How To Remove Your Personal Information From Background Check Websites
After our social media background check, are you afraid of what a future employer may find out about you? Rest easy as we have some tips to help you remove your personal information from more than a dozen online background check websites.

How Do These Sites Get My Information?
There are hundreds of online background check websites that gather information on people. In the US, these online databases are populated with information from public records like real estate transactions, arrest records, court cases, marriages, divorces, etc.

Before the Internet, investigators would have to go to the local town hall or the state records office and request this public information in person. Now with databases a dime a dozen, most of this information is readily accessible if you know where to look.

A background check website will both mine these public databases and obtain demographic information from marketing companies. If you're young, you're paper trail is likely small, but if you're older, the amount of publicly available information can be staggering.

What They Know About You
Most of this information is not as salacious as those party pics from the Bahamas, but you may not want your future boss finding out you recently went through a messy divorce. Before you start the removal process, you'll need to find out what information these companies have, if any. We used Social Intelligence for our background check, but there's a dozen or more big players that focus primarily on public information and not your social networks. It's these public databases that we'll look at here.

You'll need to go to the following sites and search for your name, address, and age.

Intelius.com
Acxiom.com
MyLife.com
ZabaSearch.com
Spoke.com
BeenVerified.com
PeekYou.com
USSearch.com
PeopleFinders.com
PeopleLookup.com
PeopleSmart.com
PrivateEye.com
WhitePages.com
USA-People-Search.com
Spokeo.com
PublicRecordsNow.com
DOBSearch.com
Radaris.com

What Kind of Personal Information Are in People Search and Public Data Sources?

Internet is such a great resource to look for information, you can easily search and find information from search engines like Google.com, Yahoo.com, Bing.com, Ask.com, or at specialized people search databases and social networks.

It is quite easy to search private information on Internet on almost everyone. As you will see next, there are hundreds online people search or background check websites on the Internet. You can make a background check on a lost friend, a missing relative, a potential date, a new neighbor, a prank caller, a ruthless car driver, an unknown mobile number, an unlisted phone number, your boss, your coworker, or strangers you never meet.

On the flip side, not only you can find anything about others, people can also find anything about you - which includes your personal records, private photos or videos, negative comments, and bad publicity.

Creditors, banks, political parties use your personal data for legitimate purpose. However, unscrupulous individuals and criminals can use the same information to harm you and your family. With the full availability of your personal information, your identity can be stolen or exploited in illegal activities such as identity theft, predatory marketing, credit fraud, Internet stalking, and etc.

With the cost of several dollar or even free, they can also obtain your information legally from online background check sites. The personal information available at these sites are not basic information about your name, address, or phone numbers, the information obtained at these sites are serious Personal and Private Information. To many people, the availability of these information on Internet invades their privacy and could potentially put their family and children on the risk.

At most background check and people search sites, a comprehensive background search on a person may include:

* Up-to-date contact information includes address history, phone numbers, cell phone numbers , email addresses, and P.O. box;
* Names and alias used, household income, companies worked;
* Relatives, household members, neighbors, and associates;
* Marital, family status, marriage history, marriage / divorce records;
* Nationwide criminal record check, sex offender check;
* Bankruptcies, liens, judgments, court records: dates, parties, lawyer names for both parties, verdicts;
* Criminal & background records. police files, arrest records jail records, inmate records;
* Age and DOB - birth records and hospital records;
* Property and real estate records;
* Business ownership and professional listings; etc etc


Most visitors came to this site had already learned that their personal information were exposed on the Internet, they are looking for fast ways to remove and hide their information from public search before getting hurt by strangers or stalkers. If you are not sure what types of personal information about you are available from people search sites, you can make a quick background check on yourself through Intelius:

It is true that there are hundreds online people search websites, and even Internet search engines lead you to background check sites. However, most these people search sites are associated with several powerful people databases behind the scene. Do you need to visit them all these websites to remove your information? The answer is no, it is time consuming and almost impossible to go through every search website.

As a matter of fact, the basic people search data feed at Google, Yahoo, Lycos, Whowhere etc is provided by one company - a little surprised?

Clearly, the best way to keep personal information off the internet is find the data sources which are providing personal information to people search sites - find effective ways to stop them from feeding your personal information to the public continuously.

At most Internet search engines and people search websites, you can make a request to remove out your personal information through an opt-out process under its privacy policy. However, with so many people search websites, search engines, and social network websites, the opt-out process is quite complicated and lengthy. The privacy policy disclaimers are vague and interpreted differently by each website. If you want to remove negative information such as bad reviews and comments about yourself or your company from some Internet forums and rating websites, it is almost impossible without professional help.

