## Data Suppression Service Sign-Up. One of the most impactful, but completely optional, actions is to sign-up for a [Data Removal Service](https://cybernews.com/privacy-tools/best-data-removal-services/) like [Optery](https://www.optery.com/), [Incogni](https://incogni.com/) or [DeleteMe](https://www.deleteme.com/). They are the only services in this guide that requires you to pay for them, but you can also manually file to remove your data from data-brokers. They're also, theoretically at least, a huge benefit. The wealth of data collected on you functions as a **social credit score**. Data brokers create comprehensive profiles about your life and daily habits, and use it to decide how much you pay for car insurance, whether or not your approved for loans, rentals, and other various metrics, while circumventing the legal requirements around background checks. And that's just the basics. Political Campaigns, advertising firms, and real-estate/rental-agencies use these databases to illegally target racial demographics, and deny them housing. **InstaCart even uses it to charge you as much as they can get away with for groceries.** Data Suppression Services will continually compel data-brokers to delete your aggregated info. **Sign-up for at least 1 month, which usually costs $8 or less**. [Optery](https://www.optery.com/) offers the best value, **at $3.99 a month**. Overall, they seem to operate under the most ethical business practices in the industry. ### Family Plans: [Optery's family plan](https://www.optery.com/family/) allows If you can, **find four friends** who may be targeted by a rogue federal agency or falsely labeled as a domestic terrorist and **split** a roughly **$150 year-long Incogni family subscription** between all of you (**$30** each). But, if you can't find four friends, or you have way more than four friends, [Optery's family plan](https://www.optery.com/family/) allows ## Referral Programs: If you coordinate with your friends, or just distribute a lot of resistance materials in your community, you can actually get paid very well by signing-up for one of these services and promoting [[The National Data Strike]] or any other resistance movement. [Optery](https://www.optery.com/referral-program/) and [Incogni](https://support.incogni.com/hc/en-us/articles/22720503252242-What-rewards-do-I-get-for-referring-friends-to-Incogni) and have commission-based referral systems. Every user gets a **30% - 40% commission** for each friend that signs-up with their referral link.  [DeleteMe](https://help.joindeleteme.com/hc/en-us/articles/29212131923091-Does-DeleteMe-have-a-Referral-Program) will send you a **$50 dollar Amazon gift card**. **Important:** **Optery offer's the most flexible option to be compensated while you distribute revolutionary materials.** [Optery's referral program](https://www.optery.com/referral-program/) will give you an anonymous referral link **even if you don't purchase their service**. It's also very cheap, meaning people that see your link are very likely to use it. **Incogni** will earn higher pay out per referral, but your link will reveal your first name. The code **BURNS**, from video essayist [Michael Burns](https://bsky.app/profile/michaelburns.bsky.social) should get you an **additional discount** with **Incogni**. If not, many other creators have sponsorships, you can probably find one. A data suppression service will target the **decades** of information collected about your life and psychology, so it is a vital part of this process. **You can file for data removals manually for free,** but most people aren't going to do that. ##### Remember: If **$30** is hard to spend for you right now, think of it as **thousands that they cannot make off of you**. It deprives AI, Marketing, and Propaganda Firms of vital datasets, it creates massive technical overhead for data-brokers, and it deprives algorithmically targeted content distribution systems of the relational datapoints required for them to function effectively. ___ **DISCLAIMER:** Data-brokers and aggregators will still constantly build profiles on you through automated web-scrapers and data collection systems. While you're signed up, a Data Suppression Service will constantly file with them to delete them, but this isn't perfect and **the less personal information associated with your devices, your accounts, and your activity, the better.** If you're an activist or journalist, or online personality, you should really be doing this anyways. **Basic compromises** for security, authentication, or convenience **will reveal you**, as will small decisions based on taste or style. ###### **To be clear:** Privacy should not a monetized industry, **it is an inherent human right**. These companies turn your desire to not be stalked into a capitalistic endeavor, which **isn't great**. However, data-suppression services have created a viable infrastructure for individual activists to **easily benefit for spreading awareness about mass digital surveillance while creating direct financial and technical overhead for data-brokers,** **and that is exceptionally great.** Regardless of how you feel about the personal privacy industry, this is a viable strategy for economic resistance **that should be utilized to its fullest.** Ask yourself if vague anti-capitalist principle is the hill you want to die on in the fight against ICE, mass surveillance, and fascism. Also consider that these companies spread the wealth around quite effectively through their referral systems. **At the end of the day, data-suppression services have created a system that allows anyone to participate in the fight against mass surveillance, get paid for it, and set the stage for greater legislative change. Let's make the most of it.** ### Actions - [ ] Sign up for at least 1 month of a [Data Removal Service](https://cybernews.com/privacy-tools/best-data-removal-services/) such as [Optery](https://www.optery.com/), [Incogni](https://incogni.com/), or [DeleteMe](https://www.deleteme.com/) - [ ] Find 4 friends to split a ~**$150/year family subscription** (~**$30** each) - [ ] Use referral links to earn money on sign-ups — up to **$120/referral** with [Incogni](https://support.incogni.com/hc/en-us/articles/22720503252242-What-rewards-do-I-get-for-referring-friends-to-Incogni) or [Optery](https://www.optery.com/referral-program/), or a **$50 gift card** with [DeleteMe](https://help.joindeleteme.com/hc/en-us/articles/29212131923091-Does-DeleteMe-have-a-Referral-Program) - [ ] For Incogni, try discount code **BURNS**, from essayist [Michael Burns](https://bsky.app/profile/michaelburns.bsky.social), or find another creator's sponsorship code. --**The National Data Strike has no affiliation with** [Michael Burns](https://bsky.app/profile/michaelburns.bsky.social), but he is a **cool guy** and he will benefit if you use his discount code-- ###### Next Step: [[Securing iPhone]] | [[Securing Android]]