How DeleteMe Improves Google Search Results: Remove Whitepages, Intelius, Been Verified, and More

Listings from data broker websites like Whitepages, Spokeo, and Been Verified make it easy for hackers to find your info from just a quick Google search. DeleteMe removes these listings, in turn removing these search results from Google.

Google Yourself! What do you see?

It’s okay–everyone Googles themselves once in a while. The results you find might be very different from what you’d expect.

You probably wouldn’t be surprised to find results with links to your social media profiles, or an article about that time your high school cheerleading team won the championship. But you might be shocked at the number of websites offering up your personal information.

Here is a Google results page from when I searched a random name and city:

Data brokers like Whitepages, Been Verified, Spokeo, and MyLife are posting your information online

As you can see, most of these results are from data brokers. Data brokers are corporations that collect huge amounts of personally identifiable information (PII) and package it all together to create ‘profiles’ or ‘listings’ with identifying tags. These tags include things like birthdays, past and recent addresses, phone numbers, information about relatives, and more. (For the full list, see Appendix B of this FTC Report.)

This is the kind of information that snoopers, hackers, thieves, and cyber criminals are looking for when they want to commit financial fraud or identity theft. Even though you aren’t directly involved, and might not even know you have a ‘profile’ on this site, these people are able to find and take advantage of your information.

DeleteMe removes you from the leading data broker websites like Whitepages, Intelius and Radaris. These are usually the most common Google search results if someone were to Google your name to try to find more information about you, like a hacker who’s looking for their next identity theft victim.

Just a quick Google search of your name will bring them to a data broker site like MyLife, Been Verified, or Radaris. There, they’ll be able to find tons of free personal information, or pay for a full report with even more data. It’s that easy.

Here is a sample listing that somebody might find on Been Verified:

Intelius is another data broker that with similar listings:

Finally, here is a third example listing from Spokeo:

A lot of this information is available for free or at a low price – even as low as $0.95. As you can see, it’s easy for anybody to find your home address, age, contact information, and more from a simple search on one of these websites.

Access to this kind of information could make it easy for somebody to steal your identity, phish your credit card information, or even stalk you.  Furthermore, because your relatives’ names are listed, they are also at risk.

How do data brokers find this information?

Data brokers get this information by crawling the web for publicly available information, and aggregating it into profiles to make it easier to find. This information is typically made public voluntarily via voter records, phone companies, social media, surveys or questionnaires, buying property, registering a vehicle, and other marketing companies. Data brokers put it all in one easy-to-find place. Unfortunately, this is all perfectly legal – and can be very dangerous.

What is DeleteMe?

DeleteMe is a hands-free subscription service that removes you and your family from data broker websites. Our privacy experts check the leading data broker sites online and perform opt-out requests for you.

You can also use our free DIY Opt-Out Guide for step-by-step instructions on how to remove yourself from each data broker. Each data broker has its own unique opt-out policy and many of these opt-out policies are difficult to find, so it can take hours to remove yourself from every website. Data brokers want to make it as inconvenient as possible for you to remove your information–forcing you to fax them opt-out forms, or mail them a copy of your ID. What’s worse, is that even after you have gone through the effort of removing your information, it could be re-posted as the data broker continues to crawl the web and create personal listings. That’s why DeleteMe checks periodically on each data broker site, even after you’ve been removed, to make sure that your information stays private.

Can DeleteMe help push negative search results down?

DeleteMe removes you from the leading data broker websites like Whitepages, Intelius and Radaris. These are usually the most common Google search results if someone were to Google your name to try to find more information about you, like a hacker who’s looking for their next identity theft victim.

We have guides with tips and tricks for removing negative content and pushing down negative search results, but DeleteMe itself does not “push down” already existing Google search results; we remove what’s there.

Can DeleteMe remove arrest records or court records?

Unfortunately, DeleteMe is not able to remove arrest or court records from the web. DeleteMe removes basic personal contact information from people search sites only.

Take control over your information. Use DeleteMe to protect yourself from data brokers like Whitepages, Been Verified, and Intelius.

Data brokers make it easy for thieves and criminals to find your personal information and steal your identity.

In 2018 alone, we have: completed more than 60 thousand DeleteMe Privacy Reports, in turn removing more than 400 thousand listings of personal information and more than 2 million individual pieces of personal information from the internet.

Nobody should be able to access your information without you knowing about it. DeleteMe lets you take back control from data brokers, and gives you back your privacy.

About Abine

Abine, Inc. is The Online Privacy Company. Founded in 2009 by MIT engineers and financial experts, Abine’s mission is to provide easy-to-use online privacy tools and services to everybody who wants them. Abine’s tools are built for consumers to help them control the personal information companies, third parties, and other people see about them online.

DeleteMe by Abine is a hands-free subscription service that removes personal information from public online databases, data brokers, and people search websites.

Blur by Abine is the only password manager and digital wallet that also blocks trackers, and helps users remain private online by providing ‘Masked’ information whenever companies are asking for personal information.

Abine’s solutions have been trusted by over 25 million people worldwide.