Guide · By Ghost Delete · Last updated November 13, 2026

How to Remove Yourself from Data Brokers: A Complete DIY Guide

Your name, home address, phone number, and email are for sale right now, on websites you have never visited, run by companies you have never heard of. This guide shows you how to remove yourself from data brokers yourself, for free, with the exact steps for the biggest ones. It also tells you honestly where doing it yourself falls short, because a guide that pretends removal is easy is lying to you.

What a data broker is, and how it got your data

A data broker is a company that collects personal information and sells it. People-search sites are the part you can see: they publish your name, address, phone number, age, and relatives, then charge anyone who wants the full report. Behind them sit marketing brokers that never show you a profile page at all. They sell your data to advertisers, insurers, landlords, and lenders.

They get it from public records, loyalty programs, social profiles, app data, warranty cards, and each other. Brokers buy, scrape, and trade personal information in bulk. You never agreed to it, and you were never asked. In most of the United States and Canada, the law does not require them to ask first. It only gives you the right to ask them to stop, one company at a time.

That last part is the whole problem. There are hundreds of brokers. Each one has its own opt-out process. Removing yourself is legal, free, and possible. It is also slow, repetitive, and temporary.

The honest truth before you start

It takes hours. A first pass over the biggest 30 to 50 brokers takes most of a day. The forms are all slightly different, and each one asks for the same details in a different order.

Listings come back. Brokers buy fresh data constantly. A listing you remove today can reappear in 60 to 90 days when the broker ingests a new public record or buys a new data set. Removal is maintenance, not a one-time fix.

Not every broker honors every request. Some people-search sites only process opt-outs from people in states with privacy laws. If you live somewhere without one, they may refuse or ignore you. California residents have the strongest rights in the US. Canada has PIPEDA, which works, but only per organization and in writing.

The results are partial. A 2024 study by Consumer Reports and Tall Poppy found that paid removal services removed about 35 percent of participants' records on average over four months, while manual opt-outs removed about 70 percent. Even the best outcome is not 100 percent. Anyone promising complete removal from every broker is selling you a progress bar, not a result.

None of that means doing it yourself is pointless. It means you should start with the requests that cover many sites at once, work down the list in order, and set a calendar reminder to re-check every two to three months.

Step 1: Find your listings

Search yourself the way a stranger would.

• Google your full name plus your city, in quotes: "Jane Smith" Vancouver
• Google your phone number, in quotes
• Google your email address, in quotes
• Check the big people-search sites directly: Whitepages, Spokeo, BeenVerified, TruthFinder, MyLife, TruePeopleSearch, FastPeopleSearch

Write down every site that lists you and copy the URL of your profile page on each one. You will need those profile URLs for the opt-out forms. Keep the list, because you will check the same sites again in 60 to 90 days.

Use an email address you can open quickly for the confirmation emails. The forms send a verification link, and the removal does not happen until you click it. Those emails look like spam and are easy to miss, so check your spam folder after each submission.

Step 2: Hit the networks first

A few parent companies own many people-search sites. One suppression request to the parent can clear several sites at once. Do these first, because they are the highest-leverage opt-outs in the US.

PeopleConnect (covers TruthFinder, InstantCheckmate, Intelius, USSearch, ZabaSearch, Addresses.com, AnyWho). Go to suppression.peopleconnect.us and submit a suppression request. Email fallback: [email protected]. This single request is the best return on your time in the whole guide.

BeenVerified network (covers BeenVerified, PeopleLooker, PeopleSmart, NeighborWho). Go to beenverified.com/app/optout/search and submit your profile. For extra records, email [email protected].

Whitepages network (covers Whitepages, 411.com, Whitepages Canada). Go to whitepages.com/suppression-requests. You will need to verify by a phone-call code.

SmartBackgroundChecks and PeopleFinders. Go to smartbackgroundchecks.com and use its opt-out. It also removes PeopleFinders.

Step 3: The top people-search sites, one by one

If a site is in a network above, the network request may already cover it. Check anyway, because coverage is not guaranteed.

Broker	How to opt out
Whitepages	whitepages.com/suppression-requests, phone-call code verification
Spokeo	spokeo.com/optout, paste your profile URL, confirm by email
BeenVerified	beenverified.com/app/optout/search, or [email protected] for extra records
TruthFinder	suppression.peopleconnect.us, or truthfinder.com/opt-out
InstantCheckmate	suppression.peopleconnect.us
Intelius	suppression.peopleconnect.us, or [email protected]
MyLife	[email protected] (some addresses reportedly require a phone call to 888-704-1900)
PeopleFinders	peoplefinders.com opt-out form, or via SmartBackgroundChecks
TruePeopleSearch	truepeoplesearch.com opt-out form
FastPeopleSearch	fastpeoplesearch.com removal form (has a captcha)
CheckPeople	checkpeople.com opt-out (needs birthdate and legal name)
USPhoneBook	usphonebook.com/removal
BeenVerified	beenverified.com opt-out

What to expect from each form: most ask for your name, the profile URL, and an email address. Then they send a confirmation email. You must click it, or the removal does not happen. Some add a captcha. A few demand a phone call. Keep a note of which ones you submitted and when, because the confirmation emails look like spam and are easy to miss.

