.

Privacy, please!

In a USA Today article earlier today, Byron Acohido reported on how more and more regular people are taking online privacy into their own hands and fighting tracking with free tools like our Do Not Track Plus.

It makes sense:  big companies in Madison Avenue and Silicon Valley make money off your data, so of course they’re opposed to anti-tracking rules.  Less tracking of you means less money for them.  They’ve continually lobbied against the adoption of Do Not Track rules.

So because the big guys aren’t going to push online tracking protection, it’s up to individual people to ensure the privacy of themselves and their families.  And that’s exactly what you’re doing by downloading privacy add-ons and spreading the word to the people you care about.

Sure, more and more people are using tools like Do Not Track Plus to stop Facebook, Google, and hundreds of less well-known advertising companies from following them across the web, but why should you?  Well, a few reasons!

Why you should try Do Not Track Plus

1. The more data you’re leaking about yourself, the easier it is for thieves to steal your identity.
2. You know those Facebook Like buttons you see everywhere?  They’re not just buttons; they’re sophisticated tracking devices.  Do Not Track Plus blocks them from tracking you, but still let you use them to share.  Good deal, right?
3. Your browser’s private browsing mode isn’t going to cut it.  Here’s why.
4. Online tracking is only getting more widespread and invasive.  The industry is growing, and their tactics are getting better (and scarier).
5. Why not?  It’s free, it’s simple to install, it runs in the background of your browser without messing up anything or slowing anything down, and it’s got a cute icon:

This icon will appear in the corner of your browser. The number shows you how many companies are trying to track you on each site you visit.

We also realize that you have several options for tracker-blocking software, so we made this handy feature comparison chart so you can make an informed decision about which to use:

If you have any questions, we’re always here to talk in live chat or over email.  Also, check out our informational page all about Do Not Track Plus.

Here’s to real people taking a stand against secret internet tracking!