Privacy Bee, an Atlanta-based privacy management tool, has released a new service that can delete en masse user data from thousands of Internet databases.
The service scrubbing the personal information of consumers from the files of businesses, so that it can not be sold or hacked. Individuals reduce their exposure to data breaches by limiting the number of places where your personal data is stored.
In the first six months of 2019 a massive 4.1 billion personal records were exposed — long before the new COVID-19 vulnerabilities forced us all to work from home. But, unfortunately, even with such breaches, it looks like the US may not soon get a nationwide Privacy Bill.
“The United States is one of the few developed countries in the world without a Data Protection Authority. The practical consequence is that US customers are facing the highest levels of data loss, financial fraud and identity theft in the world,” said Caitriona Fitzgerald, Chief Technology Officer, and Electronic Privacy Informatio Associate Director Mary Stone Ross.
But data privacy practices often lack and are antiquated by companies. According to an IBM study , the average time for enterprises to identify a breach in 2019 was 206 days.
One successful way of protecting ourselves online is to reduce the number of businesses that store and sell our information. But who does have the time, or stamina, to make hundreds of requests for data deletion? Now, there could be a reply.
Currently, Privacy Bee is a website that keeps things straightforward and open to a broad public. The privacy solution managed automatically submits requests for exclusion on your behalf, saving you time and trouble to follow up with the company to ensure compliance.
The requests for deletion and opt-out are all automated, so if users don’t want to, there’s no need to engage often.
The team has built a company database that complies with rapidly evolving privacy legislation, and has created a semi-automated system that works to delete company-by-company data from users.
The company has no outside capital and is self-funded. The service costs $9 a month or $86 a year which includes all requests for opt-outs and deletion, all follow-ups, and continued coverage of new companies added to the database.
Privacy Bee does require the sharing of a certain level of personal information. It says it only asks for the information that businesses need to make those requests, nothing more.
It has limited attorney power to act on behalf of the users and confirms that it never sells or shares user data.
Current US laws on privacy do pose a big problem for consumers. Currently, it is the responsibility of the individual to force companies to comply and to delete their personal information in order to prevent it from being sold or stolen again or worse.
The manual method is challenging and for one person to battle the tech giants alone is an enormous feat.
Consumers must be proactive and use available tools to reduce data theft and compel companies to delete information to stay safe.
Privacy Bee does seem like a low price to pay in order to avoid a massive headache in the future when the next data breach inevitably happens.
