Hi, I'm Heather Burns

Many of you will have read about the recent bankruptcy of the genetic testing company 23 and Me. They ran one of those services where you spit in a tube, sent it away in the post, and got a report back telling you “where you were from” (based on a cable-TV understanding of 200 years of global history) and, more to the point, what diseases you might develop someday (based on playing on people’s neuroses).

Now that the company has gone under, of course, all that data – meaning people’s genetic fingerprints – are now just corporate assets up for sale, with no protections for the people that data is about, or rights for those people to have a say in where that data goes. (Naturally, people are gobsmacked that the cheap gimmick they fell for turned out to be a cheap gimmick.)

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I had been looking for a data broker removal service for quite a while, specifically since some salivating fanboys affiliated with a certain project* sent a threatening package to my house to make sure I got the message. God, it’s fun being a woman on the internet.

Unfortunately, all the market offerings I came across were US-only.

…until this morning, when a generous discount code from the Revolutions podcast led me to discover a data broker removal service which – hallelujah! – covers the UK, and the EU, and yes, the US too, also Canada and Switzerland.

I signed up over my morning coffee and they’d secured seven deletions before I’d finished it. Damn.

Get deleting folks. Here it is – yes this is a discount code. You get a discount! I get a discount! Everybody gets a discount! Go go go etc.

Timely update: DSIT has opened up a consultation on data brokers x adtech x national security. It closes on 12 May. Do not ignore this one.

Update, one week later: my details have been scrubbed from 18 data brokers I’d never even heard of, so far. A small part of me will sleep a little bit better.

*It’s not the one you’re thinking of.