People search sites are annoying and invasive. They make money by collecting your information from a variety of public sources to create personal profiles that they sell to other people. Here’s how to remove yourself from people search sites!
Remove yourself from Whitepages
ESTIMATED TIME: 20 minutes
Whitepages is one of the most popular data broker websites with 40 to 50 million visits each month. Unfortunately, this site doesn’t just collect peripheral information like our names and social media handles.
WhitePages digs a bit deeper into our current and previous residence, landlines, colleagues, and relatives. While all this is pretty invasive, it doesn’t end there.
With a premium subscription, any stranger can get our mobile numbers, professional licenses, information relating to property ownership, and bankruptcy details. They can also have a full history of all the places we’ve lived before, liens, judgment, and criminal records.
To top it all off, with a paid subscription, anyone can see our confidential background checks. Scary!
To opt out and delete yourself from WhitePages.com:
- Visit the Whitepages website and input our names and ZIP codes
- Click “view details” after finding our records
- Copy the URL at the top left corner of our profile
- Visit their opt-out page, paste our URL, and click on the opt-out button
- Click on “remove me” when redirected to confirm our identity
- Pick a reason for wanting to be removed
- Verify our identity by providing our numbers and asking to be called, after which we’ll get a verification code
- Pick up a call from the WhitePages robot and give it your verification code
Due to the vast amount of information they have on us, the whole process can take up to a day. However, when it’s done, all we need to do is check back frequently to see if our accounts haven’t been reinstated.
Remove yourself from Spokeo
ESTIMATED TIME: 10 minutes
This website isn’t quite as popular as WhitePages. But, it still has upwards of 21 million visits every month. That roughly equals 250m+ people viewing our details each year.
Anybody who wants to can see our previous locations, our aliases, and relatives. However, if they happen to be subscribers on the platform, they’ll get more than that. A subscriber can see your phone numbers, physical and email addresses, level of education, and marital status.
The Spokeo platform also gives out information on our relatives, property value, ownership info, and social networks.
To remove yourself from Spokeo:
- Visit the Spokeo website and search for our identities after putting in our first and last names
- Click “see results” after scrolling through to find our profiles
- Copy the URL at the top of our browser
- Go to the opt-out page and paste the URL there
- Write our email addresses and resolve the reCAPTCHA before clicking on “Remove the Listing”
- Click on the link in the email address we’ll receive to complete the removal process
The removal process takes about 48 hours. However, we’d have to go through it in another couple of months.
Remove yourself from Intelius
ESTIMATED TIME: 10 minutes
Intelius is a bit of a giant. It also owns sites that you may recognize: iSearch, Peoplelookup, Classmates.com, ZabaSearch and PublicRecords, to name a few. While this shady outfit used to make it really difficult to remove yourself from their database, it’s a lot easier these days to get off the websites they own:
- Click over to the Intelius opt-out page
- Add your name and email address to search for your records
- Find your personal records and click Select and Continue
- Confirm your identity via your email address and hit Continue.
- Find the email confirmation from Intelius in your inbox and click the link
- Verify that you got an opt-out confirmation in your email. It will include a reference number
Keep in mind that it takes awhile for them to completely remove you. Sometimes that window is 72 hours! Once that timeframe has passed, go back to Intelius and search for your name.
If it’s not removed, take a screenshot and send an email to custserv@intelius.com with that screenshot and your confirmation number. can take up to 72 hours for the opt-out to fully process. Don’t let up! Make sure they remove you! They’re counting on you to forget and let them keep selling your personal data!
Remove yourself from MyLife
ESTIMATED TIME: 15 minutes
MyLife isn’t just a regular social media website. It rakes in around 18.5 million visitors every month. They have access to our phone numbers, address, net worth, and even our car model.
MyLife also gets the criminal records of its users alongside their liens, lawsuits, and bankruptcies. Beyond these, the website asks its users to leave reviews of people’s character and reputation. There are no reasonable limits to who can leave these reviews.
To do so, we can either call or send an email to membersupport@mylife.com. If we choose to call, the person on the other end will guide us through the process. The number is (888) 704-1900. Be prepared for them to discourage you, though!
For the email, we’ll need a bit of structure to guide our request. It should include our first and last names, all previous locations alongside the present, and our birthdays. Emails must be clear and thorough.
To remove yourself from MyLife, take note of these three things:
- The information provided must be very accurate. This is to ensure that they don’t accidentally remove someone else’s profile instead of ours.
