As the CEO of a growing digital executive protection firm, our API partner acutely understands how exposed personal data fuels a variety of attack vectors—and why removing it is critical to protecting high-profile clients from targeted attacks.
The firm specializes in targeting its own clients the way an attacker would, using the same Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) reconnaissance and investigative techniques bad actors employ to uncover exploitable information. By pinpointing online vulnerabilities before an adversary does and eliminating them, they help their clients—many of whom are high-risk sensitive targets—stay secure.
One of the firm’s core services is personal data removal, which is essential for protecting their clients against social engineering, account takeover, identity fraud, doxxing, harassment, and physical violence. To assist them in this endeavor, they turned to Optery’s API, integrating it into their services to help prevent clients from being easily targeted.
The CEO on the dangers of data brokers
With a background in OSINT targeting and investigative work, the firm’s CEO knows exactly how attackers conduct reconnaissance using a target’s digital footprint—because he uses the same methods to protect his clients. He knows how easily exposed personal data can be weaponized, and how attackers rely on data brokers, breach data, and other OSINT sources to execute their attacks.
The first step in any targeting operation is reconnaissance, and data broker sites make it easy for attackers looking to build a complete profile of their targets:
“When I’m trying to find someone, as any OSINT course will tell you, the first place you’re going to go to is a data broker site and try to expand the profile of the person you are trying to get information on.”
From there, it becomes easy to compromise accounts and launch tailored attacks:
“There’s so many things you can do with the data that’s out there on someone. If I have a name, an email, a location, I’m gonna then go see what data has been breached in connection with this info, then I’m going to be able to break into their accounts and target them in a variety of ways.”
As the CEO notes, removing exposed information disrupts attacker reconnaissance, making it significantly harder to build a viable attack profile. As a result, adversaries typically move on to easier, more data-rich targets:
“If the data isn’t out there on an individual, the bad actor is going to move on to the next person.”
Why the company chose Optery
For the firm, personal data removal offers a fundamental layer of protection for their high-risk clients, making comprehensive data removal from data broker sites an absolute necessity. The company conducts its own in-house opt-outs, but needed an API solution that could scale their efforts.
When selecting a data removal provider, the company’s CEO took a methodical, industry-informed approach. Having spent years evaluating solutions, Optery stood out from the competition:
“We know the space extremely well,