Jim Rossman: Can privacy services get spammers to stop bugging you?

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This week I heard from a reader, “I am having trouble understanding and believing the claims of these website/software vendors who say they can remove my information from all over and put a stop to spam emails and phone calls. No matter how much I research, I simply cannot find out if these people are legitimate. This whole category of things falls into the ‘too good to be true’ line of reasoning. Do you have any experience with these and are they actually valid?”

Those types of businesses offer a few options to deal with your personal information online.

They can find your listings at legitimate data brokers – the companies who sell your contact information to mailing lists – and they can initiate the removal process.

They also can set you up with email aliases, which you can use when you sign up for online accounts. That way, when you start getting spam emails from a specific alias you can turn it off and know who’s selling your information.

They can even set up phone aliases that forward to your phone that work for two-factor authentications.

These are the types of things you can do for yourself if you can navigate the waters yourself and spend the time.

Google has a free service called Results About You that searches for your contact information online and offers to initiate removal where it can. I’ve been using Results About You for about a year, but I really can’t say I get any less spam to my phone or email account.

You can also set up email aliases to keep track of who’s selling your data. For instance, Google lets you add a + and a label to set up aliases. If your email is johhsmith@gmail.com, you can create johnsmith+amazon@gmail.com. You can use any word you like after the + and the email will funnel into your main Gmail inbox.

Check with your email provider – most of them offer some way to set up email aliases.

Your phone can also screen out unknown callers for you.

The one thing these services can’t do is stop real spammers.

Real spammers – the sleazy people who will spam your phone number or email address without giving you a legal and obvious way to remove your name and number from their list – will never remove your contact information.