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RapLeaf Is Back and Bad As Ever

Posted by timothy on from the making-a-list-checking-it-an-infinite-number-of-times dept.

itwbennett writes "Privacy blogger Dan Tynan opted out of data aggregator RapLeaf back in 2010 — and wrote about it. At the time, opting out seemed to work well enough. But fast forward a couple of years and ... they're baaaack. While testing a privacy service called Safe Shepherd, Tynan discovered that 'not only [is he] not opted out of RapLeaf's database, they've also gathered far more information about [him] than they had before.' And it's a pretty good bet some of the data came from Facebook apps, which is a practice that the company was slapped for in 2010 and claimed to no longer do."

8 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. Cookie based opt-out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Opt-out policy

    This company provides a cookie based opt-out. An "opt-out cookie" is set by the browser. This provides a request that ads should not be customized through your web browsing activities and preferences. You will continue to receive ads but this company will not use this information to select behavioral ads you see online. You must opt-out again if cookies are deleted and required for each browser type and new computer. Third party cookies must be accepted for opt-out to work.

    So, if you wipe your cookies, you "opt back in".

    1. Re:Cookie based opt-out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      There are Firefox add-ons (and probably Chromium equivalents) that automatically give you opt-out cookies, and make sure they won't be deleted. Beef Taco comes to mind.

    2. Re:Cookie based opt-out by ben_shepherd · · Score: 5, Informative

      There are two types of ways to opt out of Rapleaf that should be distinguished here. The more robust way (assuming they respect it) is to go through their "permanent opt-out" form (http://www.rapleaf.com/opt-out/), which removes you from their database. What the cookie opt-out does is disable their third party tracking of you as you browse the web. If you're interested in removing yourself from all of the major data broker and people search sites check out our manual opt out guides: http://blog.safeshepherd.com/how-to-block/ . Or better yet, give our service a try.. guarantee you it will save you a lot of time and worry if you care about these sites selling your personal information.

    3. Re:Cookie based opt-out by gandhi_2 · · Score: 3, Funny

      just a bit paranoid

      Is that a twitter bird next you your id?

      --
      THL phish sticks
  2. Follow the money by Jawnn · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This behavior not going away until it becomes to expensive, in terms of bad PR as well as fines, for dishonest practices. You either honor your customers' request/expectation of privacy or you don't. If you don't it should cost you. Currently it simply doesn't, so the so-called free market being what it is, we see rampant abuse like this. Mind you, the clueless legions who so blithely bend over to have their privacy raped by Facebook et al deserve a fair share of the blame here, but it is not realistic to expect most of them to fully understand just how bad an idea it is to let some of these go on. For that reason, regulation is in order, and I mean real regulation, with teeth and a budget to enforce it. I will not hold my breath.

  3. Hmmm ... by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So, you don't trust the company (which is a given), but somehow we're supposed to trust that opting-out actually does anything or causes them to delete anything?

    If anything, it sounds like the fact that you opted out gave them more information about you and more reason to find more.

    Opting out of this kind of shit is like "click here to unsubscribe" which comes with spam to make it look compliant -- they're not going to do it.

    I mean, he's talking about logging into his account on their server to see what information they have about him -- I sure wouldn't sign up for this in the first place.

    Laws need to change so the default position isn't "company can do whatever it wants without telling you". Of course, they'd scream and howl that it was cutting into their "freedom of speech" or corporate profits, but I don't see why it should be something which they decide how it gets used.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  4. Re:Opt Out? by macraig · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And BTW, that page relies on no less than 10 external "trackers", according to Ghostery:

    AppNexus
    DoubleClick
    Google +1
    Google AdWords Conversion
    Google Analytics
    HubSpot
    MixPanel
    Outbrain
    ScoreCard Research Beacon
    SnapEngage

    People are quite likely collecting data on your choice to opt out....

  5. How we verify opt-outs at Safe Shepherd by ben_shepherd · · Score: 5, Informative

    Hey guys, I'm Ben, a developer at Safe Shepherd. Data brokers and people search sites like Rapleaf have a bad habit of blocking or flat out ignoring opt out requests. Recently we implement a system of verified removals whereby we check whether the opted out record actually still appears on the data broker's website. This allows us to identify whether they're being generally honest and whether another opt-out needs to be sent on a case-by-case basis. I set up the verified removals to run as a daily cron task, so we can identify whether records re-appear even after they've been removed (yes, data brokers do this). Also fwiw we've written up some manual opt-out guides for all the major data brokers and people search sites in case you want to do the removals yourself rather than through our service: http://blog.safeshepherd.com/how-to-block/