Original Summary

Hey all. A few weeks ago I launched a side project called Ghostifier, and it hit #9 on Product Hunt. I've been staring at the numbers since and figured I'd share them. It started because I was curious if I could somehow automate unsubscribing from marketing emails while also cutting ties with those companies permanently. Unsubscribing stops the emails, but those companies still keep your data. So I built something that finds every company that has your email, unsubscribes you, and sends actual data deletion requests. It only reads senders and subject lines, never what's inside the emails. For every company it finds, it looks for a few things: one click unsubscribe, unsubscribe, addresses, and privacy pages on their own domain. These come on handy later. First numbers: 118 accounts, 86 Gmail inboxes connected 757,252 emails scanned 22,039 companies found (about 256 per inbox, which surprised me) 2,121 unsubscribes, 1,273 opt-outs, 1,993 deletion requests sent 41 data broker removals 5 payments, $167.87 in sales. Not quit-your-job money, but the four weeks before launch were a flat $0, and watching strangers pay for something I built still hasn't gotten old. Things I learned: People care a lot more about "who has my data" than about inbox zero. The scan result is the hook. It's shocking how many scans came back with nearly 1000 unique vendors. Trust is the whole game. The most common question by far is "does it read my emails?" A lot of companies make you confirm deletion by email or verify your identity, so "automated" still means some homework for the user. I had to design around that. The app uses the Gmail.metadata scope. This comes with a lot of caveats. First, I only read the email headers. The scope has no access to the body of the email. Secondly, this scope is considered a secure scope. That also means I have to get an independent third-party security review, called CASA. ($695 annually) Data Brokers and Data Privacy Public data brokers are vast and varied in how they handle deletion requests. I compiled about 250 open source data brokers with publicly available email request forms. I use these for the main data deletion request for data brokers. The app sends an email to the broker on the user's behalf, with most brokers responding directly to the user email. California is a whole other story. They have a single entry point where one person can request a lesion from all brokers at once. I haven't built that into the app yet. Where I'm at: Any app that reads Gmail data has to pass Google's CASA security review before it can open up to everyone. Mine is in progress, and they're saying 4–6 weeks. Until it clears, Google's sign-in screen shows Ghostifier as an "unverified app," which is about the scariest thing a privacy tool can show you. And 86 people clicked through it anyway. That told me more about demand than any survey could: people really want to kno

  • 情报分类：工作与职业机会
  • 分类依据：内容涉及招聘、求职或职业发展
  • 信息来源：Reddit · SideProject
  • 发布时间：2026/10/16 06:33:24