Oh boy, have you heard about Permission Slip? It's like the Tinder for your data privacy, but instead of swiping right to find "the one," you swipe right to tell data brokers, "You're not the one who's allowed to have my data!" This app is basically your helicopter parent for the digital age. "Stop selling my child's data, Karen. He's not a piece of merchandise!" Permission Slip is like having an overly-attached bodyguard who not only fights off the data creeps but also walks up to them and says, "Delete his data, and do it NOW!" Oh, and it's from Consumer Reports, so it's basically like your stern, but fair, aunt who's always got your back at family dinners when everyone else is getting into your business. Swipe right on Permission Slip; it's the only relationship you won't regret in the morning!

TLDR: Great intentions, clumsy execution. Not totally useless, but not worth the $60 subscription price. I have had some minor successes using Permission Slip, but unfortunately it falls short of what's intended in today's cavalier regulatory environment. The majority of our hundreds of requests had no response (understandable, not Permission Slip's fault, our flaccid congress hasn't any spine to stand up to write or give teeth enforce any laws here). Another minority of requests came back successfully acknowledged and acted upon (great). Another large minority came back with 'action required' in the app, which almost always means 'X sleazy data grubber has acknowledged the request and has sent you a sketchy, vague email that definitely went to your spam email inbox a month ago and has an expired link that you were supposed to click on to acknowledge this reasonable opt out request.' One or two of these is one thing, 80+ "action required" statuses like that is just impossible. Sorry, Permission Slip is just unable to do this and thus fails to really achieve its stated goals. Idk that it's worth it anymore in a world where any corporate overlord can mug you for data and no one is going to do anything about it. There is no power to enforce here, these companies need to be sued for *TRILLIONS* of dollars and their management jailed 25 to life. Maybe then we would finally see change here, until then I'm not paying for this app.

Unfortunately the app submits all of the email addresses you supply with every request you make. The goal is understandable (to increase the chance that the recipient will find your account), but it gives the target company valuable personal info which they didn't previously have. For privacy and security reasons I use a custom email address for every account (easy if you have a catch-all address), so it is at best pointless to submit all those addresses with every request. At worst it allows the receiving company to cross-reference those addresses and learn more about me from and of my personal information that they've acquired elsewhere, but which they didn't previously know belonged to me. Request: please let me specify which email address(es) to submit with each request. Don't make me enter all the addresses in advance, and don't automatically save the address because that would just mean I have to tediously delete it every time.

Assuming it works, it’s awesome. I’ve had one company agree to stop selling my info that I didn’t even know had my info, but 3 other sleazeballs flat-out refuse so far: cvs, intuit and yahoo. However, when this happens, the app doesn’t give you the option to go back and tell the company to delete your info altogether, or to stop stealing it to begin with, especially without prior permission and compensation. Also, a list of sleazeball companies that refuse the requests should be compiled and made very public in order to try and force them to stop stealing and profiting from the personal information of individuals, which by definition belongs only to each individual. Sleazeball denials so far: versium, walmart, starbucks, kohl’s, merkle, intuit, yahoo and cvs.