Take Back Control: Unveiling the Secrets of Data Privacy with Lawrence Gentilello

[00:00:09] Lawrence Gentilello, thanks very much for joining me today. How are you? Good, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me on. So you're a pro. You're a CEO and co-founder of a company that is set to resolve some of the privacy issues online.

[00:00:26] But before we get started, just set the stage, maybe provide some cloud to what you're going to say. Walk me through, remember, Lane, how did you get to where you are today? Yeah, yeah, great question. Really two things were the lead up to starting Optery.

[00:00:44] One was I had spent about 10 years in the consumer data space. Originally I had a company called BlueKai and then BlueKai was acquired by Oracle and then Accenture. And so I had spent a lot of time helping companies leverage consumer data really for marketing.

[00:01:00] And when I got into this space it was a little more innocent. It was really about kind of targeted ads. But over time the technologies were getting so advanced and the cleverness of companies was getting really, really great.

[00:01:13] And the types of liberties that companies were taking with people's data got to be really, really just too extreme. And so what then started happening was privacy laws starting to get passed, like the CCPA and the GDPR,

[00:01:28] they gave consumers rights to opt out and say delete my data. And so as I started to see that, I felt like there was an opportunity to create a software platform that delivered opt out requests and data deletion requests at scale.

[00:01:42] And so that at that time was just sort of an idea and they would really catalyze things and really kind of brought things home because I became the victim of identity theft.

[00:01:50] Somebody had sort of profiled me and then created a fake ID in my name and not only created a fake ID in my name but created a fake ID in my wife's name

[00:01:58] and had I believe sourced a lot of the information to kind of build the profile, the dossier on myself based on information that was publicly posted by data brokers. People searched sites that list up your spouse's name, your family members names, home address, etc.

[00:02:15] And so when I became the victim of identity theft it sort of all came together for me just my understanding of the data world from working at Blue Chye Oracle and Accenture, becoming a victim and then seeing these laws that were starting to get passed.

[00:02:27] And I felt like there really need to be a platform out there that submitted opt out requests for people at scale. Yeah, and I love that it's one of the best origin stories, founder stories.

[00:02:39] People come across a problem throughout their career as a personal life or maybe both in your case. And come across a problem and they saw that there's no, no particular solution available.

[00:02:52] And then you go out and build the something like that to resolve and actually just this topic is dear to my heart because again as a cyber security professional,

[00:03:02] I'm always interested to see what's what's available, you know, on me online and I've come across confidential information that is out there and trying to opt out or remove myself. I came across tremendous hurdles.

[00:03:21] There's all kinds of they call it suppression tools where they ask you to go through huge amount of anyways before we jump into that. Let me ask you a couple of questions.

[00:03:33] What do you think so you mentioned that this has been around for a long time so data collection and you know people saying data is a new goal to data collection is not new.

[00:03:42] Right. The ability for companies to use that data to sell you and to get to you and then provide you what it is that they think that you want. That's not new either.

[00:03:57] What do you think happened in the past, I would say several years that turn into this whole craziness of data explosion and we as consumers as individuals are losing the battle in this. Yeah, I think really it's just that companies and adversaries have gotten very sophisticated.

[00:04:20] So, you know, 1020 years ago the the use of the data was much more basic and the real big original use case was for marketing from my perspective.

[00:04:34] It was like you could think of direct mail profiling neighborhoods based on your types of income or how they vote, you know, Republican or Democrat in leveraging data for marketing to start off direct mail and then for email lists like database marketing for

[00:04:52] email and then for targeted ads. And it kind of got more and more sophisticated over time.

[00:04:58] And then, meanwhile you also had the increasing sophistication of cyber security adversaries that started to say hey, we can have better targeted attacks just like marketers have better targeted ads and take it better targeted offers to consumers.

[00:05:15] They basically started saying hey, we can use data to have better targeted attacks that are more efficient. So marketers increasing conversion rates in an attacker is also increasing conversion rates for their own attacks.

[00:05:27] So I think the sophistication across the board just got greater and greater and just the tools and technologies that were people's disposal. Even now, AI is increasingly being used combined with public data sets to attack and infiltrate companies more than ever.

[00:05:45] And one would say I guess the flip side I would say I hate people reaching out to me with the wrong pitch or the wrong approach. People that haven't done a research in what it is that I care about or who I am.

[00:06:04] And it's a waste of my time. It's a waste of their time.

[00:06:07] And what would say that I guess the flip side of it, maybe there's benefit of somebody knowing everything about me so they can kind of tailor, you know, not from an a various perspective, but just tell you the kind of the pitch or to something that I really want and like.

[00:06:24] And then I will see the benefit. What can you say on that side of the house? And kind of the positive aspect of researching and knowing everything about me.

[00:06:34] Yeah, it's been really hard to get so there's privacy laws that have passed. So there was GDPR in Europe and then there's been laws at the state level in California, Virginia, Texas and Oregon.

[00:06:44] Laws go live on Monday on July 1st. But it's been really hard to get something passed at the federal level. And as as laws get further along, it becomes very evident that there's a lot of our economy is driven on data.

[00:06:58] And so I think a lot of lawmakers and people are really concerned that if you pull the rug out from under data for marketing, it can cause a lot of problems, especially for small businesses that rely on things like Google and Meta to deliver ads.

