People Finder Sites and You: How to Remove Your Personal Information

Personal data has quickly become one of the most valuable currencies available. The information that makes up your personal identity — name, phone number, address, even court records and other info — is now just a search away using data aggregator sites such as Spokeo, Whitepages, Radaris, Intelius, BeenVerified, TruthFinder, and many other “people finder” services.

Unfortunately, these “people finder” or data aggregator sites end up offering your basic and detailed private information to hackers, spammers, spear phishers, stalkers, and other criminals. Another issue is “scraping”, where robo dialers, spammers, and other unsavory services can steal your info and bombard you with phone calls, texts, emails, and more.  

In other words, your personal data and the data of your family members including your brothers, sisters, parents, aunts and uncles, is just sitting there for the taking — unless you take steps to protect your privacy, and have the data removed from these data aggregator sites.  

Now, before you approach these sites to have personal data removed, you should understand what’s legal and what’s illegal. Know that the vast majority of these people finder sites are operating within the law, and everything from property and vehicle records to your contact information and educational history is already out there as public record. So, while BeenVerified TruthFinder, Radaris, Intelius, Spokeo, and PeopleFinders are making it easy for others to find your information, they’re not doing anything illegal.  

However, by having this data removed from these sites, you can make it much more difficult (and not even worth it) for the criminals looking for easy access to your information to use for credit card theft, mortgage fraud, and more.

So, how do you stop some of the top data aggregator sites from showcasing your personal information? Here’s what you need to do to have personal data removed from BeenVerified,TruthFinder, Radaris, Intelius, Spokeo, and PeopleFinders.

Prepare to unregister your information

To hide, remove or unregister your personal information from PeopleFinders and data aggregator sites, you’ll need to start by doing the following:

1. Create or register for a spam/burner Gmail account. This is an account you’ll only use to receive your opt-out/unregistration info.
2. Register for a phone number via Google Voice. This phone number will only be used for the opt-out process, so do not link your Google Voice number with your real phone number.

Remember: When you ask for your data to be removed, you might be tasked with providing information that you would find on these data aggregator sites. However, never give these sites your primary email address or real phone number. Do the bare minimum in offering up data to unregister and remove your personal info.

Ready to opt-out and remove some personal data from aggregator sites? Here’s what to do.

Don’t have the time or patience to walk through these steps? Contact Status Labs to seamlessly handle this process on your behalf.

Unregister from BeenVerified

The first step in opting out from BeenVerified is to go to the bottom of the homepage and find the link titled “Do Not Sell My Info”. Click on that link and you’ll be asked to enter your name and state. You’ll then be taken to a page that asks for personal info to start your request – make sure to use your burner email.

Once your record comes up, click on it, and on the next page, enter the info you want to opt out with. This includes phone numbers, email addresses, social media, and street addresses. Follow the steps and your opt-out request will be submitted, which will include verifying your request in an email sent to your burner address. If the private info matches what’s in your record, that info will no longer be listed on BeenVerified.

Your info should be removed from BeenVerified in around 24 hours. If you check and it’s still there, contact the data aggregator’s customer service team to complain or work out the problem.

Unregister from Truthfinder

Go to TruthFinder.com. Start by clicking on the opt-out link at the bottom of the homepage titled “Do Not Sell My Personal Information”. You’ll be asked to enter your name, city and state — do this and hit the SEARCH button. Find your record and hit the button that says REMOVE THIS RECORD. On the next page, enter your burner email address, click on the box that declares you’re a human, and click on the button that says SEND CONFIRMATION EMAIL. Once you receive the email, click on the link, go back to the site, and list out what you want removed.  

Once you request your information removed from TruthFinder, the data aggregator may take up to 48 hours to delete it from searches. If it’s still there after the 48 hours, contact their customer service team here or call (800) 699-8081 during listed business hours.

Unregister from PeopleFinders

Visit peoplefinders.com’s homepage and scroll to the bottom. Click on the opt-out link titled “Do Not Sell My Personal Information”. On the next page, you’ll see the steps to remove your personal information from the data aggregator service. Start by a search, click on your profile, and copy the web address (URL) for your profile.