Most Internet people search websites are data terminals and cannot remove your information directly from their websites, as a matter of fact, they have to forward your request to their up-stream data providers, this is a lengthy process. No website would tell you where their data feed comes from too - that's their business secrets.

Even if you have found the data source providers, it's not easy to opt-out your information. Keeping and selling your personal information is their main business. It costs money and efforts to attain, maintain, and update millions of personal records.

Removing your personal information from these powerful online databases by yourself will take time. Another reason why it takes so long is because some search sites require you to send a formal removal request through a regular U.S. mail. Of course, it can take weeks to get an answer or no answers at all. It makes us wonder why would they want to take this traditional mailing approach in the days of Internet and electronic age. Of course, the laws have not changed much to take into consideration of digital Internet information age. To get immediate results, you may consider to use professional companies to help you as will be discussed later.

After my extensive research, the following are some major players in people search on the Internet (not inclusive):

(1) Intelius.com
(2) Acxiom.com
(3) USsearch.com
(4) Yahoo.com's People Search
(5) Google.com
(6) ZabaSearch.com
(7) PeopleFinder.com
(8) Spokeo.com
(9) Alliance Data and EXelate

There are several other popular people search sites don't allow to list their names here.

To stop people from getting your personal information, we will discuss people search sites and data sources such as 411.com, Intelius, Acxiom, US Search, Peoplefinder, Yahoo.com, Whitepages.com, whowhere.com, zabasearch.com, privateeyes.com, infospace.com and many others in the next section. How to contact data mining companies, how to get professional help. One section is dedicated to deleting your information from Google search results.

Procedures to Remove Your Name & Personal Information from Internet
Remove Negative Search Results and Unwanted Information
With hundreds of people search databases and sites contain your personal information, removing your name and personal data from the Internet is a tedious task. As we mentioned above, you don't need to go through all these sites to remove your information from the Internet. You need to go to the data sources to stop personal information from being searched by others. This is what this article is trying to accomplish - help you get your unwanted information off the Internet.

(1) Intelius is a most well-known people search engine on Internet, its targets every Internet visitor. Many background search websites are affiliated with Intelius. Many popular people search websites are associated with Intelius. Intelius sells background information to anybody on anyone regardless who you are (unless you take an action to block it). The famous DateCheck site is also hosted by Intelius. Their reports include your name, address, date of birth, court records, unlisted or mobile number, and other personal info as described in the last section. You can search personal records by name, SSN, or by phone number, etc through Intelius.

As a courtesy, Intelius can 'opt out' your specific information from the Intelius's Search service. Your name as it appears in a particular record and the associated identifying information such as your address and phone number will be suppressed.

To remove your personal information from Intelius, they need some documents from you to confirm your identity. There are two ways to show your identity: (1) You would need to fax a copy of your driver license, you can cross-out your photo and license number, they only require your name, address and DOB; (2) Send them a notarized form confirms your identity.

At Intelius , under their Privacy section, there are instructions on how to remove your personal information from Intelius.

(2) Acxiom.com is probable the biggest personal information data provider behind the scene. It has been described as "one of the biggest companies you've never heard of." I used to trade its stock - ACXM. From reading their 10Q and 10K annual reports, I learned all big search engines such as Google.com, Yahoo.com, Lycos.com, WhoWhere.com etc are powered by Acxiom. Last year, Acxiom generated over $1.2 billion revenue from selling personal information. If you want to remove your private information from major search engines like Google or Yahoo, this is the first step you should take - have Acxiom remove your personal information from its data source either through your own effort or through other online personal information removal websites.

Acxiom has two databases. One database provide background check for businesses and law enforcements, and another database is provided for general public which powers the search engines. The data for businesses and law enforcements includes very sensitive financial information and social security numbers, your personal information cannot be removed from this database, but you can select to remove your personal information from the general public database. You can make such a request through email or phone call. Visit Acxiom website for details on how to remove your data from Acxiom or email privacy@acxiom.com, check their Privacy Statement. Be warned, it won't be easy to get it done without giving them more personal information first.

(3) US Search : You might have heard or seen US Search from TV or radio advertisements. Many websites are associated with USsearch. Like Intelius, they sell your background information to anyone. You can make a request to remove your personal records from them via a postal mail. You need to include your name and DOB in the mail letter. In addition, they want you to list the former addresses of 15 years as well as the aliases you use. As readers pointed out, US Search also require you to pay to remove. The best way to get updated information is go to US Search and check out its new Privacy Policy.

(4) WhitePages.com - just like a regular hard copy white page book, whitepages.com has an online directory which is available to anyone on Internet. The White page lists your name and address in its search results if your phone number is not under unlisted number. This information is not more serious than others mentioned above. Most info can be found on hard copy phone books. You can remove your information via an online form avaliable on their website. In the form, you fill in your name, city, and state, and give a reason to remove, in the drop down list, you can select General Privacy Concerns as the reason to remove. Of course, the most serious personal information can be found at its Sponsor links after your name.

