Discover Will Now Monitor Sites That Collect, Sell Your Data
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Discover has launched an Online Privacy Protection benefit for debit and credit cardholders that will help remove their personal information from several "people-search" websites that legally gather and sell it. The benefit will be rolling out in stages over the next few weeks to customers who enable it in Discover’s mobile app.
How the Online Privacy Protection benefit works
People-search websites collect personal data — like your name, age, address, and contact information such as email address and phone number — and sell it to others.
But for Discover cardholders who enable the Online Privacy Protection benefit, the issuer will automatically scan the following 10 websites every 90 days for your information and submit requests for opting out:
BeenVerified.com.
Intellius.com.
Yellowpages.com.
Addresses.com.
PeopleLooker.com.
AnyWho.com.
InstantPeopleFinder.com.
PeopleSmart.com.
USsearch.com.
ZabaSearch.com.
The removal of personal information from these websites may protect consumers from identity theft and curb the number of unwanted emails and phone calls, a Discover news release says.
“Consumers today worry about their personal data ending up in the wrong hands," Shannon Kors, vice president of product and marketing at Discover said in the release. "The process to get this information taken down from people-search websites can be time-consuming, confusing and costly, and consumers are often left to fend for themselves. Online Privacy Protection is a convenient and free benefit that helps give our customers peace of mind and more control of their personal information online.”
This is not the first time Discover has instituted features aimed at thwarting identity theft. In 2017, the issuer launched an alert feature that lets cardholders know when their Social Security number appears on the dark web.
» MORE: How to prevent credit card fraud
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