As a new customer, why has my removals progress stalled?
New Optery customers that scrutinize their dashboard and opt out progress are often very impressed with a large amount of opt out and removal activity happening in the first 1 - 2 weeks of their subscription, and then are surprised to see things stall with relatively little progress from around week 3 - 4. In this post, we explain why this happens and what to expect in the first month.
Optery's approach is a combination of automated opt out bot + human privacy agents for quality assurance and manual processing. After the automated opt out bot submits its opt out requests, some data brokers remove the profile immediately, but others can take weeks or months to process the removal. Every data broker works a little differently.
In the first week or two there are a large amount of opt out requests happening, and then there's a waiting period to give the data brokers time to process the requests. The waiting period is also to give time for Optery to re-scan the data broker web sites to verify that the profile has been removed. Data brokers do not always notify Optery when a profile has been removed, so subsequent scans are required to verify that the profile has been removed, and this happens periodically during the course of each monthly interval.
If you are confused by the lull after the initial 1 - 2 weeks, what you're likely experiencing is this waiting period after the initial submissions occurred, and that is normal. Also, most opt out submissions occur immediately, but some are queued for a few weeks for various reasons. We're working very hard to get better and faster, but unfortunately, we can't remove all profiles immediately.
Customers typically see that more than 50% of their exposed profiles are removed / not found within 30 days. However, we wanted to point out that removing profiles from data brokers is an ongoing effort and takes months of effort, not days or weeks. Most customers use Optery for the ongoing monthly scans and removals, and to outsource the tedious work to us. But some prefer to roll up their sleeves and do it themselves, and in that case the Free Basic tier with its free scans and deep links is very useful.
Optery's approach is a combination of automated opt out bot + human privacy agents for quality assurance and manual processing. After the automated opt out bot submits its opt out requests, some data brokers remove the profile immediately, but others can take weeks or months to process the removal. Every data broker works a little differently.
In the first week or two there are a large amount of opt out requests happening, and then there's a waiting period to give the data brokers time to process the requests. The waiting period is also to give time for Optery to re-scan the data broker web sites to verify that the profile has been removed. Data brokers do not always notify Optery when a profile has been removed, so subsequent scans are required to verify that the profile has been removed, and this happens periodically during the course of each monthly interval.
If you are confused by the lull after the initial 1 - 2 weeks, what you're likely experiencing is this waiting period after the initial submissions occurred, and that is normal. Also, most opt out submissions occur immediately, but some are queued for a few weeks for various reasons. We're working very hard to get better and faster, but unfortunately, we can't remove all profiles immediately.
Customers typically see that more than 50% of their exposed profiles are removed / not found within 30 days. However, we wanted to point out that removing profiles from data brokers is an ongoing effort and takes months of effort, not days or weeks. Most customers use Optery for the ongoing monthly scans and removals, and to outsource the tedious work to us. But some prefer to roll up their sleeves and do it themselves, and in that case the Free Basic tier with its free scans and deep links is very useful.
Updated on: 18/05/2023
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