How to Eliminate Personal Data from Websites and Data Brokers

Removing your personal details from online platforms and data brokers can feel like an overwhelming task. It’s unsettling to search for your name and come across results revealing your address, age, phone number, and more. Where do these sources obtain this data? What are they doing with it? Can you request its removal?

For centuries, businesses and governments have gathered information about individuals. In 1085, William the Conqueror famously initiated a record of property ownership in England known as the Domesday Book. While it wasn’t a comprehensive census, it did list the names of landowners and their properties.

Historically, these records were handwritten, and due to widespread illiteracy, access to them was virtually impossible for the public. Today, many records are created or digitized for easier public access. This shift has made it simpler to work with and share information. Government data, including vital records, tax filings, voting records, salaries of government employees, and more, must be publicly accessible by law. While the specifics vary depending on location, in the United States, it's likely that at least some of these details are legally available. If William had access to Zillow, there would have been no need for the Domesday Book.

Before the internet era, accessing such information required physically visiting records offices or sending requests by mail. Nowadays, with some knowledge, time, and effort, it’s much easier to gather data that many people consider private or sensitive. While various laws limit how much information any one agency can share, a savvy individual can combine bits from different sources to assemble a public profile about you.

If you’ve searched for your name and found personal information on the first page of results, you're likely encountering results from people finders. These websites collect legally available information and create profiles that they make accessible online.

Many of these sites provide access to personal information like email addresses, phone numbers, and even your Social Security number, along with details such as your birthdate, home address, past residences, property values, relatives' names, religion, ethnicity, hobbies, employment history, websites you have accounts with, and much more. Data brokers often display a portion of this information for free and charge a fee for access to more extensive data, including legal and criminal records.

Other Sources of Personal Data on the Web

In addition to people-finder sites, there are other potential sources of your personal information. You might have shared your hobbies on social media or created a public wishlist on an online shopping platform. Businesses, including traditional brick-and-mortar stores, often sell their customer mailing lists to others. Sometimes it's easy to trace these sales, especially when a name is misspelled, and that misspelling appears on junk mail.

Making a donation to one charity could lead to you receiving requests from many others in the same sector. Charities often sell their mailing lists to other organizations, helping them raise additional funds. Similarly, entering a sweepstakes by filling out a survey could land you on another mailing list.

While some of this information might seem trivial based on your personal perspective, it can be exploited by dishonest individuals to craft a profile for fraudulent activities like catfishing. These individuals may appear to know private details that only someone close to you would, which is how they gain your trust.

Although catfishing is a concern, on a daily basis, it’s far more likely that people are gathering as much information about you as possible to sell you something. We’re all becoming more aware that websites track our online behavior through cookies to target us with advertising. The same happens with social network mobile apps. You likely gave them permission to do so when you accepted their terms and conditions. You did read those terms before clicking Accept, right?

You may come across websites that claim to provide directory information about you, whether through white pages, people finders, background check services, or market research platforms, which then make your personal data accessible online.

The easiest way to uncover what's available about you online is to search for your name, email addresses, and other personal identifiers. You can start with a search engine like Google, but be prepared for an overwhelming amount of unrelated information — or results about others who share your name or username. A search engine can help you view the top hits associated with your contact details and assess your online reputation. However, searching through data collection sites will likely yield much more relevant — and possibly unsettling — results.

What Types of Data Collection Sites Are There?

The internet is vast, and many of its corners remain unexplored by most of us. Some of your information may exist on what is referred to as the surface web, consisting of web pages that are linked to by other sites and can be discovered through search engines like Google. But unlike typical search engines, data brokers — organizations that gather and sell data — often extract much of their information from what some call the deep web or even the dark web. The deep web includes web pages and databases that are not linked to other sites and are excluded from search engine indexes. In fact, the deep web makes up the majority of the internet’s real estate.

Some data brokers go to the extent of manually retrieving official records on individuals. They then compile your data into a detailed profile and make it available online in a single, easy-to-access location.

People-finder sites on the surface web are typically categorized into two types: primary and secondary. Primary sites collect your information directly from original sources such as public records from government agencies, utilities, and similar entities. Secondary sites gather their data from primary sites and other online sources, including other secondary sites and social media. It is often difficult to determine whether a people-finder site is primary or secondary. Some of the well-known people-finder sites include Intelius, PeopleFinders, TruthFinder, BeenVerified, Spokeo, and DOBSearch.

Take Spokeo, for example, a well-known, user-friendly, and sometimes unnervingly accurate people search site. Spokeo allows you to search by name, email, phone number, or mailing address. The results appear as markers on a map, and you can click on a specific entry to view a profile containing extensive personal information, such as previous addresses, family members, and partial phone numbers. Basic searches are free, but access to more detailed information, such as court records, social media profiles, and complete phone numbers, requires a paid subscription.

This is just one example. There are hundreds of similar sites, each with varying levels of user-friendliness and accuracy, some connected to each other, and others operating independently.

The fact that these organizations are collecting and making this data widely accessible raises significant privacy concerns. It makes it easier for individuals to misuse this information for purposes like stalking and identity theft. Moreover, many people-finder sites disclaim that they gather information without verifying its accuracy, which adds another layer of concern.

When many people share similar names or have lived at the same addresses at different times, it can result in incorrect details being linked to your profile on these sites. This could become an issue, especially when you are applying for jobs or trying to maintain a positive online presence. Many employers and hiring managers conduct online searches to evaluate candidates.

