Have I Been Sold?

@amrith I purchase the lists from conferences, meetups, web services and other profit-driven data collectors willing to sell them.

@amrith @bitfalls So, uh, you have an online list of emails that have been sold without the owners' permission, while you're actually purchasing emails without peoples' permission yourself? :D And you're even buying said emails if I people end up on the list. You presumably doesn't use the emails for anything, but I think the service is contradictory in a way. EDIT: Thanks for the elaboration below, makes sense!

@amrith @martinsanton I buy them because I'm sick of spam and because I want to out the data brokers and original sellers and put a stop to spam. I'm not sure what I can say about the service being contradictory, but given that there's not even analytics code on the page and the app itself is open source (just polishing some stuff up, will announce and add links in the coming few days), I think most people will find less of an issue with this app than with most email collecting apps. We'll see.

@amrith @martinsanton @bitfalls a lot like Thanos :D

@amrith @bitfalls Thanks for elaboration, makes sense!

@cliffm35511967 There is no affiliation whatsoever and the KG database does not contain people's emails at all.

@bitfalls I get that there is no affiliation (in the sense that this is not a diffbot product), but these two projects do seem to be at odds with each other. That is why I asked you. "KG database does not contain people's emails at all." is that true? I definitely remember the ability to get emails when I saw a demo few months back (I might still have some screenshots to show you what I'm talking about). Also, in this project you are talking about reporting GDPR-violators. GDPR doesn't just protect email information. I'm not 100% sure here, but I think this quote from the Diffbot knowledge graph might be a strong indication that KG is a GDPR violator: "Each person has up to 90+ data attributes. Diffbot's records are the most diverse and comprehensive by merging data from person and professional *social profiles, resumes, personal websites, biographies and more.*"

@cliffm35511967 At odds? How so? I can tell you that in KG the only data sourced is the data that's publicly available, there's just aggregation happening just like with something like Google. And just like with Google, you have the right to be erased with KG too. But I would recommend talking to sales@diffbot.com for further clarification on those issues and any DPA you'd need signed.

@bitfalls With this website you just launched you are saying you are tired of getting unsolicited emails and want to crack down on people whose business might involve selling a dataset that includes information about you, even though you didn't consent to it. The Knowledge Graph product by Diffbot is being sold under the tagline of "The world's largest, most accurate database of people and companies". And one of the main value props is: "Say sayonara to manual list building. Diffbot's faceted search enables you to craft queries like: Software Engineers with machine learning and computer vision skills" Don't you think this could be seen as selling people's information (which they did not actively consent to), to facilitate list building in order to send unsolicited emails? Also, in the current KG product when you are in a person's profile there is a button saying "Lookup Contact Info" which when you click in it gives you the email of that person.

@cliffm35511967 I can guarantee that KG does not expose data that is not publicly available, including emails. If you put an email address in your Github bio, that'll get sourced as the email address, etc. KG is, in effect, a high quality paid search engine of public data and in this regard the two services are not at odds in my opinion.

@androidlove You vastly overestimate the value of your context-less email

It is a coincidence. What kind of spams did you start getting?

@rrhoover good call 😂

@marcbc I guess I should explain better - they are automatic! You just type them out as you wish, you don't have to set anything up. Because you have a catch-all address, ALL addresses on your domain are valid, so even sldfhlsdhfdkjshjksdhf@mydomain is OK. That's why you set up a filter to delete all except, for example, contact@mydomain.com and myname@mydomain.com, and all that begin with trap-*, but auto-delete all others. That way it's all automatic and instant for you.

@bitfalls ahhh! got you :) I didn't connect the dots there... makes sense now. Thanks! :)

@marcbc @mydomain @bitfalls If you're saddled with Gmail, you can also use gmail-name+service-name@gmail.com as a trap. The mail still gets to you but you can see who's using your address. Very few services validate against this approach.

@languages_ai I purchase the lists from conferences, meetups, web services and other profit-driven data collectors willing to sell them. I get offered this data because I run bitfalls.com and coinvendor.io, I imagine a lot of other more popular online portals do too and that's how you end up on newsletters you had no idea you were a part of