Launching today
Ghostifier
Companies have your data. Ghostifier gets them to delete it.
91 followers
Companies have your data. Ghostifier gets them to delete it.
91 followers
Instead of one form per company, Ghostifier starts from your inbox. It finds who holds your data, unsubscribes you and opts you out of sale and sharing on day one, waits out the return window, then sends deletion requests and tracks every reply. Banks, insurers and your employer are left alone. It also asks data brokers to delete you. Gmail access is headers only, so it never reads your email bodies, and there is no AI: every decision follows fixed rules.
I like the name, it's clever. I think many people are trying to figure out how to delete their digital footprint. This seems to go straight to the source, people's inbox. How does it compare to the big firms like Aura or Incogni?
@cloudalchemist Thank you!
Fair question. Incogni and Aura work from a list of data brokers, and they're good at that. Ghostifier starts from your inbox instead, hopefully catching your data before it lands at a Data Broker. By sitting in your inbox, it finds companies you've actually dealt with: shops, apps, newsletters, the places that have your name and address because you gave it to them. Those may not be on any broker list at all.
As additional protection, It also sends deletion requests to 220+ registered data brokers, so there's overlap. Incogni covers more brokers than we do, and Aura adds credit monitoring and identity theft insurance, which we don't do. Plenty of people could reasonably use one of them alongside this.
Hello Ghostifier! I have a technical implementation question. How do you read only the Gmail email headers? Is this ability through the Gmail API?
Congrats on today's launch!
Hey @sara_ford_goog !
The Gmail API has different "scopes" that allow an application or service to have different levels of permissions, based on the needs of the application. For Ghostifier, I built the API connection with the "metadata" scope: this is a restricted scope that gives Ghostifier access to the headers of the email (who it came from, the subject, any unsubscribe links, etc) without giving access to the body of the email itself.
As a restricted Scope, however, Google requires third party security assessment (which I am currently in the early stages of).
Thanks for the question and thanks for your interest in the launch!
Thank you for all of you that have signed up so far! It's so satisfying seeing something I built gain some traction!
As I launch Ghostifier on ProductHunt, I'm trying to see how this type of product would land with you all. The Gmail Security Review process is lengthy and expensive, and before investing there, I want to validate with you all if this is a worth enough service to continue support. For those of you signing up and connecting Gmail, you may see a Google Warning during the authentication step, and that's normal! Hopefully we can improve that experience later on once we validate the product.
And for you all that have been able to connect and scan, what was your experience like? Any weird bugs / behavior that wasn't clear or was confusing? I want to build Ghostifier to be as strong as it can be, and I need your help to do it!
Thank you!
love that banks, schools and your employer never get a request. that tells me you actually thought about what could go wrong also the "Ghosting Assistant" name made me laugh lol...
Thank you, @marina_gomel5 !!
The “wait out the return window, then request deletion” workflow is a clever touch. I’m curious how Ghostifier determines that window and what happens when a company doesn’t respond or only partially fulfills a deletion request. Does the tracking continue until there’s a confirmed resolution?
@gayathriivinod Great question! For purchases, the window comes from your own order and shipping emails. Ghostifier waits 45 days after your last order, or 30 days after the last delivery, whichever is later, so we don't request a data delete while a return is still possible. For deletion requests, companies often will confirm directly with the account holder's email, and Ghostifier will continue to monitor any vendors as they come into your email.
Partial deletions / monitoring are an enhancement to the product that I'd like to explore in the future!
there's a tension in the pitch that I'd want answered before connecting my real inbox: to find who holds your data you need fairly deep read access to the inbox itself, which means trusting one more company with everything already sitting in there to fix the problem of too many companies having your data. what's the actual scope of that access - does it need to read full message bodies to find these companies, or can it work off senders/headers alone? and is anything retained after the unsubscribe/deletion run finishes, or is it read-and-discard