[00:07:16] And beyond that just direct mail. And so if you sort of outlawed targeted marketing, it could put a damper on the economy. So much of the economy relies on data for for marketing and customer relationships.

[00:07:32] So that is a big, a big problem. Now, I think the other big thing is trust. And so you've got consumers that actually are often comfortable and fine with giving some companies information about themselves because they trust them.

[00:07:47] You know, you might have a particular retailer that you trust. Maybe it's Nordstrom and you're fine giving them your email address, your address and information about your preferences because you trust that company.

[00:07:59] You trust that they're going to tailor offers towards you that you that you like. You can also maybe get discounts, etc. So there's sort of this, this world where if you just put a stop to everything, it would, it would definitely have an impact on the economy.

[00:08:15] And there's other world where there's some companies that you trust and some things that you don't.

[00:08:19] And so I think a lot of what's happening now is through laws and through platforms like ours, it's around control for consumers and saying, okay, hey, these are these companies that I trust, they can have permission to my information.

[00:08:30] But these are these other companies that I don't trust, they can't have permission. And by the way, why is it that these 300 other companies that I've never even heard of?

[00:08:38] Why should they be dealing in my information? So that's kind of really the vision that was for Optree when we started it was a data rights management platform, a control system for your data that in the past it just you had no control over your information.

[00:08:55] Just whatever data that companies or governments or adversaries grabbed on you, they just could use. But now more and more you're seeing control put in the hands of individuals and consumers who laws and through technology products like ours,

[00:09:11] they deliver data rights requests backed by by law. So it's really about control and trust. And we'll talk about how exactly it is that you do that.

[00:09:22] So in, in, in essence, everyone collects information. Listen, I go to the doctor to the dentist and they give me a 10 page questionnaire about fees that are not really relevant.

[00:09:38] They just call it. I don't even know why they're collecting it. I typically try to opt out of it. But almost everything you touch you move, you know, you move location you fill out perform to for the USPS.

[00:09:52] Before you know it, you get bombarded with with mail, like say welcome to the new neighborhood. Here's, you know, here's a home Depot is, you know, some cleaning services is like furniture. Like, I mean, it's unbelievable. And all you wanted to do is essentially just move your address.

[00:10:13] It seems like this is completely out of control, not just in the in the digital world also the physical world. As I mentioned to you, you go in and you relocate or you fill up of some forms.

[00:10:26] Aside from signing up for, for your service and we'll talk about this. What can you as an individual do to circumvent that or have be mindful.

[00:10:39] And some people will say, Oh, well, I have nothing to hide. I don't really care because I've heard that before from a privacy perspective.

[00:10:47] Yeah, it's interesting that you use the example of a doctor's office and historically that was someplace that you just had full trust literally you'd take your clothes off and give them your full history and just give them anything and everything that you

[00:11:00] And then they asked for. And so that's a classic example of someone that you might trust a lot. But at the same time in today's day and age you kind of can't really trust anyone.

[00:11:11] You don't know if that doctor's office is going to get hacked. You don't know if that trusted, you know, vendor is going to get hacked.

[00:11:19] And don't you don't even have to have them hacked. I mean, I would say that some of them even sell that information to third party without your consent. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's my point is even in these most trusted relationships you kind of can't trust anyone.

[00:11:34] And that necessarily because you don't trust them. But you don't know, you don't know how carefully they're protecting information. So the question was like, what can you do? There's a lot of it's it's a it's a massive problem and it's it's not there's no silver bullet.

[00:11:50] It's not like, Oh, you go click this button. It's gonna all be fixed. It's like cybersecurity. I mean, there's just so many different vectors and so many different things that could go wrong.

[00:11:59] But there's a lot of basic things that you can do to start to protect yourself. I mean, you mentioned the change of address form with the United Postal Service.

[00:12:07] That is a common way that your information, your address gets propagated out to just hundreds or thousands of data brokers are letting them know your address has changed as a whole industry that's based off of knowing where you live.

[00:12:20] And by finding that change of address form with post office, you now have basically broadcast your change of address to all of them.

[00:12:27] So what I recommend is never using the USPS permanent change of address form, just only do the temporary. So if you do the temporary this when you do a change of address, you can do it one or two ways, you can do a temporary,

[00:12:38] and you could do a permanent. Don't do the permanent because then you're permanently telling hundreds of data brokers where it is that you've moved to the temporary use that temporary to buy some time to go change the addresses at the places that you want them

[00:12:52] changed and to start monitoring your mail and say, Oh, this was mail message was forwarded to me. I need to go. It's a reminder to go change my address.

[00:13:00] So that's, that's one, two is there's a lot of services out there that will create one time use disposable use phone numbers and email addresses sort of very bare minimum.

[00:13:10] Some people that's too difficult, it's very very man what you could do. That's actually not hard. It's not going to be really challenging is to have is to maybe create five email addresses one for friends and family one for financial accounts.

[00:13:21] One for online e-commerce and vendors and maybe one where if you walk into a restaurant they ask you for for an email you kind of have to get it given a table, get a table.

[00:13:30] So very minimum you could just create two or three or four or five, but even better. There's a lot of kind of like one time use disposable email services and phone number services as well.

