Title says it all. If it does what it says it does, it seems to be well worth the fee.
As usual, reviews are utterly unreliable.
So-- is Cloaked the real deal?
Since you didn’t say, apparently it’s a service that purports to remove your data from big databases?
I found this: “When you sign up for a service like Cloaked, it generates a random, fake email address for you. When a website sends a message to that fake address, Cloaked forwards it to your real email. If you start getting spam from that company, you simply “turn off” the fake address, and the spam stops forever.”
Doesn’t clicking “Block” or “Send to Spam” do the same thing for free?
That I categorically choose to disbelieve. They’re claiming that their product, for all intents and purposes, hacks those databases and removes data? Baloney, I say.
Worth noting that Apple’s iCloud mail has a “hide my email” function that does this automatically for you (if you so choose) when you sign up with email for a new account or service.
Or they just forward your information on to the legitimate “do not call”-type lists (which illegitimate businesses just ignore). Or Cloaked is run by the same company as one of the big dataminers, and that’s how they’re able to remove your data (from their database, but not any of their competitors). Or they have bots that generate a lot of random noise about you, to make the data stored about you meaningless.
There are a lot of ways that they could be not-lying, but still not worthwhile. Or, of course, they could also just be lying.
Sounds like this is the nut of the whole thing: from a review, “Cloaked automatically submits removal requests to over 100 data brokers”
I think the idea is that if you sign up for Company A with fake@email.com and then they sell that email. Now you’re getting spam from 100 different places. Instead of blocking on by one you just turn off fake@email.com and get nothing.
It’s not the same thing. Blocking and send to spam just blocks the specific sender of the email. If an email address ends up on a spammer list, then you’ll get spam from lots of different senders. Blocking is generally useless for spam since it will come from many different addresses, and the addresses will often be random and fake. It doesn’t matter if you block the sender because the next spam will have a different sender.
What services like Cloaked do is allow you to create random email addresses that you give to each company. For instance, if I’m signing up at overseasales.com, I would first go to Cloaked to get a random email address like 18lciaod28a@cloaked.com. I use that email address to sign up with overseasales.com. I don’t use it anywhere else. If I start getting spam on that address, then I know that it ended up on spammer list somehow. The company may have sold their list to a 3rd party marketer. Often, it’s because the company’s servers were hacked and the user info was stolen. I’m sure we’ve all gotten notices about our personal info being stolen from various companies we use. If that happens with a uniquely created email address, then you could go to Cloaked and disable the unique email address that was getting spam. After that, anything sent to that unique address would be blocked at the Cloaked server and would not end up in your inbox.
All of this. And more.
Gee, imagine? Something that sounds too good to be true…
I’ve seen ads for 2 or 3 of these “services” and they do their best to scare you - I find it interesting that all the dark web hackers are hunched over keyboards with hoodies hiding their faces! And the notion that “They have your name and address!!!” Yeah, anyone can go to a state website and access real estate records. Ours shows when we bought the house, from whom, and how much we paid, as well as the current tax-assessed value. OK, so what? It’s not like our banking info or social security info is on there.
And the whole business of “I get sooooo many spam calls a day!” I get some too, and I don’t answer them. They must not be legit because no one ever leaves a voicemail. To me, the ads are just an annoyance in the middle of my match-3 games!
Exactly, every person on this board is old enough to remember the white pages. Mention “a book with everyone’s name, address, and phone number” to someone under 30 and you’ll get disbelief.
Most of these data brokers are the exact same thing. They’ve scraped a bunch of public or semi-public data, and put it behind a paywall. You can go to all of these services and ask to have your data removed, or you can use a service, such as Cloaked, which will ask for you. Many of the data brokers will even remove it; until the next scrape when it might appear again.
This is somewhat more legitimate than “your IP address is showing!” ads, the same way people used to have unlisted phone numbers there are legitimate reasons to want to limit how much data about you is easily available. If I don’t have any idea what county you live in, then I’m going to have trouble finding your property tax records, etc.
