How to get your home address off people-search sites, and keep it off

Data brokers assemble your address history, phone numbers, relatives, age and sometimes photos from public records and sell them. Each one has an opt-out, and each one re-adds you after a while. The job is the order and the repetition.

Start with the sites that rank

Hundreds of brokers exist. About forty of them actually appear on the first pages for a person’s name. Start there: Whitepages, Spokeo, BeenVerified, Intelius, TruthFinder, Radaris, FastPeopleSearch, TruePeopleSearch, MyLife, PeopleFinders, Nuwber, ClustrMaps, and the sites they share data with. Search your own name in a private browser window and list every people-search result you see.

File the opt-outs

Each site has an opt-out page, usually linked in the footer as “Do not sell my information” or “Opt out”. Most want the URL of your record and an email to confirm. A few want a phone verification; some of the worst want a photo ID, which you can redact down to name and address. Use a dedicated email address for this; you will get a lot of confirmation messages.

Use your state law

If you live in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia, Texas, Oregon or another state with a privacy law, you have a legal right to deletion and the broker must comply within a set period. Say so in the request. California’s Delete Act will soon allow a single deletion request to reach every registered broker at once.

Ask Google too

Google’s Results about you tool removes search results that show your home address, phone number or email. It does not remove the page from the broker site, but it stops it ranking for your name, which is most of the harm.

Repeat

Brokers rebuild from new public records every few months. Re-search your name quarterly and re-file what came back. This is the part most people skip and the reason their address is back a year later.

If you would rather not spend a weekend a quarter on it, our protection plan files across more than nine hundred sites, prioritizes the ones that rank, and re-checks every cycle.