[00:13:43] So to start to protect a trusted address or trust the phone number. So that's another thing you can do. And there's there's really, you know, there's really lots of things. One of the things you can do which which is what our company does is is you can opt out so you can opt out yourself and go to a lot of these sites or a lot of these companies opt out and take your information

[00:14:05] out of circulation opting out is not a you know what and done and it's also not an off switch for unwanted email it's not off switch for unwanted phone calls but it takes that information out of circulation over time if you get better and better at this and you're using your primary

[00:14:23] email or phone number in less of less places you're opting out more and more places. You're going to start taking your information out of circulation the other big thing that I'll stop is on a pause is when you purchase a home so real estate records are public data.

[00:14:41] So when you purchase a home that usually gets recorded in the county registry and that's a big source of information for data brokers, census data, real estate transaction data, data brokers feed on that data. That's just a core asset that they review because it's public data.

[00:14:57] More and more people will put their home when they do a purchase in a trust to conceal their names now I always recommend doing that through a state planning attorney that's skilled in privacy to get some advice through that but that is a very common way that data is leaked in addition to the change of address form with the

[00:15:16] USPS but also real estate transactions. Yeah absolutely and I believe the iPhones provide you a one time email address or aliases right off the bat so I think that this options there and that was very insightful thank you for that.

[00:15:35] And I believe also that the it's not necessarily just a single source like that said the change of address the problem starts when when some of these are connecting the dots. I don't know if people notice but the majority of not all of the.

[00:15:53] You know background check from a from a criminal perspective is attached to your name and your birth date.

[00:16:03] And so now you post your birthday on social media and they have your name is now all I have to do is match that and then all of a sudden you matched up with an address.

[00:16:15] You matched that with some other sources and connecting the dots is what makes it.

[00:16:20] Quote unquote almost like dangerous you know accurate and then it can be a start building a real profile on you and from a identity perspective that he you know stolen a you know and again maybe you can recommend as well to freeze your credit reports.

[00:16:38] But all of that becomes exponentially more dangerous and then as you mentioned there's this kind of big data data lake where all these data points are now easily combined through quote unquote AI engine that consists of millions of records and pinpoint the certain individual

[00:16:57] is that something that correct that I've just described. And definitely so one of these is interesting. So what our product does it does two things it's half search engine.

[00:17:08] So half of what we do is search hundreds of data broker sites to see if our customers information is there. And we first set up the product.

[00:17:16] What we did is we said what's the minimum amount of information that we need from the customer to be able to find them with a high degree of confidence. First name and last name is not good enough. There might be hundreds of people with the same name.

[00:17:30] So so start with sort of the full name first middle last the next thing that helps the city and state. So now you've narrowed down to someone that's in the same city. But if you add in that birthday that really gets you high confidence.

[00:17:43] So when people sign up for a service we have a free sign up. That's the minimum required because everyone gets a free scan. So we have we have first name last name city state and all we really need is is year of birth that gets us close enough.

[00:17:56] It helps a lot better if we get month and date. But without information we can go out and search hundreds of data broker sites and find you with a high degree of accuracy which then enables us to remove you.

[00:18:08] So that those those pieces of information are very helpful. But what we use and what adversaries use as well is additional information. So what we make it optional. The other thing that's really helpful is actually family members names because even then you might have people are similar age.

[00:18:23] But if you have the same family members and espouse a sibling a parent that helps a lot and then pass it in states.

[00:18:31] You might have a lot of people with the name John Smith age 40 in New York City but only a subset of them that used to live in Miami. You know so and then only a subset of them beyond that that has similar family members names.

[00:18:43] So we use a lot of the same methodologies and tactics that adversaries use to find people but we use them to find them and then remove them.

[00:18:52] So to your point the more data that you have the more accurate that you're targeting can be whether that's targeting for marketing.

[00:19:00] And this is why Google and Meta have such you know such powerful marketing platforms because they have all the data they know they know you know where you live. They know which IP addresses you're accessing Google from they know your family members names they know everything.

[00:19:16] And then increasingly adversaries are beginning to know everything by crawling the web and sourcing data sets from the dark web.

[00:19:24] And so what we did is we sort of say hey what are the types of tools and techniques and methodologies that large marketers like Google and Meta use and that adversaries use how can we bring those same types of

[00:19:37] methodologies to find people with high accuracy and then layer on the delivery of legal demands to get information removed. So to your point yeah there's a there's a an arms race.

[00:19:49] And this is why we started the company was consumers have always just been showing up with you know with with knives and popsicle sticks. And you've got these nuclear weapons at the big tech companies and increasingly in with AI in their hands with adversaries.

[00:20:06] And so we felt like there's this is just like massive and that power imbalance between consumers who had just basically writes but no tools and writes but no knowledge of like who are these companies.

[00:20:17] And you've got lawyers and you've got tech and you've got AI and you've got data out in these other hands. And so that's really the why we started the company was to to arm consumers. There showed up with with just just completely out outbund.

[00:20:32] In these identity brokers I mean they they profit from that right. You know you go out and you search for somebody even out of curiosity or like even a business partner.

[00:20:44] And then they come out with this OK you know the start and it's these some of these sites I mean I have to tell you they look a little fishy and odd.

