this post was submitted on 19 Oct 2023
24 points (92.9% liked)

Privacy

31182 readers
1812 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

Chat rooms

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I'm wondering if there's a service out there that can scrape sites to determine if you have an account tied to your email(s) and subsequently delete them. The deletion would be amazing, but I'd settle for something that just confirms if there are sites out there I never tracked my login against.

I'm trying to get all my accounts under control. Enable MFA, rotate passwords, remove saved details like payments and addresses, etc...

Any advice is appreciated!

top 9 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Most properly done auth for sites that protect your account will not respond in the affirmative or negative if an account with a specific username/email exists. You'd also have to have it log in to delete your account, which means scripting to navigate every single site. It's just not a thing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

The security implications of what you're asking for are terrible. Imagine I get an email passwords combo, I use a service to scrape the web of everywhere else that email exists, now I only have test a handful of sites not all of them.

Keep changing all the passwords you can. If you've forgotten the site, then as long you change the important ones - worst case they get an already public email and password that's not repeated anywhere important.

As for payment info, if you get a brand new card number that's the easiest route. Otherwise you'll have to rely on the expiration and new security code to eventually invalidate anywhere the number remains.

Using any kind of proxy card, like privacy.com is a good idea. Failing that, at a minimum have a separate savings account and only keep whatever you need available on the debit card to minimize potential losses. Additionally, it's recommended to use a credit card as they tend to offer better fraud protection then a typical bank card (citation needed).

Note, I am not a financial or security expert. Just some bloke sharing what works for me.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Yeah my plan is really to cycle around as many passwords as I can to the sites I know I'm on, and setup MFA everywhere possible. At least then whatever old passwords I used can just die there

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Is this legitimate? It seems odd to grant a company access to my emails. I assumed it would scrape the internet to find these details. It won't find much in my inbox as I try to keep it very clean.

Also, it's a paid service?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What you're looking for does not exist. Sorry.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If it doesn't exist that's okay, figured it was good to check in with the community 👍

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Well, I'm honestly curious as to how that would work, so I guess just about how you though this would go.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

I tried it once a few years ago and it seemed to work fine enough for me. I can't say how exactly it works now, but there is (or at least used to be) a free plan with limited functionality, so I figured it might be interesting to you