Search your name in quotes. Add the city you grew up in. Add the city you live in now. Hit enter.
If you haven't done this in a while, you might be surprised what comes back — a current address, a list of relatives, an old phone number, maybe a property record or two. Sometimes a photo. All of it on sites you've never heard of and never agreed to share anything with.
I covered how this data gets out in the first part of this series, and where it ends up in the second. This part is about what you actually do about it.
Start by knowing what you're dealing with
Before you start opting out, it's worth spending five minutes understanding your own exposure. Search your name on Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo — in quotes, with different cities you've lived in, with a previous address if you have one. Note which broker sites show up at the top.
Google also has a tool called Results About You that lets you request removal of contact information from Google's search index. Worth doing, though it's worth being clear about what it actually does: it removes the listing from Google's results, not from the broker's own website. Someone who knows to go directly to Spokeo still finds you. But it reduces casual discoverability, which matters.
Once you have a rough sense of where you're showing up, you can start pulling threads.
The manual route
There's no single "remove me from everywhere" button, unfortunately. Each broker has its own process, and most of them are designed to be just annoying enough that a lot of people give up. With the right list, though, you can get through the major ones in an afternoon.
Start here. These are the sites with the widest reach and the most search traffic:
- Spokeo — spokeo.com/optout: Find your listing, copy the URL, paste it into the opt-out form, enter an email, confirm the link they send. 24-72 hours to process.
- Whitepages — whitepages.com/suppression-requests: Requires a phone verification call. Annoying, quick. Also removes your entry from 411.com.
- BeenVerified — beenverified.com/app/optout/search: Search by name and state, find your listing, complete a CAPTCHA, confirm via email. Up to 24 hours.
- PeopleConnect (covers Intelius and more) — suppression.peopleconnect.us/login: This one is worth knowing about because PeopleConnect is the parent company behind Intelius, Instant Checkmate, US Search, and roughly 15 other sites. One opt-out through their suppression portal reaches the whole network — that's a better return on effort than it looks.
- MyLife — mylife.com/ccpa/index.pubview: Email works too ([email protected]). Known for being slow — 7 to 14 days. Don't mistake the silence for failure.
- Radaris — radaris.com/control-privacy: Web form. If the form gives you trouble, email [email protected] directly.
- FastPeopleSearch — fastpeoplesearch.com/removal: Web form, CAPTCHA, done. About 72 hours.
- TruePeopleSearch — truepeoplesearch.com/removal: Multiple CAPTCHAs. Mildly tedious, straightforward.
- Nuwber — nuwber.com/removal/link: Filter by state first. Email [email protected] if the form resists.
- FamilyTreeNow — familytreenow.com/optout: One of the more comprehensive people-search databases and one of the simpler opt-out processes.
- PeopleFinders — peoplefinders.com/opt-out: Asks for ID verification. Takes 5-7 business days.
One level deeper. After the people-search sites, there are the commercial data brokers — the ones that don't sell your profile to consumers directly, but supply it to companies for marketing, insurance underwriting, background checks, and hiring. Acxiom is the one to hit first. They're one of the largest data brokers in the world and your opt-out there removes you from the data they sell to businesses, not just the public-facing sites. LexisNexis has its own consumer opt-out portal as well.
A few brokers will ask you to upload ID. PimEyes is a facial recognition search engine — if you want off their index, their opt-out form requires a photo and a blurred ID. That's a legitimate ask given what they're holding, but it's worth knowing before you start.
For the full list — Yael Grauer's Big-Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List on GitHub is the most comprehensive community-maintained resource I know of. It covers 85+ brokers with direct opt-out links and notes on method.
The part no one likes explaining
Here's the thing about data broker opt-outs that the guides usually bury: for most brokers, it's not permanent.
They collect from public records — property transactions, voter registration, court filings, address changes. They buy from other brokers. Your data, which you just had removed, re-enters their system when they do their next database refresh. That typically happens on a 3-6 month cycle. You get removed, they pick up a new batch of public records that includes you, and you're back.
Some brokers maintain suppression lists that prevent them from re-adding your information after you've opted out. Many don't. The opt-out removes you from today's database, not from the data they haven't collected yet.
This is why the advice to "opt out once and you're done" is genuinely misleading. It's not a one-time thing. It's a recurring maintenance task, and that's probably the honest core of why automated removal services exist.
The automated option
If the prospect of opting out of dozens of sites and then repeating the process every few months sounds like exactly the kind of thing you'll do once and then forget: yeah. Most people do.
I already did a full breakdown of the main services — Incogni, DeleteMe, and their alternatives — so I won't rehash it here. The short version: Incogni covers 420+ brokers (with a Deloitte-verified audit to back that number up), re-runs removal requests every 60-90 days automatically, and costs around $100/year. DeleteMe gives you more visible reporting and human-managed removals but has narrower practical coverage. EasyOptOuts is the budget option at $19.99/year for roughly 100 people-search sites.
The math isn't complicated. If doing this manually takes you four hours and you have to redo it every quarter, the services start making sense fast — not as a luxury but as a time decision.
If you're in California: there's a new shortcut
In January 2026, California launched something genuinely useful: the DELETE Request and Opt-Out (DROP) portal.
The idea is straightforward. Instead of submitting individual opt-out requests to each broker, you authenticate once through privacy.ca.gov and submit a single deletion request that cascades to every data broker registered with the California Privacy Protection Agency — over 500 of them. The portal uses MFA and hashed data to protect what you submit.
Starting August 1, 2026, per CPPA regulations finalized in November 2025, brokers are required to check the DROP system every 45 days and must delete matched data within 90 days. They also have to maintain a suppression list — meaning when they re-acquire your data from a new source, they have to delete it again rather than just let it sit.
That suppression list mechanism is the part that actually matters. It addresses the re-listing problem, at least for brokers registered in California. If you're a CA resident and haven't done this yet, it's worth prioritizing before the manual opt-out grind.
Non-California residents don't have an equivalent yet. A federal data broker law has been proposed repeatedly and shelved repeatedly. That's a longer conversation.
What you're actually buying with this effort
Complete removal isn't realistic. There are thousands of data brokers, and the ones you've never heard of collect just as quietly as the ones you have. What you're buying is a meaningful reduction in how easily findable you are to the casual searcher — a recruiter, a landlord, an ex, someone who found your name and wanted more. That's a real reduction in exposure, even if it's not total.
The people-search sites in Tier 1 above are where most casual lookups happen. Getting off those makes a material difference. The commercial brokers below them matter more for insurance, credit, and background check contexts — worth doing but a different category of risk.
I put together a full companion checklist with 50+ brokers, their opt-out URLs, required methods, and estimated removal times — you can find it here. Bookmark it. You'll need it again in three months.
The better long-term answer is probably also on this site somewhere. If you want to think about your overall digital footprint rather than just this one slice of it, that's worth reading after you've gotten through the opt-outs.