Most of the erroneous information is probably harmless, but it's not unheard of for a site to mistakenly associate a criminal record with the wrong individual. Furthermore, these sites might make it easier for professional connections to stumble upon unflattering photos, like that drunken vacation photo a friend posted of you. To protect your online privacy, safety, and reputation, it's a good idea to monitor the private information out there and work towards cleaning up your digital footprint.

Can you remove your data from a people-finder site?

There are countless data aggregators out there, and new ones emerge regularly. Since you can't completely erase all of your public records, the simple answer is that it may not be possible to fully remove your data. However, you can likely reduce the amount of personal information that is easily accessible online.

The good news is that many of these data brokers offer opt-out options, allowing you to request the removal of your information from their sites. These requests can typically be made online, via fax, or through physical mail. Some may require verification details such as your email address, a copy of your driver's license, or another form of state-issued ID. While it's understandably unsettling to provide more personal details, instructions for opting out are often available on their sites, typically found at the bottom of the home page. Additionally, resources like the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse compile lists of data brokers and their opt-out procedures, where available.

Unfortunately, some of your data may resurface on the sites you requested to be removed from, or it could appear on similar platforms. People-finder websites may also create multiple profiles for you due to name discrepancies, spelling mistakes, and other issues, meaning you may need to conduct several searches and submit multiple removal requests.

Other factors influencing your ability to manage your data include the company's location or the countries in which it operates. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) of 2018 mandates that companies disclose the information they hold about their customers and provides the right to modify or delete it. Unfortunately, this law primarily benefits California residents and offers limited help to those outside the state.

The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is one of the strictest privacy regulations globally. Enacted in May 2018, it mostly applies to EU residents, but it also impacts businesses that collect data from EU customers. If you've noticed an uptick in pop-ups asking you to agree to privacy policies, it's likely because these sites want to do business with people in the EU. The GDPR mandates these companies to disclose the data they're collecting and to allow users to opt out of unnecessary tracking.

The GDPR also includes provisions from the EU's previous 'right to be forgotten.' Essentially, it grants EU residents the right to request that organizations delete their personal data, particularly when it's no longer being used for its original purpose. Privacy and security regulations like these are becoming more common worldwide, potentially helping by restricting the types and amounts of data accessible to brokers.

If you've submitted an opt-out request to a data broker in the United States and they either repost your information or fail to remove it, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recommended steps you can take to address the issue. In 2022, the FTC filed a lawsuit against a data broker accused of selling geolocation data that could expose sensitive personal details. You may also contact other government or advocacy groups to help push for policy changes, such as making certain harmful practices illegal.

If the thought of requesting data removal from numerous sites feels overwhelming and you're not willing to wait for legislative changes, there are services emerging that claim they can assist in erasing your data from various data aggregators. Some of these services include OneRep, DeleteMe, ReputationDefender, and Kanary. Prices vary from low monthly rates to hundreds of dollars, depending on the service and package you choose. Many of these services offer automated tools to locate and remove your information from popular people-search websites. If automatic removal isn't possible, some companies will manually request removal on your behalf or guide you on how to do it yourself, and they will notify you when your data resurfaces online.

You may also find your personal details on a regular website, not necessarily a data aggregator. While there might not be a formal procedure for removal, you can usually reach out to the website's owner and politely ask for the removal of your information.

How to Remove Personal Information From the Internet

There are various reasons why you might wish to remove your personal information. Fortunately, there are actionable steps to take in order to remove this data from the web [source: Stouffer]. However, be aware that this can be a time-consuming process, and it may not lead to the complete removal of all of your data.

The Step-by-Step Guide

Removing your personal information from the internet is a proactive way to protect your privacy. While it can be challenging, minimizing your digital footprint is a crucial step towards improving your online privacy and security. In reality, maintaining online privacy requires constant vigilance and management to ensure that your personal data stays protected.

Free and Cheap Ways to Monitor and Control Your Online Presence

There are several other alternatives for managing and monitoring the information about you online. BrandYourself is a cost-effective service that helps you optimize specific links to ensure they rank higher in Google search results, or conversely, de-optimizes links you'd prefer to keep buried. Other companies, including some of the previously mentioned data removal services, offer similar tools. While this approach doesn't eliminate the information, it gives you some control over the first links people encounter when they search for you online, which are likely the most prominent.

Google provides guidelines on how to search for and remove your personal information from the internet, along with a form for requesting the removal of content from its search results or other Google services. While there's no guarantee, it's worth a try. You can also set up a Google Alert for your name or other relevant phrases, and Google will notify you when new instances of those search terms appear on the web. Although this is not a comprehensive solution for managing all online data about you (since it only monitors new activity and doesn't catch results that would typically show up in regular searches), it can still be a helpful tool.

Other platforms that notify you when your selected monitoring topics appear online include Social Mention (part of BrandMentions), which tracks information about you or others on various social media networks. Social-searcher.com offers a similar service. Both platforms claim to offer free services, but there may be limitations to what is included.

You can take steps to make it more difficult for data collectors to link all of your personal details together, such as tightening privacy settings on social networks and other sites you've registered with. It could be a good time to revisit your account settings and review your preferences. Also, examine your profiles, blogs, and other sites for sensitive data you've posted, and consider removing or modifying it to enhance security.

Limit the amount of data stored about you by utilizing the incognito mode in your browser or by switching to privacy-focused search engines like Startpage or DuckDuckGo. These search engines offer results similar to Google but do not store cookies related to your search activities.

Maintaining the privacy of your most sensitive information offline requires consistent attention. Typically, having your data removed from a site does not erase the original sources where it came from, and such information could easily resurface elsewhere. Just as it's a good idea to periodically check your credit report, you might want to regularly search the web for your personal details. And always be cautious about what you share online.