Pro Tip: Open a new tab to do your search so you don’t need to re-open this same page later, where you’ll enter your profile info to have it removed. On the next page after your search, which shows your info with many items crossed out, copy the URL and enter it into the opt out instructions page. Enter your burner email, verify that you’re human, and hit the button.

You’ll receive an email with a link to click on that removes the profile. You’ll be taken back to the website where your request is confirmed. Wait 24 hours and if your information is still on the site, contact customer service during listed business hours at (800) 718-8997.

Unregister from Spokeo

In order to opt-out of Spokeo you first need to find your profile. You can do this from the Spokeo home page. Go to the bottom of the page where it says  “Do Not Sell My Info” or type your name into the search bar and click search. Once you have found your profile go ahead and click on it. This will bring you to your profile page. Grab your profile URL from the top of the web address bar and then input this into the opt-out form here. At this point also provide your burner email (don’t use your real one) and click the “remove this listing” button.

Now check your account for the confirmation. Follow the link in the confirmation email to verify the opt-out. Once the process is complete (2-3 days) you should get another email. If the listing is still there after three days contact their customer service directly here using the same profile URL that was originally inputted in the opt-out form.

Unregister from Intelius

The process of unregistering from Intelius is very similar to Spokeo and the form can be difficult to find. It’s on the very bottom of the page in the fine print that says “Do Not Sell My Personal Information.”

Go directly to the Intelius opt-out form here. Input your information into the search bar and locate your profile that matches your information. Verify that this is the profile that you want removed, provide your burner email address and complete the Captcha. Check your email and follow the confirmation link. Again, if the information is not removed within 7 days, contact Intelius directly here or call them at (888) 245-1655 during listed business hours.

Unregister from Radaris

The process for unregistering for Radaris is similar to both Spokeo and Intelius. Follow these instructions as specified by the opt-out page on the Radaris website or scroll to the bottom of the page and select “DO NOT SELL MY INFO”:

Or from the homepage:

• Search for a name.

• On the search results page, select the name that is most appropriate.

• On the profile page, click the down-arrow to the right of the name and select “Control Information”.

• From the information control page, choose “Control Info”.

• You’ll be prompted to log in with Facebook, Google, or your email address. If you don’t have an account, you can create one here.
• Once you’ve signed in, you’ll be asked to claim your profile. Once you’ve claimed your profile, you can choose to remove all information or to delete specific records.

At this point, you will be prompted to enter both an email account and phone number. If they do not accept your Google voice number do not enter your primary contact number. At this point contact Radaris customer service.

Remove your name, address, phone number from White Pages

        1. Enter the white pages web site in your browser: https://www.whitepages.com/

        2. From there enter your full name and city into the search bar.

        3. Once you’ve found your listing, click on the profile.

        4. This will take you to your profile page. Grab the URL which should resemble: https://www.whitepages.com/name/Your-Name/Your-City/

        5. Now open a new tab and go to the opt-out form here: https://www.whitepages.com/privacy/ccpa

        6. From the dropdown menu, choose “I would like to opt-out of having my information published by Whitepages”.

        7. On the next page, fill out the form using your burner email address and other info (including your Whitepages profile URL). Submit your request.

Please note that it may take up to 45 days for your information to be deleted from the site. If your personal information appears more than 45 days after you fill out and submit your opt-out request, you can follow up at the Whitepages customer support portal here.

While the process of removing your private info from sites like AnyWho, ZabaSearch, Peeplo, SwitchBoard, 411, Pipl, PeekYou, MyLife, PeopleFinders, and PeopleSmart may seem easy, it often ends up being a lot more work than expected. You’ll need to be very organized and vigilant to make certain that your requests are honored by the sites.

Use the Status Labs removal service

If you’re having trouble removing your personal records including your phone number, addresses, age, email, or other info, or you’re simply overwhelmed with all the data aggregators giving broad access to your personal data, try our data security removal service. With this annual service, Status Labs can:

• Scan and remove your personal data from the 25 most common data brokers and aggregators
• Conduct a custom scan and manually remove info from 80+ additional data brokers and sites that are known for having a difficult removal process
• Conduct a custom scan and remove court records from court sites including Justia.com, Law360.com, and Casetext
• Scan the dark web for your revealing personal details. The dark web is often used for criminals to traffic personal info

Choose to have a scan conducted each month (12 scans per year), or quarterly (four scans).