Removing Yourself from Public Record

How to Delete Your Information from People Search Sites

If you’ve ever searched your name online, you may’ve been surprised to find a lot of information about yourself that you didn’t personally post: old addresses, family members’ names, pictures of yourself, and a host of other facts. If you can find this information without much effort, imagine what other stuff is out there if you dug a bit deeper.

People-search websites accumulate data by scouring public records, social media, and commercial sources. They can include information about bankruptcies, criminal records, and the addresses of family members. These sites can be risky; they can make it easier for stalkers to find or dox you and can facilitate identity theft.

While you may find it hard to scrub your identity from the internet, there are some steps you can take to delete your information from people-search sites. Be aware that it isn’t an easy task and may take some time. Think of removing these public records as an act of maintenance and not a weekend project; you may have to do it more than once.

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People-Search Opt Out Process

There are many people-search websites that exist, and each one may have different information about you within its database. The specific steps for opting out of these sites and removing your personal information may vary based on each site, but the overall process is the same, albeit tedious.

Some of the most popular free people search websites include Spokeo, WhitePages, MyLife, and PeopleSmart. Before you get started, make a disposable email address that you’ll use during the process. Most of these sites will require you to sign up and claim your personal information before it can be deleted. If you use your real email account, you’ll be added to their marketing lists. If the goal is data removal, don’t use an email address that you use for anything else.

While the steps on each people-search site may vary, the process is similar. Below is how to opt out of having your personal data on Spokeo:

1. Search for your name on Spokeo. You may need to narrow down the results by city and state.
2. Right click on the listing you want to remove and select “copy link address.”
3. Go to Spokeo’s Opt Out page and paste the link address into the form on the page and enter the throwaway email address you created.
4. Confirm that you are not a robot and click “Remove this listing.”
5. Spokeo should send you an email confirming the deletion of your information. You’ll need to click the confirmation link at the bottom to complete the process, and the information should be off the site in about 48 hours.

While each site has its own peculiarities, the general steps across the board are:

1. Locate your information on a people search site. Make sure it’s you!
2. Select all the information you’d like removed and copy all relevant links so you can submit them.
3. Go to that site’s opt out page and present the information you’d like removed.
4. You may need to confirm your identity to proceed.
5. Confirm that you’d like it removed, usually by clicking a link in a confirmation email.

If your information appears on the public record site MyLife, you can actually call their customer support line and ask for your profile to be deleted. You’ll need to confirm some personal information before they’ll do this, but they just want to make sure that they’re getting rid of the correct profile.

Sites like PeopleSmart and Intelius have very straightforward opt out pages, and the process is very similar to Spokeo’s. Simply confirm your identity and verify the information you’d like removed. These sites will send you a confirmation email, so keep using that throwaway address you created for this purpose.

How Can I Limit Other Personal Information on the Internet?

If you’re committed to deleting or limiting the amount of personal information about you on the internet, there are a few other steps you can take in addition to scrubbing your data from people search sites.

• Delete old profiles. These could be social media profiles you’ve abandoned, email addresses you’ve outgrown, or commercial accounts at stores you no longer shop at. If you’ve grown up on the internet, your digital footprint might be huge and full of information. Find and delete as much of it as you can.
• Use a professional service. Services exist to scrub your personal data from the internet and help you manage your online reputation. If you have social media posts that should never see the light of day again, these services can help you stay off people search sites and keep sensitive information under wraps.
• Adjust your privacy settings on social media. Profiles that are set to public can be found with a simple search.
• Talk to your kids about online safety. Younger kids don’t always understand the need for privacy online. Make sure they know never to give out personal information.