Guide series — still being written
Privacy, People-Search Sites, and Data Brokers: Taking Your Details Back
From the Personal Reputation Management team · Last updated October 19, 2026
Short answer: People-search sites assemble profiles from public records and sell attention to them; most offer a free opt-out you should use yourself rather than paying anyone to submit. Google's “Results about you” separately handles results exposing your phone, home address, or email. This series will systematize both, broker by broker, with recheck habits.
Why this matters for ordinary people
Most people never chose to be searchable, yet brokers publish their addresses and relatives by default. Privacy is a safety issue for some and a dignity issue for everyone; the fixes are mostly free and mostly unknown.
What this series will cover
How broker profiles are built and why they are often wrong, finding and opting out of your listings, Google's personal-information removal tool, keeping your own pages from feeding brokers, and a recheck calendar because listings reappear. The guides below are listed with what each will cover.
Where to start today
Search your name plus your city, open the broker listings about you, and bookmark their opt-out pages. Do the first opt-out today; calendar a recheck in a month.
Guides in this series
- How do I remove myself from people-search sites?Still being written
Find your exact listing on each major people-search site, follow that site's free opt-out or suppression steps precisely (usually confirming by email), and calendar a recheck in a month because listings reappear when bro…
- How do I remove my phone number or address from Google results?Still being written
Use Google's free “Results about you” tool in your Google Account: it finds results containing your name with contact details like a phone number, home address, or email, and lets you request removal of qualifying result…
- Why is my home address online, and how did they get it?Still being written
Usually from public records — property, voter, court, and business filings — aggregated and resold by data brokers into people-search profiles. You generally cannot erase the underlying public record, but you can suppres…
Honest by design — including what we don't do
What we do
- Show you what people find, result by result, and ask you to confirm what's actually you.
- Build your personal site from facts you approved — nothing is published without your approval.
- Use licensed search data and official tools only. No scraping.
- Keep watch weekly, in plain English, with one clear next step.
What we never do
- No fake reviews, fake profiles, fake news, or bought links.
- No bogus takedown notices, and no promises to remove results or guarantee rankings.
- No searching for anyone but you, and we never sell your data.