[00:20:53] Did you quote unquote they make it look like they're searching and show you all kinds of stuff and then all all of a sudden after you know two minutes or whatever this oh you know if you want to get the full report you know just pay us like whatever

[00:21:05] $15 $20 $30 or whatever and just the whole thing looks a little odd to me.

[00:21:11] And I also know that they're beginning from experience is a lot of these aliases for the same company meaning that there's a one database and then there's like you know 10 different you know names and almost like

[00:21:26] almost storefront for the exact same thing where they you know and and the whole thing is really out of control. Now let me ask you this is somebody who lives on the East Coast New York New Jersey. Let's talk about regulatory compliance.

[00:21:46] Are we protected because again and I'm going to jump into the just a question I brought up the beginning.

[00:21:52] Somebody is data brokers that tell you well we have to fill out the suppression tool basically meaning that you have to verify information that you didn't give them to begin with.

[00:22:04] And you have to go through a 15 steps process I mean I my god you got to hire somebody to do this and and then they tell you oh you know if you make the request that we feel like it and you've made you know me took all those 15 steps will remove

[00:22:19] or will suppress your data and there's some of them are really cheeky about I mean they're like if you ask them to to say no I don't want to fill this out is too complicated for me to so well.

[00:22:28] We saw it that's that's our way for us to remove it. So I know it's a kind of long preempted question but what can you do a from a regulatory perspective can you file a complaint is it something you do.

[00:22:39] And and you really have to go through all this crazy suppression tools to remove your information. Yeah so there's three points there and the first point is there's a wide spectrum of data brokers that are out there.

[00:22:56] And some are truly just sort of bottom feed or scum and others are really kind of more on the up and up above board they're kind of doing their best to play by the rules and there's everything in between.

[00:23:07] So one example that I like to give is Nielsen like going back in the old days Nielsen would kind of like get permission from people to put a device in their home to monitor what was it there. The television program they're watching that was a huge business.

[00:23:24] Yeah it's a huge business. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah and so that's an example of like it's a trusted relationship and they're a data broker so they would take that information they would sell it to the networks and say this is what people are watching. This is the popular shows.

[00:23:37] These are the unpopular shows. And so that's an example of you know companies are did it very transparently and there's other companies out there that have these kind of layered shell corporations and Cyprus and other countries.

[00:23:50] They completely ignore opt out requests they use fake identities as to who the leadership of the companies people that don't even exist and just just just kind of horrendous types of companies and there's everything in between.

[00:24:02] There's a lot of big respectable companies in the data data world Oracle com score you know Nielsen etc. to the large spectrum that's kind of kind of point one every you get something a little different with everyone. To is this is a state by state patchwork today.

[00:24:17] We don't have a federal privacy law in the United States. So it means that state at the state level some states have them enacted and others don't.

[00:24:25] The good news is there's been a cascade of laws I think because it's coming to consumers really care about they really want. They are advocating for themselves to their lawmakers started in California.

[00:24:34] Like I said Texas Oregon goes live on Monday of next week and it's more they're going live Montana I think goes live in October and more going live next year.

[00:24:42] So that's great and unfortunately the good and the bad news so if you're gonna state with a privacy law you've got some real rights.

[00:24:49] It makes our jobs easier and consumers jobs easier when they want to get information removed because data brokers visit hey look like you're in California you're in Texas. We have to honor what you're asking for but if you're gonna say that doesn't like New York.

[00:25:01] For example or Washington state for example you actually don't have the right to opt out if you want to opt out the data broker is doing you a favor and in opting you out.

[00:25:11] They don't have to and as the volume of the opt out to start to increase we're starting to see some data brokers say hey look like if you're in a state with a privacy law will honor the opt out if you're not we're not going to.

[00:25:23] And whereas in the past the volume was lower and they would just say hey we'll just do it for everybody. We're starting to see a separation out of if you're not a state with a privacy law. You better get one passed in your state.

[00:25:33] Otherwise you can't opt out so that's kind of like the second thing. And you know the last thing is really kind of what you mentioned the suppression lists is is every day to progress a slightly different process.

[00:25:46] So you mentioned in one case they're asking for additional information they're making you go through just a bunch of hoops.

[00:25:52] In some cases it's very simple in some cases they make it difficult and like you said it's kind of hard and it's really kind of intractable problem for a lot of people.

[00:26:01] So that's where services like ours come in some people prefer to do this themselves and they just spend you know hours on the weekends searching through things and submitting them and it's all different.

[00:26:11] So you know we cover a few hundred data brokers and everyone's a little bit different where sometimes they're asking for a URL like what's the URL that you found put that in or sometimes asked for.

[00:26:24] So so how do you do that for your clients do you fill out those suppression requests and go through it because again the process is tedious.

[00:26:32] Yeah and that and that's basically a reason for existence so so opt three is two things one is this powerful search engine and we make that available for free.

[00:26:40] We have a freemium model anybody can sign up you sign up you get a free scan we search through hundreds of sites.

[00:26:46] We have a couple patents around the technology and then we send you a report on average of about 100 screenshots so we don't just say how we found you at 100 sites.

