How to remove yourself from people-search sites
A people-search site is one where a stranger types your name and gets your home address, your phone number and the names of the people you live with. There are 41 of them that we file against. You can get off them yourself, for free, and here is how.
Do this first: look yourself up
Before anything else, search your own name on one of these sites and find the page that is about you. Almost every opt-out form asks for the address of that page, so you cannot start until you have it. Copy the link.
This is also the part people find hardest to believe until they do it. The listing is usually there, it is usually accurate, and it is usually free to read.
Then, for each site
- Open the site’s own opt-out page. Every one of the sites below has one, and we link straight to it.
- Paste the link to your listing.
- Give them an email address or a phone number so they can check the request came from you. This is the step that puts people off, and it is the one you cannot skip: they will not remove a listing on an unverified request. Use an email address you can reach.
- Click the link in the message they send you. Nothing happens until you do.
- Wait. Some sites take a day; some take six weeks.
- Check again in a month. This is the part that matters — see below.
The sites, and the exact steps for each
- AdvancedBackgroundChecks
- BackgroundAlert
- BackgroundCheckers
- BeenVerified
- CheckPeople
- CheckThem
- CyberBackgroundChecks
- FamilyTreeNow
- FastBackgroundCheck
- FastPeopleSearch
- FreeBackgroundCheck.org
- InfoTracer
- Instant Checkmate
- Intelius
- Nuwber
- PeekYou
- PeopleFinder
- PeopleFinders
- PeopleLooker
- PeopleSmart
- Radaris
- Skopenow
- SmartBackgroundChecks
- Spokeo
- ThatsThem
- Truecaller
- TruePeopleSearch
- TruthFinder
- US Search
- USA-People-Search
- Whitepages
- Addresses.com
- AnyWho
- BlockShopper
- Classmates.com
- ClustrMaps
- LocateFamily
- NeighborReport
- NeighborWho
- NumberGuru
Why it comes back
People-search sites do not invent your details. They rebuild them, over and over, from public records — property deeds, voter registrations, court filings, change-of-address notices. So when you are removed today, you are removed from the copy they are publishing today. The next time they rebuild, you can reappear, and nobody emails you to say so.
That is why the honest version of this page is not "do these six steps and you are done". It is: do them, and then do them again, and the doing again is the part almost nobody sustains.
Not sure which of them have you?
That is the part worth doing first, and it is free. One email address, about 15 seconds, no account and no card. You see which of your details have leaked and where they are published, and you can decide about everything else afterwards.
Or keep going by hand. Everything on this page works without paying us, and it is written so that it does.