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How to Remove Your Personal Information from Data Brokers

by Jim Wang

Updated

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If you’ve ever wondered how scammers know so much about you – your name, relatives, addresses, and even old phone numbers – it’s because of data brokers. And most of that information is public.

If you want to fight back, you need to get your data deleted. It is a time consuming process so you can pay a service or treat it as a “fun” weekend project that you can slowly chip away at.

⭐ If you don’t want to deal with this and prefer to pay, DeleteMe is $10 a month and Incogni is $8 a month. Both will remove you from hundreds of data broker sites, monitor it on a regular basis, and save you hundreds hours of time.

Here’s my guide to removing your personal information from data brokers.

⚠️ I’ve removed myself from all of these sites (not the super big one at the end though) and you’re welcome to search for me. It’s a painstaking process that I don’t recommend you try to do all in one weekend, unless you like this sort of thing.

The challenge is that the data somehow always comes back because some other services reports it and so you have to periodically check – so if you do see my name, please let me know!

Table of Contents
  1. The Approach
    1. First – Set Up Google Results About You
    2. The Process
  2. 🔥 People-Search & Background-Check Sites
    1. Day 1
    2. Day 2
  3. 📕Major Consumer & Marketing Data Brokers
    1. Day 3
  4. 💳 Credit & Financial Data Aggregators
    1. Day 4
  5. 🗂️ Maintenance Plan
  6. Super List of Data Brokers (For the Truly Ambitious)

😀 What is a data broker? These are companies that collect, analyze, and sell your personal information to marketers, background checkers, and sometimes scammers.

The Approach

There are several types of data brokers and we’ve broken them up into groups based on priority. We prioritized sites that let you search up people for data or background checks (like criminal records).

Next, we focused on consumer marketing sites that collect information about your purchasing behavior for sake of marketing.

Finally, we have financial and credit sites.

We do not list every site that collects and sells your data. There are simply too many. But we list the high priority ones that have the most data and that appear most often in search engines.

And yes, this will feel like whack-a-mole. Your data will come back, which is why some people prefer to pay a service to do this.

First – Set Up Google Results About You

Google has a Results About You tool that will scan its search results for your personal information and you can ask Google to remove it from search results. Google will scan its results on a regular basis for you, so it’s like a secret agent working in the shadows.

You can put a lot of information for it to find, including passport numbers, driver’s license ID numbers, and your Social Security Number. I put everything except passport, driver’s license, and SSN.

When it finds something, Google will email you. I will request Google remove the results and then I will go through the Process below with that data broker. Google can remove the result from its search but it won’t remove the source information, so you have to do that manually.

This will identify (and remove) the easiest to find records since most people just Google your name if they want to find out about you.

The Process

  1. Go to the Opt Out Page below.
  2. Search for your information.
  3. Copy your profile URL if necessary (many will not require this).
  4. Fill out their opt out form.
  5. Confirm by email.

In the lists below, I’ve linked to the opt-out page to start the process. In some cases, they will need you to find your record on their site and get the URL for your profile. To find yourself, search for your name plus your city, state combo. If you recently moved, search for your previous city, state combo too.

But not all of them require this, or the opt out form will include a search, so go to the opt out first and see what that site’s pricess is.

⏰ Sadly, many times in this searching process there is a fake “waiting” screen as they pretend to look you up. Open multiple tabs at once to save time.

Then, you fill out that form, enter your email, and they will take you through an email confirmation process. Once you’ve confirmed your request, they’ll send you an email indicating they’re removing it.

I “snooze” this email in Gmail to check back in a week. Many sites promise to remove it in a few business days, I check a week later to confirm it’s actually been completed.

🔥 People-Search & Background-Check Sites

Unless you are well known on the internet, these are the sites that usually come up when you search for your name and the city you live in. Their whole business model is selling your information to people who are nosey and in many cases, includes your home address and phone number.

In fact, do a quick search now and remove yourself from any sites that appear on the first page, then do the list below. If you find yourself on a site, copy the URL and go down to the footer and look for a link that says something to the effect of “Remove my information” or “Do not sell my personal information” – that’ll be the opt out page.

Day 1

Quick Tip: I recommend using a separate email for this just in case this leads to spam. You know the types of companies you’re dealing with here, I wouldn’t be surprised if that email got onto some list. I use my spam email for this.

Day 2

Whack whack whack… funny part is that this is my report on People Connect but I don’t have a middle name.

📕Major Consumer & Marketing Data Brokers

This list of companies don’t tend to appear in search engines but they do sell your data to other companies and power a lot of marketing. It’s lower priority because scammers are less likely to buy this data just to scam you… but it helps to remove it.

Getting off these lists will remove spam calls, it just won’t (usually) affect the scam calls.

Day 3

💳 Credit & Financial Data Aggregators

This last group is lowest priority because scammers are definitely not getting this data, but companies like to use it to target you for advertising. Again, dealing with these will reduce spam but not necessarily reduce scam attempts (sadly).

Day 4

Quick Tip: To stop pre-screened credit and insurance offers (and reduce mailbox theft risk, which is albeit quite small) use OptOutPrescreen.com.

🗂️ Maintenance Plan

Your data will re-appear on some sites after you remove them. I don’t know or why but it does happen.

So every six months, recheck sites like Whitepages, Spokeo, TruePeopleSearch, and FastPeopleSearch (the first two groups) to see if your name has re-appeared.

If you want to be super diligent, you can use a spreadsheet to track it but I don’t. Just “remember” to look and deal with it if I see it again (which happens more than I’d like).

Be sure to share this post with your friends and family, especially family. You will appear in their listings as relatives or “known associates” and so having them remove their information is important too.

Good luck and happy whacking!

Super List of Data Brokers (For the Truly Ambitious)

This is roughly ordered by how much scam-useful data they expose and how often they show up, then by overall size. This list doesn’t include any sites we shared above.

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About Jim Wang

Jim Wang is a forty-something father of four who is a frequent contributor to Forbes and Vanguard's Blog. He has also been fortunate to have appeared in the New York Times, Baltimore Sun, Entrepreneur, and Marketplace Money.

Jim has a B.S. in Computer Science and Economics from Carnegie Mellon University, an M.S. in Information Technology - Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as a Masters in Business Administration from Johns Hopkins University. His approach to personal finance is that of an engineer, breaking down complex subjects into bite-sized easily understood concepts that you can use in your daily life.

One of his favorite tools (here's my treasure chest of tools, everything I use) is Empower Personal Dashboard, which enables him to manage his finances in just 15-minutes each month. They also offer financial planning, such as a Retirement Planning Tool that can tell you if you're on track to retire when you want. It's free.

>> Read more articles by Jim

Opinions expressed here are the author's alone, not those of any bank or financial institution. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.

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John Lombard
8 months ago

I subscribe to Incogni and Cloaked, two removal services that do this work for you.

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Jim Wang
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Jim Wang
8 months ago
Reply to  John Lombard

Why both?

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John Lombard
7 months ago
Reply to  Jim Wang

Cloaked adds another level of removal such as multiple email addresses, phone numbers, and relatives

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