[00:26:56] We actually send you 100 about 100 it varies it could be 50 it could be 20 it could be 120 about 100 screenshots where we show you these are actually screenshots of where your profiles are made we make that available for free.

[00:27:07] And we run those every three months for free and then if we have self service tools we say hey look if you don't want to spend any money on this you can go and click through the opt out links and submit the opt out yourself or you can upgrade

[00:27:21] and we have that's how we make our money and then we have software that automatically goes out and populates forms sends emails manages the back and forth communications with these companies.

[00:27:32] I just don't know how people have the time to do it themselves some out there do it but for busy people and don't have the time or just the knowledge of increasingly more and more people are outsourcing the work.

[00:27:44] And initially this this kind of like industry we're not the only ones in the industry there's some other companies it started off originally with consumers but increasingly the biggest growth vector in our industry right now is companies and the government.

[00:27:58] So more and more this is viewed as a serious cybersecurity tool to get executives employees judges police officers election workers politicians information off the web.

[00:28:13] Yeah absolutely I mean it carries some risk right depending on who you know even if you're an executive or some company and you know this the company is not very liked or there's always if you do business.

[00:28:28] You're not very like if you like a really big company there's going to be some people who are going to be a guest. So what about potentially finding content online is related to you that's wrong.

[00:28:41] Maybe fake profiles maybe incorrect maybe different the cemetery information do you do anything about that.

[00:28:49] We don't I mean you know cybersecurity itself massive space and then we kind of fit in this we're kind of a little little niche and even with our niche kind of rushing up against us is like reputation management and brand management which is something we don't do.

[00:29:04] So I know there's a lot of other companies out there that will monitor for fake websites. So let's just use our Nordstrom example again. You might have the Nordstrom owns Nordstrom dot com but then you might have scammers that are building out like Nordstrom store dot XYZ or you know Nordstrom dot Nordstrom

[00:29:23] you know Inc.io and so that's a whole kind of sub sector where companies are scanning and searching for impersonating types of sites. We don't do that today. The other one is like what you mentioned sort of content and that's what I refer to as like reputation management

[00:29:41] is OK somebody Googled me and there's some like stuff that I like and maybe there's like a negative review or an article that doesn't you know paint you know me in a favorable light how do I push that stuff down is the way I can get that removed.

[00:29:55] And that's a whole nother space we've decided to really focus in on the data broker problem and just make that our niche also allows us to keep the costs down.

[00:30:06] Usually those other types of services are much more consultative. They're more they're just there's just that they're more there's just like a lot more angles to work whereas us it's much more formulaic.

[00:30:18] Our lowest tier plan is a few dollars a month and so we're able to kind of focus more on on scale and focus as opposed to kind of this more holistic thing. There's other things out there.

[00:30:28] If you're like hey look like we want to protect our brand or we've got reputation management issues. So it's another area. The other thing that the big the big movement in the space right now is you're starting to see a lot of lawsuits against AI companies.

[00:30:41] We're basically doing what data brokers have always done with data brokers have always done is saying hey any information I can get my hands on. I'm just going to use it and AI companies now are saying this data is really valuable.

[00:30:50] It's really important to us. I'm going to just start using anybody's information. The canonical case here is when the New York Times sued open AI because opening I basically just gobbled up all the New York Times whole website and started using that train their models and they

[00:31:08] said no no no you're not going to do that anymore. So we're seeing that it unfortunately not all not all creators or writers have the legal resources to take on Microsoft or Google or open AI but it is a big issue that you've got in the past it was sort of these data sets but now it's people's actual creative work that's being hijacked and usurped.

[00:31:29] So we're going to see that kind of play out over next year's AIs brand new obviously so well these days brand new in the public consciousness.

[00:31:38] And in recent years we've seen a tremendous influx of data breaches. So all these companies are collected you know started with like the big one the target but it's there's so many like where millions of records of consumers and individuals get siphoned in into this black hole of somebody's

[00:31:59] computer and then they go out and they sell it in the dark web which is really just a just another form of web where people access information and they buy it.

[00:32:11] And that includes credit card information identities and whatnot. What do you do in that regards because what you just described these are even though there's some sleazy data brokers.

[00:32:23] There are still not considered dark web or do not they kind of nefarious entities. What do you do about that piece if you do it all.

[00:32:31] Yeah so again we're we're all just sort of laser focused on this problem of data brokers and for better or for worse we've just chosen not to tackle dark web.

[00:32:44] So dark web monitoring in my view is you know a bit of a commodity product. There's a lot of companies out there. There's nothing you can do about it. What is good to know is that you can know if you're an email and password combination has been compromised

[00:32:59] and that tells you that it's a good thing to go change. It's baked into Chrome is baked into iPhone iPhone you got a security area that actually does dark for Mars for you.

[00:33:09] So our view is basically hey Apple provides it Google provides it. You know most services out there provided if people it's important you can't get it removed but the knowledge the awareness the transparency to tell you oh I need to go change my password or that's a password.

[00:33:25] I'm using it elsewhere so we don't touch that but it's definitely an important area and there's a lot of companies out there that do.

[00:33:34] And do you think that or do you believe that we are going to get to here in the States the kind of GDPR level of the right to be forgotten.

[00:33:45] For those people not familiar with that is the ability for someone to request all their information data to be completely removed.

