Have I Been Sold?

Check if your email address was sold without permission

10 followers

Check if your email address was sold without permission

10 followers

Have I Been Sold? is a free service which lets you check our database of purchased emails and see if someone sold your contact information.

Launch tags:Privacy

Launch Team

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Promoted

From your bio, you are involved with Diffbot. Seems like diffbot is selling access to a pretty massive database of people https://www.diffbot.com/knowledg... How is that consistent with this project? The tagline for Diffbot's knowledge graph product is: The world's largest, most accurate database of people and companies In that page it also states: 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.

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8yr ago

Have I Been Sold?

Maker

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

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8yr ago

@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.*"

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8yr ago

Have I Been Sold?

Maker

@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.

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8yr ago

@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.

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8yr ago

Have I Been Sold?

Maker

@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.

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8yr ago

Interesting concept. I get emails all the time asking me to purchase email addresses of the users of XYZ product. What I'm more interested in is how to opt out of all these lists. Lists that I'm not even aware of that I'm currently a part of. Is there a way to do something about it? This user information selling has become an industry in itself. Websites like DiscoverOrg, Zoominfo etc.

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8yr ago

Have I Been Sold?

Maker

@with_farhan You can report them as GDPR violators now, yes. They are guilty by default if they sold your info after May 25th 2018 without your permission. If you can prove they sold it (by using this tool or by using unique emails as described on the tool's homepage), they're done for.

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8yr ago

Have I Been Sold?

Maker

@with_farhan Btw, please contact me about those lists they're offering you. I might be willing to take a look, depending on context.

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8yr ago

Overe - Free Microsoft 365 Security Tool

"Step 5: Use a new trap email for every service you sign up for": trap email addresses sound like a great idea! But it is quite inconvenient to set one up for every service we sign up for... it would be great if there was a LastPass kind of extension out there that automates the process once you are in the sign up form and creates a new address with your provider right away on the spot.

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8yr ago

Have I Been Sold?

Maker

@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.

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8yr ago

Overe - Free Microsoft 365 Security Tool

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

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8yr ago

@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.

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8yr ago

Analog.Cafe

Does your app offer any further steps for those whose emails got sold? All mine are green, so I can't tell.

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8yr ago

Have I Been Sold?

Maker

@dmitrizzle Nothing specific, you're just given the source of the data and the source of the list, and any action you take based on that is up to you. There's not much we could do, specifically, unless you have some ideas?

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8yr ago

Hi @bitfalls ! Nice job. 🤘 I checked your product and feel it's very useful. Any plan to open APIs? I noticed you "step-by-step" of how to stop spammy emails and would like to share with you the product I've launched (https://www.producthunt.com/post...) few days ago exactly for the same purpose. Perhaps you'd consider on check it out and give me some advices. p.s: I'd love to use your API's (when available) and integrate Mail Shield with it.

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7yr ago

Have I Been Sold?

Maker

@rogeriotaques Thanks! No plans right now, no business case really so time sink only, but I'll think about it. Feel free to query the API directly though like the site does it. If you don't break my server I'm okay with you taking advantage of it, just can't guarantee long term availability

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7yr ago

@bitfalls awesome, man. Thanks for that. Will check it out soon.

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7yr ago

After reading some "positive" reviews I've entered my e-mail there. It seemed legit. However, 2 days later I started receiving Spams. I rarely receive Spams. It can't be only a coincidence..

Pros:

Didn't find any since I started getting Spam after using this.

Cons:

Started getting Spams 2 days after I used this.

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8yr ago

Have I Been Sold?

Maker

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

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8yr ago