She also provided a list of the top sites online that hold data on you. Thanks to LawyerCT for bringing this topic up on /r/technology. In Part 2, I’ll discuss how these companies get your information in the first place, what you can do about it, and how you can better protect yourself.Īnd without further ado, here is Pibbman’s reddit post: And if keeping your contact information private is important to you, please keep spreading the word to anyone you care about. Using privacy apps in your browser that prevent tracking, like DoNotTrackPlus, and masked emails, like MaskMe, will also help safeguard your information. DeleteMe will do it for you if you want to save yourself the time, but if you’d rather do it yourself, see below for full instructions. At the very least, these sites should have one uniform, simple, clearly-displayed opt-out method.īut until this happens, the burden is on us to play cat-and-mouse with these companies: we follow their convoluted rules and delete ourselves they try to find us again. And if we decide that it’s okay, we should see a cut of that profit. If these companies want to profit off the facts that makes us who we are–our names, ages, birth dates, addresses, and family members–we should have a say in that. Lawmakers need to recognize that the super-public nature of these people search sites has strayed too far from our original concept of “public record,” and everything needs to be opt-in by default. Getting it removed shouldn’t be as confusing and time-consuming as it currently is. Having their contact information so readily available isn’t just annoying it’s dangerous. I hear from people with stalkers, a history of domestic abuse, a vindictive ex, or just a general interest in staying private. There’s a big difference between A), physically walking down to a courthouse and asking for a copy of a legal filing so you can find someone’s name and address from it, and B), Googling it from your couch. It’s not public record anymore it’s super public. They’re doing something completely different: they’re making all of our contact info more visible and more accessible than ever before. They argue that they’re simply reposting public record info that already exists for anyone to access, but I disagree. They get your information through public record sources, like birth certificates, real estate purchase and sale records, lawsuits, and marriage licenses–for free–and then they stockpile it, post it for the world to see, and sell it. I’m convinced that many of these companies try to make it difficult to remove listings after all, your data is their lifeblood.īut I think there’s something fundamentally wrong with these sites. I’m an attorney and a privacy advocate, and I spend a lot of time deleting people’s contact information from people search websites like MyLife, Intelius, and Spokeo.Īs a result of doing all these opt-outs, I’ve become good at digging through long Terms of Use, privacy policies, and contact forms to find how to delete yourself. I’m thrilled to raise awareness of a major privacy issue, and I’m including the same info on our privacy blog at Abine to help the cause.Ī little background on myself: I’m a DeleteMe expert here at Abine. Thanks to LawyerCT.” It made it to the front page of reddit, and since then it’s been popping up everywhere, including a LifeHacker article by Melanie Pinola. The user Pibbman added to what I had started to create a second thread, titled “ HOW TO: Remove yourself from ALL background check websites. I was sick of people search websites making it hard for people to delete themselves, so I figured I’d share my tips and ask the reddit community to spread the word.Īnd spread the word they did. Proving once again that reddit is the best site ever.Ī week ago, I–Sarah Downey, an attorney and privacy analyst at Abine–posted a reddit thread as LawyerCT on how to remove yourself from the background check site BeenVerified, as well as a few others.
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