[00:33:51] So not just like in a sense that they're they're not going to be available anymore. No but they have to they can request to be deleted and then they have the ability to request that the you know close the loop on it basically ask the company to showcase that they've deleted it.

[00:34:08] Is there something that we're going to see here. Well so what's what's happening so California has been the pioneer in data privacy in the US so California passed the first privacy law which went to effect in 2020.

[00:34:21] And now many states don't have anything and but more and more are coming online. California just passed another law called the California Delete Act which goes into effect in January of 2026 and about a year and a half.

[00:34:34] And it is just as C.C.P.A. was years ahead of everybody else. It is years of everybody else. And it's really amazing because they're creating a centralized almost like a do not call right like we have a national do not call registry.

[00:34:50] They're creating out for data brokers and it's called drop. I forget what the what what the with the acronym you know what it actually spells out basically consumers can go and submit once to drop and then data brokers are required to honor the requests from

[00:35:06] drop. The provision also has a carve out for authorized agents like which is what our company does so consumers can go there directly or they can go through an authorized agent and that then will propagate the opt out requests to hundreds of data brokers.

[00:35:20] So if you look at California as the leader historically on things like emission standards and fair credit access and data privacy.

[00:35:28] California leads the way and so it's really great to know that California now has a centralized opt out mechanism that's going to go live in a year and a half.

[00:35:38] And based on that likely you'll start to see more stuff happen across other other states. I think Texas has a provision as well for something similar.

[00:35:46] I've got to believe that we'll get something to the federal law they give all United States citizens the option the opportunity to have something like this.

[00:35:54] But I will say I've been disappointed over and over again for many years so I always have felt like we're a year or two away from a federal privacy law but I you know that's been for the last like six years.

[00:36:07] So I don't know every year like every year to another like possibility comes up like I think a year or two ago it was the American Privacy Rights Act and there's another one that just kind of got a little bit of traction.

[00:36:20] But they really just die every year there's like there's one supposed to happen and it was covered and there's nothing that happened it was Ukraine and then now it's election year and so just keeps getting pushed out so we'll see if it happens I'm very hopeful but

[00:36:32] we'll see it's been really hard to get something like that passed at the federal law.

[00:36:37] Are you hopeful because then you're going to have more teeth like clouds for you to act upon or because eventually like I mean you don't want to be out of business if everybody stops doing it.

[00:36:49] You know there's no you know there's no legitimized business you know ability to sell this product.

[00:36:58] Yeah it's a little it's a little tricky and honestly quite honestly it's unknown so one of the analogies that I like to use is Turbo tax H&R block tax sale tax layer.

[00:37:11] So you can file a tax report with the IRS for free you don't have to pay anybody to do that but there has been software that has been built that enables you to do that much more efficiently and

[00:37:28] layers in a better customer experience and just a more effective ultimate solution. And so I believe that companies like Optree are going to layer themselves over what it is ever it is that the government provides.

[00:37:44] So we are already working on layer ourselves over on top of the California Delete Act in the near term we're probably going to have custom layers over you know what's happening in Texas and other places.

[00:37:54] Ultimately also in the at the federal level something like that comes out so one it's I don't think anybody knows how we will play out and what it'll look like.

[00:38:06] But even the do not call registry that doesn't really work so well like a lot of people still use services like ours because they say hey I did the do not call registry but I'm still getting calls and texts and then they use ours.

[00:38:19] And then their texts and calls goes down dramatically. So if you look at the do not call registry that was not a death knell for unwanted phone calls and text messages. You still need professional technology to your disposal but we'll see it's a little bit unknown.

[00:38:40] I'm not worried about it though to be honest. And yeah it's amazing that they enacted this do not call list and their fines are tremendous.

[00:38:49] I mean the FCC I think they you know can put in a significant fine yet you there's a robocalls because I guess they get rerouted for some while.

[00:38:59] And I would say any ask a question OK why don't the telcos block these they have a ability to see who's calling in the same question then you know you can translate that too.

[00:39:12] And one of the search engines suppress these these data brokers or maybe provide some another thing or so you know you want a data broker fill in this information why are you looking for this.

[00:39:24] And then because then they will kill the kind of the whole business model because now you search somebody's name you know there's 50 data brokers and some of them are very sleazy show up. Why do they show up on the first page. Why do I get to suppress those.

[00:39:38] Yeah it's a very tough problem. This has been a problem that's vexed people the FTC put out a big report 10 years ago in 2014.

[00:39:47] They highlighted all of the a lot of these same issues and they flagged all these data brokers and there's all these problems and consumers are being harmed. That was 10 years ago and that much has changed.

[00:39:59] Almost nothing has changed at the federal level but we have seen change at the state level. It's very hard. There's a lot of there's also. Yeah I always think about it from both perspectives.

[00:40:08] So data brokers say we got rights to you know a lot of this information public information and it's not illegal in many places. And there's even issues that data brokers lean back on as identity verification where it said sometimes people don't necessarily validate their identity.

[00:40:28] And so data brokers also hey we don't know exactly who you are. So we're not going to honor it.

[00:40:33] So that's what going back to like what happens if you get to be the federal level one of the things we work with that we spent a lot of time on is validating with the data brokers that this is who you got.