(5) Yahoo and Lycos's People Search are also powered by Acxiom. If you just want to remove very basic search info from Yahoo, visit Yahoo Privacy Policy .

(6) Peoplefinders.com is a People Search site actually associated with Intelius. The company helps people find family members, friends, classmates, military buddies, old flames and most anyone else in the United States. People Finders also provides more than 40 years worth of historical records. Peoplefinders.com require you to write a letter and signed by you with the following information in the letter, your name, address, former addresses going back up to 20 years. Refering to Peoplefinders.com private policy for details on opt-out process.

(7) Anywho.com, Address.com, Infospace.com, 99lists.com, Peoplelookup.com, Phonebook.com, thepublicrecords.com, Zabasearch.com, backgroundcheckgateway.com, etc are all linked Intelius on personal background information check. Most of these sites provide phone number and address search only, but background and personal information check is done through Intelius .

(8) If you concerned about name/address search at ZabaSearch (which shows your history of address changes), you can contact ZabaSearch to remove you information from their search engine. ZabaSearch has an option out feature right after you clicked your name.


Professional Personal Information Removal Services and Tools
How to remove your personal information quickly and throughly
As you may have realized, it is not easy to go through hundreds people search websites and search engines to remove your personal information, don't even mention new personal information websites pop up every week. As many readers pointed out, the opt out process is not hassle free, in most cases, even they paid and filled out paperwork, after weeks and months, their name or unwanted personal information still exists in various websites and search results.

Many people are looking for professional assistance to remove their personal information from Internet completely and immediately. No companies were in this business when the site was started. Only until recent years, one professional company named Reputation Defender (RD) has been doing the business that many frustrated people are trying to accomplish - remove personal information from Internet with automated process and continuously monitor personal information on a daily basis.

At RD's My Privacy service, you make a full search of your personal information, it brings up your personal information spreads over thousands websites on Internet, you select what information you want to delete, their tool will automatically submits your removal requests to search data sources, its service will track and monitor your online information proactively each day. Most importantly, according to the website, their company has exclusive removal agreements with some major background check and people search companies. Their company was the first and the only company that performs the personal information removal service. If you want to remove unwanted information from websites such as Spokeo.com, peoplefinder, peoplesmart etc, you should take a serious consideration of RD .

The basic cost to use RD's continuous personal information monitoring and removal service is about $5 month. RD has been well covered on major media and press such as CNN, ABC News (20/20), NBC News, CBS News, Fox News, Business Week, Associated Process, Reuters, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and on talk TV shows such as Dr. Phil etc.. Visit RD for more details.

RD also offers My Reputation service which help businesses to take out unwanted negative information or bad publicity from Deep Web (not just the search results on Google, Bing, or Yahoo) for every bad reference to you and related information, including over 40 of the biggest social networks. If you want to remove very tough links for your business from a particular website, additional cost and legal fees may apply.

Three other companies can also help to pull out your information from search engine results. They don't have online information removal tools like RD, nor have any agreements with data source providers or search engine companies to remove data. These companies require you to make phone calls to get a quote on pricing.


ZALLAS.COM - aka Reputec.com aka Virtograph.org. According to the company, it takes 4 to 6 months to help move your bad or negative information from the 1st page or 2rd page of the search engine results, You have to call to get a quote, the price varies on case by case basis, can be in hundreds or thousands of dollars.

REMOVEYOURNAME.COM: the price is $995 to remove your negative information from the first page of Google, $1495 to remove your negative information from the first two pages of Google, Yahoo, Bing and AOL. and $3,995 for the first three pages.

POSITIVESEARCHRESULTS.COM : according to its website, its service fees range from $10,000 to $40,000 depending on the manpower required to produce the guaranteed results. The typical primary fee is $20,000 for most companies with an average amount of negative posts to clear.

How to Remove Your Name and Information from Google Search Engine Results?
This section has just updated and is dedicated to remove information from Google search results - the most popular and widely used search engine on the Internet. A recent study shows about 54% of the adults used Google to search each other's name and information. So how to prevent your name, phone, addresses, images, photos, bad comments, and other sensitive information from appearing on google search results?

Google's main people search data feed is from Acxiom.com. Put your home phone number at Google search box, you can instantly see your name, home address, map, and driving direction etc. How to remove your name and address from this type of Google search results? If you want to remove your name, home phone number, and address from Google's phone listings, it is pretty easy, here is the link, choose "privacy concern" as the reason to remove, in my experience, the next day, this information will disappear from its search results.

