Contact sites collect personal data from public sources and sell it. Here's how to exercise your right to erasure and cut down the spam.
What data brokers are
Data brokers are companies that collect personal data from public sources (gazettes, registers, social networks, data breaches) and aggregate it into profiles: name, phone, address, ID number, property, relatives. Those profiles are shown on contact sites and sold to third parties for marketing, verification or, in the worst case, fraud and identity theft.
How it affects you
- More spam, commercial calls and fraudulent messages.
- Easier identity theft and bank fraud.
- Your data exposed to anyone who pays for the database.
- Profiles often contain errors that are hard to fix.
Exercising the right to erasure
You have the right to stop appearing on these sites: Article 17 of the GDPR recognises the right to erasure, and data brokers must honour it. The procedure: identify the sites where you appear, find their privacy contact and send an erasure request pointing to your profile. Many comply; others ignore it, and that's where a complaint to your data protection authority comes in.
Tips to reduce your exposure
- Check periodically what appears about you on search engines.
- Avoid publishing your phone and address on networks and forums.
- Don't fill in forms of dubious origin.
- Use aliases or variations of your name for non-critical services.
- After an erasure, monitor to detect reappearances.