[00:40:45] You know 500 John Smith. This is our John Smith. So it's not it's it's a really really tough problem. You mentioned search engines Google about a year ago came out with something because so here's like the the.

[00:40:59] Part of the problem problem is you've got the data brokers posting stuff up on the web and on their sites and then Google goes in and indexes those sites and then has their little snippets right where if you search for someone's name.

[00:41:11] It'll you'll have a link to someone that been verified and in the snippet all this like maybe the city and state or their age or something like that.

[00:41:20] So Google came out with something about a year ago where you can go into Google and submit basically a removal request from Google's cash that doesn't remove it from the source.

[00:41:28] It doesn't prevent somebody from just going to you know been verified and searching for somebody but it does remove it from Google's cash that was a nice step forward. But it's also just doesn't do anything about removing it from the source.

[00:41:40] So it's just a very very tough tough problem and the telcos is a whole nother animal. So yeah it's just a really big multifaceted problem. Everybody's got their turf everybody got their turf their stake down and trying to defend and protect.

[00:42:01] Yeah and it's more than privacy I mean the consequences of somebody having that data and then decided to target you. I'll give an example. I get this weekly calls like hey are you looking for remote work.

[00:42:15] And you know this is a you know a vishing attempt or whatever there's somebody is sensing out you know collecting information and God forbid I answer then immediately send it over to someone else to start working on me.

[00:42:28] And potentially you know the next thing is that I want to send out some information or whatever for like this fake job. You know they ask me to pay or before you know it my bank account is going to get cleared out.

[00:42:37] So yeah and this happens on a daily basis and I suspect the numbers are much higher. A lot of people just are shy and they're too you know to freight to report it.

[00:42:49] But again just to be clear this is not just like my privacy. I want to be a private person. This has some major consequences for people's lives.

[00:43:00] You know I would say especially the people that are at high risk maybe elderly just uninformed people are just not aware that these things happen. Is that correct. Yeah definitely there's kind of like three vectors there of what you described.

[00:43:16] So vector one is dark web stuff and that's basically stuff that was compromised. It's on the dark web. It's in databases somewhere file somewhere that attackers are just getting in using.

[00:43:27] And probably the best thing to do there is to use this disposable emails disposable phone numbers have several different ones so that it's hard for them to track down like what's your actual trusted number and if you use that trusted number just in certain places or even even shut things off.

[00:43:47] So there's solutions out there that give you the ability to have almost like masked phone numbers and emails.

[00:43:52] I would kind of like protect you there where we say hey I just got a text message on this one of my 10 numbers from one of these you know phishing phishing phishing attacks that's all that's been compromised. It's time to start shutting that one down.

[00:44:07] That's kind of one vector and that's really kind of in my mind the best thing to do the second vector is information that just on the public web through data brokers. So I just have a friend who I just just showed them like how our solution work.

[00:44:22] I just Google her name and I sent them two links that had their cell phone number and their home address and I just said by the way we can use up three that goes away you know within within weeks so the second way that could happen is you've got bad actors crawling the web crawling these sites harvesting your cell phone your home address.

[00:44:40] So what would you do there. Well the way you could do there is start opting out and removing yourself from those sites so now you can be eliminated or dramatically reduce the access to your information from there.

[00:44:52] And then the last one is like quote unquote respectable data brokers which is like zoom info rocket reach clear bit Apollo these are you know companies that are by and large above board but they sell people's phone numbers and email addresses. And so they don't.

[00:45:10] Some cases they don't publish them on the web but they publish profiles in the web and then you can buy them from them so you should be opting out of those sites whether just directly or through a service like optary.

[00:45:21] So if you look at that problem say hey I just got this unwanted text message clearly this is something like bad stuff going on here.

[00:45:27] There's probably three broad categories that it could have originated from and you've got the three different strategies to start to get it removed but there's no one like silver bullet which is I mentioned at the beginning.

[00:45:38] Like you can take it out of circulation you can start to remove it but it's really hard to just completely eliminate because you're only one week away or one day away from another breach or another.

[00:45:51] You know doctors office whose whose IT team didn't secure their customer list right so you can take it out of circulation you can start to remove it you can make it harder.

[00:46:02] You know so that's what we do well just so you don't you know become a you know sitting duck yeah and unfortunately when there's money involved the you know credit card companies are selling your data everybody's out there to make you know and I'm one I mentioned beginning data is the kind of

[00:46:20] the new gold it's becoming a commodity to be sold and bought in so therefore you know I wish there was more way for us individuals to control it but this is a step in the right direction so let me ask you one last question this was really phenomenal

[00:46:36] and then I ask you about how do you get in touch with you and how to to opt into the service can someone really vanish and get off the grid these days is this even possible because I've seen some YouTube videos and people say oh you know if you want to vanish

[00:46:51] I know that in Japan which is really interesting there's about 40 to 50,000 people that kind of vanish and there's services for that meaning that they decided to kind of disappear because of whatever whatever reason maybe the business failure maybe family failure and they just vanish completely

[00:47:09] and then they get new identity is this something and I'm not saying that you should offer that as a service but is it something that's really doable as people can can just really get himself completely removed.