- You may have to send requests from each email you want to be deleted.
- If you don’t ask them to remove our details from all their other websites, they won’t. Since MyLife also owns Wink.com, be sure to request removal there too!
After about three to five days, you’ll be free from their spying eyes. But beware: your profile may return in four to five months.
How to submit a BeenVerified opt out
ESTIMATED TIME: 15 minutes
This people finder is slightly less popular than MyLife. However, with 18 million visitors each month, it’s not by a considerable margin. Unfortunately, each of those 18 million visitors can see our age, location, family members, and aliases. That’s a lot of information for random strangers to have.
And with a premium account, users get even more detail: a subscriber can see our numbers, property reports, convictions, address history, criminal records, etc.
To delete your data from BeenVerified:
- Visit the BeenVerified opt-out page
- Enter your first and last names and city
- Click search
- Choose the offending profile
- On the opt-out page that loads once you select your profile, enter your email address and solve the CAPTCHA
- Click on the button that says Send Verification Email
- After receiving an email from BeenVerified, click the “verify opt-out” button
When all this is done, wait to get a mail confirming our exit from the site. The entire process shouldn’t take more than 24 hours. Afterward, you’ll be free for another sixteen weeks or so. And then you have to do it all over again…
Remove yourself from Truthfinder
ESTIMATED TIME: 15 minutes
This is another data broker that has millions of visitors each month. It’s not exactly huge compared to the fifty million of some others. But, 16.5 million is still a lot of people to share our details with.
Admittedly, Truthfinder is a bit more stingy with our personal information. They only give out our age, possible relatives, and location. However, if a paid subscriber wants to do a little snooping, they’ll get the full package.
This includes everything from our business-related details to our neighbors and even our social profiles. Beyond that, they can get our pictures, property history, vehicle, hunting records, criminal records, etc. No random stranger should have this much detail about us!
Annoyingly, you can’t opt out via mobile devices or through fax messages. It’s more manual and you have to do it record-by-record:
To remove yourself from Truthfinder:
- Visit the removal page on Truthfinder
- Click the “search” button after putting in our first and last names alongside our city
- Click the button that says “remove this record” after finding a result that matches our identity
- Enter our email to receive a confirmation mail from Truthfinder.
- Open the email and confirm your opt-out
The whole process may take up to forty-eight hours. And it might take a few months for your profile to reappear.
Remove yourself from InstantCheckmate
ESTIMATED TIME: 5 minutes
InstantCheckmate Is a public record search company, which offers its background check tool for people to see all available records about a particular person.
Fortunately, InstantCHeckmate makes it easier than some other people search websites to remove yourself. Here’s how to delete your name of Instant Checkmate:
- Visit the InstantCheckmate opt-out page and tell them whether you’ve been a customer before
- Fill out the form at the top of the page and select the records you wish to remove
- Follow the instructions that appear on-screen.
The process can take up to 48 hours after opting out. Be sure to verify that your request was fulfilled!
Remove yourself from Pipl
ESTIMATED TIME: 10 minutes
Pipl calls itself “an identity resolution engine.” That’s fancy corporate-speak for finding everything publicly available about you and selling it to others.
To remove yourself from Pipl’s people search:
- Fill out the Personal Information Removal Request page
- Complete the CAPTCHA and submit
- Check for an email from Pipl and follow the instructions. Be sure to do everything they ask!
Make sure to do everything they ask in the follow-up email! They will ask for you to confirm your identity, whih is a process that can take a few days. If you don’t do this, the opt out request will not be fulfilled!
Lexis Nexis opt out
ESTIMATED TIME: 5 minutes
You can’t actually remove yourself from LexisNexis unless you are a police officer, a victim of a data breach or under threat of violence. That makes it extremely limiting — and it’s no wonder that police agencies and other government entities pay LexisNexis for their comprehensive database of people! It’s one of the most detailed in existence.
Remove yourself from Apollo.io
ESTIMATED TIME: 5 minutes
Apollo is a data-driven sales platform. So you may find that your data is actually being used by this platform — especially if you have a job that’s often targeted by external sales people.
To get off Apollo:
- To remove yourself, tap or click this link.
- Enter your email address and your apollo.io profile URL
- Submit to start the process
As always, check your email and complete all steps!
Remove yourself from the internet. Stay private!
