I’m building a tool to discover who holds your personal data (and delete it) šŸ› ļø
DEV Community

I’m building a tool to discover who holds your personal data (and delete it) šŸ› ļø

The core idea is simple: finding out which companies hold your personal data shouldn't take hours of research, and asking them to delete it shouldn't require hours of manual work either. To address this, I'm working on a tool that combines a local browser extension with a companion website.

How it works (2-step process)

  • Local detection: The browser extension uses various methods to identify domains, vendors, and data brokers that likely hold your data.
  • Batch action: The interface aggregates these domains, retrieves privacy-specific contact addresses, and prepares deletion request templates tailored to national and regional laws.

šŸ’” Note: Of course, this tool cannot guarantee with 100% certainty who holds your data, but it provides strong, sufficient indicators for you to take action-with the aim of reducing the volume of information about you scattered across various servers and systems.

I don't know if a similar project has already been built-I didn't find anything exactly like it during my research-but I assume a tool like this could still be useful for anyone wanting to start to clean up their data without spending hours on it (which is the case for me!).

Current State & Architecture

The project is currently in beta, with a few temporary limitations on the website side.

  • Privacy-first: The extension's code runs 100% locally on your machine and stores nothing on external servers.
  • Open-source? Not yet! I am still refactoring it, but it will be.

Looking for your feedback on the CONCEPT!

Right now, I am not looking for technical bug reports. Instead, I would love to get your thoughts on the overall utility and features. I have 3 specific questions for you:

  1. Does the link between local detection and template generation make sense to you?
  2. What features would you add?
  3. Would you use a tool like this in your daily life?

Try it out

Here are the extension URLs to test the beta:

Read on DEV Community ↗ ← Back to News

Comments

No comments yet. Start the discussion.