[00:47:22] Yeah so one of the things you mentioned just to start with is one thing that people can do is if you're in a state that doesn't have a privacy law make noise with your lawmakers because it could help and that helps a lot as if your state has a privacy law in the book so that's one thing that

[00:47:37] any bill is just when you say make noise can you just be more specific what can you do can you just have to find out the representative and just what write them an email complain about leave them a voicemail.

[00:47:49] Yeah, yeah I think most states have kind of state senators and your congressmen that you can send emails to send letters to you there's a lot of open forums out there for people to air what's important to them so they just tracking down your local politicians

[00:48:05] and informing them this is something you care about so I think that's something that everybody can do.

[00:48:10] But going completely off the grid so Michael Basel who you know he's got his I think his podcast has now been in I think he's not doing anymore but his podcast Extreme Privacy was the model for that was just completely concealing yourself from anyone and everyone fascinating podcast I've listened to most of the episodes

[00:48:34] and a lot of work beyond the capability probably of most people what he does and he literally puts his cell phone in a third day bag.

[00:48:43] You know before he gets to his home so that his home can't be triangulated by telco provides cell phone company or apps etc so really really hard to do in today's day and age but certainly possible with a lot of effort and work you need to start.

[00:49:02] I mean this is a huge effort that would go into it in things like disposable credit cards using a P.O. box or drop boxes and say don't go get anything sent to your home.

[00:49:13] You know there's just there's a whole range of things that you can do is it possible I'd say if if Michael Basel editing the same for about it I would say the answer is yes but I would say a tremendous amount of work would go into it.

[00:49:24] It might be a little bit out of the realm of feasibility even if you think of things like if you have kids oftentimes you have kids you have to sign them up for sports or you have to sign them up in school.

[00:49:36] They have like apps now to monitor like your communications that is a way that information gets out of mapped up to your address when you send it for a little league team or a softball team they're asking you what's your address and now that's in a database somewhere.

[00:49:51] So very hard for most people to do but there's definitely a lot of steps that you can take to protect yourself. Yeah so.

[00:50:00] And wait until they enforce digital currencies I think we're you know even the cash option is going to go away you're going to have to literally just move to a farm and for your own food.

[00:50:12] Yeah yeah yeah I think that the it's kind of like you have your home and you got your home security approach and starts with locking doors and windows.

[00:50:23] Maybe it's got motion lights that turn on if somebody walks in front of your home cameras you can kind of keep going you can even go to like a bunker underground but if somebody shows up with a bazooka you know you're going to knock your door down.

[00:50:36] So it's sort of like it's very similar with personal privacy and security like if you can just take continued successive steps and to continue to make yourself more and more secure but yeah I'm not a little bit tough and boys I how do you commend you become you know a privacy prepper.

[00:50:52] And I would say the start up with with signing up to service so now's the time to tell me about like how can I sign up you mentioned is a freemium version.

[00:51:03] Talk to me about that and then you know upgrading the services what do you get and what's the easiest way to get on board.

[00:51:10] Yeah so a couple things so one is we have a freemium model so anybody can create a free account for a free scan and self service tools to do this themselves.

[00:51:21] And then we have premium tiers where you can upgrade and we make it really flexible you can make monthly or yearly you can pause your subscription you can cancel it and we monthly scan and remove scan and remove. There's other services out there they're not all the same.

[00:51:39] So many things that I always like to reference to people is us and our competitors it's not a commodity product. Optree has won the PC Mag editor's choice most outstanding product in the market the last three years in a row.

[00:51:52] We were named one of three winners for privacy and security by Fast Company for last year next big things in tech. We just won three cybersecurity excellence awards for best employee privacy protection attack service management.

[00:52:06] And so you know the products are not commodities there's other products out there that have a ton of marketing and they got a bunch of stuff out there.

[00:52:15] I always advocate throughout the free tier if this is something that you want to get into throughout the free tier for a few different products get a feel for it see how good the products are before you make a decision.

[00:52:27] So yeah in any case we have you know tens of thousands of paying customers hundreds of businesses use us we've gone through rigorous stock you know rigorous security reviews before landing our product inside of government agencies Fortune 500 companies etc.

[00:52:44] There's definitely some kind of like you know services out there that aren't as good and there's some service out there that are a lot better. We like to think that ours is the best. Absolutely and then the website is a particularly URL what is their hotline.

[00:52:59] Yes it's it's Optery so the company's Optery and the name comes from Opt like OPT opt in opt out and then you know why like like bakery or eatery or fact country dot com.

[00:53:11] Yep and it's Optery dot com that's the best way to do it OPT ERY dot com Optery dot com and then we got that's the best place to go. Yeah fantastic.

[00:53:21] Lawrence has been really awesome having this conversation today I learned a lot personally and I you know I second your journey.

[00:53:29] I think it's a it's a viable important step in the right direction you're providing a service that's much needed not just individuals that do they want to be private. I think it's for everyone.

[00:53:40] I think everybody should be conscious and mindful in terms of what it is that they're sharing online and offline and you know be the step in the right direction. And start having control over or over the assets which is their information.

[00:53:53] Definitely yeah it's great conversation really enjoyed it thanks for for for the for me on. Thank you very much and until then to join us in next episode stay safe online as well as offline and take care of.