Cloaked might not be a scam, but is probably not worth paying for.
The cost of Cloaked seems really excessive. It costs the same as my current identity protection service, which offers this kind of benefit in addition to everything else (mostly financial protection).
(If you’re curious, I currently use Aura, after dumping LifeLock which I used for years before Norton bought it and ruined it.)
The unique email for everyone is a much more useful concept. I’ve been doing it for a very long time, and I do suggest that everyone do it. I have my one vanity domain, so I’ll use lowes@mail.example.com or usbank@mail.example.com.
This has the spam blocking related feature, where if (just an example), Lowe’s has a data leak and I start getting spam at that address, I change my email with them to lowes2 and forget lowes. After that I can’t receive any mail at the old address, because my mail server doesn’t know where to deliver it.
The other extremely useful feature is that if I get any email about my US Bank account, and it is not sent to usbank, then I know it is phishing. This aspect is the most useful in my opinion, and is probably more difficult with randomized addresses.
It was recently disclosed that the real email behind a hidden iCloud addresses can be easily revealed. Not that big of a deal, because US Bank, isn’t going to start sending to my real iCloud address, but if I was depending on the hidden email feature to make anonymous complaints at work then it would be concerning. Hopefully Apple fixes this.
If it’s possible to find the real email behind an obscured one, then, as long as it’s not too difficult, the hackers will do what’s necessary to figure out the real email and send spam directly to it. Simple methods, like gmail’s “+” addresses, won’t really prevent spam. The spammers can easily figure out that a gmail address that looks like “uniquestuff+realemail@gmail.com” is really realemail@com. If they have a way to get the real email address behind an iCloud address, then they’ll send spam to the real email address instead of, or in addition to, the obscured email address.
“Identity protection service”? I’ve certainly heard of them, but have always considered them nothing but an unnecessary inherently oversold borderline scammy idea. O I’ve never researched them.
What does your legit service actually do that a smart IT savvy person like you is willing to spend money on it/them?
If someone opens a bank account, applies for a loan, does anything using my personal info, they get that info and then alert me. I also have an alert for any large purchase made from any of my accounts. They provide insurance in case of identity theft, and if I do become a victim of it, they will act on my behalf to help fix my reputation.
I’m really good about avoiding scams and not falling for tricks from folks online, but that won’t help me if my information gets compromised in a way I can’t see unless someone is able to monitor for that sort of thing.
It’s basically just a different type of insurance.
On top of all that, they also monitor the web for my information, and can do the same kind of data removal that Cloaked does. But I subscribe mostly for the financial stuff.
Thank you. For many years I didn’t much worry about that stuff, expecting my CC company to notify me of any bad charges. Until they didn’t once. Easy enough to fix after the fact, but a bit surprising.
I’ve since increased my defensive posture by setting alerts on all my CCs and checking accounts to notify me when any transaction occurs. Pretty much all modern banks and card issuers have this feature. As does my brokerage. I have lots of automatic transfers or payment arrangements set up. And purchase subscriptions. The slow drip feed of texts or app alerts keeps me aware enough of what’s going on. I’ll know of anything unexpected, and probably before an algorithm could detect that it’s out of place.
My arrangements would be of no help for someone opening a new account in my name at some unknown place. But it does pretty well preclude someone diverting money unnoticed.
At times like this I usually type in “Is (fill in name of company) a scam” on search engines and look at the results. “Is Cloaked a scam” came back with tons of hits…pretty much all saying that it isn’t in the slightest. Glowing reviews from Trustpilot, BBB, Scam Detector, Linked In and many others give it a “thumbs up”.
Apple says it patched this flaw a few weeks ago (without informing anyone apparently).
But one of the researchers says linked emails might still be available in mail transfer logs. I assume just assigning your iCloud email a new Hide My Email address solves that, not that I bet this was a particularly big problem in the first place.