Most companies rent or buy lists of individuals who they believe are likely to be interested in their products or services. They will use these lists for offline and online marketing campaigns. These lists come from a variety of sources, including public records, telephone directories, and from companies who exchange or rent their customer file for marketing purposes to other organizations who have a legitimate need for the information.

In this heightened era of personal data breaches, opting out of online websites that contain personal information is one of the ways to make you and your family less vulnerable to cyber fraud. In this blog post, we share tips on how to opt out of a relatively new online public records website: True People Search.

True People Search allows a user to conduct a people search, reverse phone and reverse address search. The service is free and accesses billions of public records. A recent search of a phone number provided the following information:

  • Current & previous addresses
  • Current & previous phone numbers
  • Background report
  • Email addresses
  • Associated names
  • Possible relatives
  • Possible associates

To remove your information, click this link, and you will land on a page with detailed instructions on how to remove your information. You will first need to check off a disclaimer to verify you are not a robot.

You will then be redirected to the home page, where you can enter your phone number and your data will appear. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click “Remove Record.” Once you’ve done that, you receive an immediate message indicating that your data will be removed within a few hours. We recommend allowing 48 hours. Note of caution, this site shows recent searches on their site. We ran some tests and do not believe this is an active running list.

Like what you’re reading? Become an Hg member and learn how to maximize your online investigations with shortcuts, tips, tricks, better investigative tools, and advanced research techniques for all skill levels in our Data2Know newsletter, published eight times a year. As an added benefit, subscribers get access to our Opt Out Index containing over 200 active links to assist you in getting your private data off the Internet. From Abika to ZoomInfo, we’ve got you covered!