Two brokers that used to be on lists like this are gone. Radaris was removed in September 2026 after a court ordered its domain transferred. Nuwber disappeared in October 2026. If a broker on an old list no longer loads, it may simply be dead, which is good news.

Step 4: The marketing data brokers

People-search sites are the visible part. Marketing brokers sell your data to advertisers, insurers, and lenders, and you will never see a profile page for them. Opt out of the biggest ones directly.

Broker	How to opt out
Acxiom	acxiom.com/optout/ (US form)
Epsilon	Epsilon consumer privacy and opt-out portal
LiveRamp	LiveRamp consumer privacy portal
LexisNexis	LexisNexis opt-out and information suppression request
Equifax, Experian, TransUnion	Each has a consumer privacy and opt-out portal for the marketing side, separate from your credit file
ZoomInfo	ZoomInfo privacy centre and opt-out form
Data Axle (Infogroup)	Data Axle consumer privacy and opt-out portal
National Public Data	nationalpublicdata.com opt-out form, with email verification

These portals ask for identifying details so they can find your record. Give only what is required. The marketing brokers are the quietest part of the industry and the hardest to check afterward, because there is no public profile page to reload. Keep a copy of every confirmation email.

Step 5: Canada

Canadian coverage is thin everywhere. No removal service publishes a Canada-specific list, and there is no Canadian equivalent of California's DROP. These are the main Canadian listings and how to remove them.

Broker	How to opt out
411.ca	411.ca opt-out form
Canada411	canada411.ca opt-out (Yellow Pages Canada)
Whitepages Canada	whitepagescanada.ca suppression (Whitepages network)
YellowPages.ca	yellowpages.ca opt-out and listing removal
411.info	411.info opt-out form
Canada Post	Canada Post privacy and marketing opt-out

For anything else that lists you in Canada, the route is PIPEDA. Write to the organization, ask what personal information it holds about you, and ask it to delete it. PIPEDA applies per organization and in writing. There is no single form that covers them all, and no central registry to file with.

Cross-border brokers also list Canadians. LiveRamp, Equifax, Experian, Acxiom, and Epsilon all hold Canadian records. Use the Step 4 portals for those.

Step 6: If you live in California, use DROP

California's Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, DROP, is the one genuinely centralized tool in North America. It launched on January 1, 2026, under the California Delete Act, and became enforceable on August 1, 2026. A California resident signs up at consumer.drop.privacy.ca.gov, verifies residency, and submits one deletion request. That single request goes to every data broker registered in the state, more than 600 of them. Registered brokers must check DROP at least every 45 days and process the requests, with deletion within 90 days.

DROP only covers brokers registered in California, and only for California residents. It does not cover credit reports, and people-search sites that are not registered brokers will not receive your request. If you live in California, do DROP first, then work through the individual opt-outs above for the sites it misses. If you do not live in California, do not use DROP. Residency verification is part of the process, and other states do not have an equivalent tool yet.

Step 7: Clean up Google, too

Removing a listing from a broker does not remove it from Google's index immediately. Google can keep showing the old snippet for days or weeks after the source page is gone.

• Use Google's Remove Outdated Content tool: paste the dead profile URL and submit it, and Google will refresh the result.
• Use Google's "Results about you" tool to request removal of search results that show your personal contact information, such as your phone number or home address. Google removes the result from search, which is different from removing the listing at the source, so do both.

Step 8: Staying gone

Removal is not permanent. Put a repeating reminder on your calendar for 60 to 90 days from now.

1. Re-search your name, phone, and email.
2. Re-check the sites on your list from Step 1.
3. Re-submit any opt-out that has come back.
4. Check the networks again (PeopleConnect, BeenVerified, Whitepages).

Each round gets faster, because you already know the forms and you have the profile URLs saved. The first round is the long one.

How long it really takes, and why it is hard alone

A realistic first pass over the top 30 to 50 brokers takes most of a day, spread across form submissions, confirmation emails, phone verifications, and captchas. The marketing brokers add another hour or two. Then the maintenance starts: re-checks every two to three months, re-submissions for anything that came back, and new brokers that appear as the industry grows.

The difficulty is not any single form. It is the volume, the repetition, and the fact that the work never ends. Brokers are paid to keep your data. Their opt-out processes are built to be slow, buried, and easy to give up on, because your data is their product. Doing it yourself works, and it costs nothing but time. The honest question is whether your time is better spent elsewhere.

That is the whole reason removal services exist, and the whole reason Ghost Delete is being built. The same opt-outs, done for you, with screenshot proof for each removal and re-checks that catch listings when they come back. It is coming soon for the US and Canada, at $6.99 USD a month or $55 USD a year in the US ($9.99 CAD a month or $79 CAD a year in Canada), starting with a free scan that shows what is exposed before you pay anything. If you would rather do it yourself, this guide is the way. If you would rather not, that is what we are here for.