Guides

How to Opt Out of People-Search Sites

2026-06-07 · byscento Privacy Team

People-search sites - Spokeo, Whitepages, BeenVerified, Radaris, MyLife, and dozens more - take public records and commercial data and turn them into searchable public profiles. Anyone can look you up and see your address history, phone numbers, age, and relatives. Here's how to get those listings down.

The general opt-out process

Most people-search sites follow a similar pattern:

1. Find your listing. Search your name (and city) on the site and open the profile that's you.
2. Open the opt-out page. Look for "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information," "opt out," or "remove my record" - usually linked in the footer.
3. Submit the removal request. Paste your profile URL or search for yourself on the opt-out form, then submit.
4. Confirm. Many sites email you a confirmation link you must click to finalize the request.
5. Verify it's gone. Re-check the listing after a few days.

We publish the exact method, opt-out link, and gotchas for each broker in our opt-out guide directory.

Watch out for these snags

• Confirmation emails - if you don't click the link, the removal doesn't process.
• Identity checks - a few sites ask you to verify yourself first; share only what's required.
• Shared data networks - many people-search sites pull from the same back-end, so the same record can reappear on a sibling site even after you remove it from one.

The hard part: they come back

This is the single most important thing to understand: removal is not permanent. People-search sites rebuild profiles from fresh public-records and commercial data on a recurring basis. A listing you removed can reappear within weeks or months. Opting out once feels productive, but the data quietly repopulates.

Staying off these sites means re-checking and re-submitting continuously - which is tedious to do by hand across dozens of sites.

Automating it

byscento handles the whole cycle: it scans the people-search sites for your listings (with a screenshot of each as proof), submits the opt-outs as your authorized agent, and keeps re-checking so your profile doesn't quietly come back. Start with a free scan to see where you're listed right now.