🔒Privacy

Just found my entire life on Spokeo including my kid's names — how do I get this removed

Data broker sites exposing your address, phone, relatives, and other personal info

5 min readUpdated Mar 2026

You searched your name on Spokeo and what came back was terrifying — your home address, phone numbers, email addresses, your kids' names, your approximate income, where you work, and your neighbors' names. All public. All free. All one search away from anyone who wants to find you.

Spokeo is just one of over 190 data broker sites doing this. They scrape public records, social media, marketing databases, and purchase histories to build comprehensive profiles on virtually every American adult. The good news: you can remove your information. The bad news: it takes effort, and it comes back.1

ℹ️

Spokeo is legal — but removal is your right

Data brokers operate legally by aggregating public information. However, every major data broker is required to honor opt-out requests. Spokeo specifically has been fined by the FTC for FCRA violations and is generally responsive to removal requests.

What Spokeo Knows About You (and Where They Got It)

12B+

Records in Spokeo's database

190+

Data broker sites with similar data

Cost to search for anyone

Personal details: Full name, aliases, age, date of birth
Contact info: Current and past phone numbers, email addresses
Addresses: Current and past home addresses with satellite imagery
Family: Names of relatives, roommates, associates
Financial: Estimated income, property values, mortgage info
Social media: Linked profiles from Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram
Court records: Any available civil or criminal records

This data comes from voter registration files, property records, court filings, social media profiles, data breach dumps, and marketing lists. Spokeo doesn't hack anything — they just aggregate what's already out there and make it searchable.2

How to Remove Yourself From Spokeo

Spokeo removal process

Find your listing

Go to spokeo.com and search for your name. You may find multiple listings — one for each address you've had. You'll need to remove each one separately.

Copy the URL of your listing

Click on your profile and copy the full URL from your browser's address bar. You'll need this for the opt-out form.

Go to the opt-out page

Navigate to spokeo.com/optout. Paste your listing URL into the form.

Enter your email and confirm

Spokeo sends a verification email. Check your inbox (and spam folder) and click the confirmation link. Your removal request is now processing.

Allow 24-48 hours

Spokeo typically processes opt-outs within a day or two. Search for yourself again after 48 hours to verify removal.

⚠️

Spokeo is just one site — there are 190+ more

Removing yourself from Spokeo alone leaves your information on BeenVerified, WhitePages, FastPeopleSearch, TruePeopleSearch, Radaris, Intelius, and dozens of others. Each has its own opt-out process. The total time to remove from all sites manually: 40-60 hours.

The Other Sites You Need to Worry About

Spokeo gets the attention because it's one of the most visible, but it's far from the only offender:

People search engines

WhitePages, BeenVerified, TruePeopleSearch, FastPeopleSearch, PeopleFinder. Consumer-facing sites designed for the general public to look people up.

Background check aggregators

Intelius, Radaris, US Search, Instant Checkmate. These charge for detailed reports and position themselves as background check tools.

Property and court record sites

Sites that index property ownership and court filings. Harder to opt out of because the underlying data is public record.

Marketing data brokers

Companies like Acxiom, Oracle Data Cloud, and LexisNexis that sell your data to marketers. No consumer-facing search pages, but your data flows through them.

We remove your information from 190+ data broker sites and continuously monitor for re-listing. One setup, ongoing protection.

Remove My Data →

Why Your Information Comes Back

This is the most frustrating part. You spend hours removing yourself from Spokeo and 20 other sites, and three months later, you're back. Data brokers re-scrape public records every 30-90 days. Unless you address the underlying sources (voter registration, property records, marketing databases), your information gets republished automatically. One-time removal is not a solution — you need ongoing monitoring and re-removal or source-level suppression.

Before

Your full profile on Spokeo and 100+ other sites. Home address, phone, relatives, income, all searchable by anyone.

After

Removed from all major data brokers, ongoing monitoring catching re-listings, source-level data suppressed.

Who Needs to Worry Most

Everyone should care about data broker exposure, but some people face elevated risk:

Domestic violence survivors — Abusers use data brokers to locate victims who have relocated.
Public figures and executives — Doxxing, swatting, and targeted harassment often start with a data broker search. Doxxing protection is critical for anyone with public visibility.
Healthcare workers and teachers — Patients and students can find your home address in seconds.
Anyone with a stalker — Data brokers make stalking trivially easy.
Parents — Your children's names and associations appear on your profile.

Frequently Asked Questions

Free Resource

Complete Data Broker Opt-Out List

Direct opt-out links for the top 50 data broker sites, with step-by-step instructions for each. Updated quarterly.

Get the Free List

Sources & Citations

1
FTC report on data brokers: A Call for Transparency and Accountability — detailing the scale and practices of the data broker industry. Federal Trade Commission ↗
2
Spokeo, Inc. FTC consent order for FCRA violations and $800,000 civil penalty. Federal Trade Commission ↗
3
California Delete Act (SB 362) — creating a single deletion mechanism for data broker records, signed into law 2023. California Legislature ↗