Google's search engine robots search millions of websites every minute to collect and index information. Google's website aggregates information already published on various websites, even if Google were able to eliminate the page in question from Google index through talks with Google or through a formal court order, it would still exist on other websites or other search engine databases.

Do you need to remove sensitive information from Google? Found a dead link in Google search results? Want to help Google to improve their SafeSearch filter? Sign up a Google account, give Google webmaster tool a try. This tool suppose to help webmasters to control information or image that appears in the Google search results. If you find a page in Google search results that lists your social security or credit card number, submit a webpage removal request. Google will contact the site's hosting company to request that the page be taken down from the Web. Google also take steps to remove the information from its search results, you can also send a request to removals@ google.com to eliminate the sensitive personal information from Google index or cached pages.

If your name or other information appeared on a site that you don't own or have control over. The first step is to contact the owner of that site or domain and ask him/her to remove or block the content. Only the website's owner or webmaster can, by removing the content (or including code that blocks Google robots), prevent a page from appearing on Google search results. You can find who owns a domain or website through www.whois.net.

Is it possible to remove all my information from Google? If you want to delete or block all information related to your name from Google search results, it would be a very tough task and maybe hard to do so since there are other people may have the same name as you in the world, in some cases, a formal court order will help.

The following example could help you on removing your information from Google. In a recent news, Johnston County officials in North Carolina mistakenly posted a file with thousands of names, addresses, Social Security numbers and cell phone numbers on the county Web site. Of course, the speedy Google search robots indexed these personal information quickly. Even after the information was removed from the county website, the information was still available at Google search. To remove the information from Google, a judge ordered Google to remove remnants of personal information on Johnston County residents that still show up on Google search engine. Officials said the information might have been online for as much as six weeks before they found out, but getting the private information removed from Google search took a court order, and it is a tough task for Google to filter out too.

Of course, if your case is serious, you could retain professional reputation defending service companies like Reputation.com to remove undesired search engine results.


How My Personal Information is Exposed?
How to Protect my Online Privacy?
Famous stars, celebrities, businessmen, or even regular Joe like you and me are at risk when our private and personal information is easily accessible from Internet.

To get your information off the internet, you have to understand there are many ways that your name, address, telephone number, date of birth, neighborhood information are ended up in online people search databases.

To protect personal information online, you should take actions to remove your personal information from Internet as mentioned above, but most important of all - be conscious of protecting your personal information daily is essential.

The people search databases are collected and purchased from various public or commercial data sources. Data brokers buying and selling personal information collected through state or county public records, paid surveys, sweepstakes, vacation giveaways, and through confidential sources. Have you filled out a detailed form to win a brand new car at a mall during Christmas shopping? That's one of the ways data brokers to collect information on you. In situations when you provide information to the government, or to a private company -- without a binding assurance that the information cannot be sold or distributed, that information, in effect, becomes part of the public domain sooner or later.

When your computer is connected to Internet, every move you make on your computer, including all of your Internet activities and email browsing, is being recorded whether you realize it or not. If someone else has access to the computer you use either physically or remotely, such as a friend, a boss, a co-worker, a spouse, or a hacker, they can see every single thing you've done on that computer and they don't even have to know much about technology to accomplish such a feat. By simply using one of many common software applications available online, almost anyone can retrace every computer move you've ever made.

First, does your PC have an anti-spyware program installed? Does it have the latest updates and pattern files? Spyware (malware) are much worse than virus, their goal is to steal your personal information and take advantage of you. Make sure you have installed a good anti-spyware software program. A spyware can steal sensitive information stored on your PC or hijack your Internet activities.

Second, have you joined any social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Myspace or other social networks? You may have the public know too much information about you. These days, people are spending more and more time on tweaking Facebook or tweeting Twitter. People are updating their status and checking friends' tweets constantly. That's all well and good if you have time to spend, of course, on the flip side, the amount of personal information you share in real time with others, and the level of trust implicit with the social networking sites, do pose particular personal security and privacy problems.

According to a recent investigation conducted by the Wall Street Journal, "tens of millions" of applications on Facebook transmit varying amounts of personal identifying information to their own ad servers, even in cases when users' profiles were set to completely private.

Have you posted personal information you don't want public to see on your personal profile? Make sure you have provided your private information as little as possible on your personal profile at these social networks. To checkout your profile, logout your account and check it as a regular visitor or another user. Some social networking websites DO expose and disclose your email address, name, and location information to the public by default. Very often, your personal information was published to Internet unintentionally.

In a recent study from security firm Sophos, they found that Facebook users reveal more than adequate personal information to new friends, including ones they really don't even know or have never met in the past. Using fake profiles, Sophos sent out friend requests to 100 random Facebook users, more than 40 percent users blindly accepted the requests, giving the company access to their birth dates, e-mail addresses, phone number and addresses-- quite private information you don't want strangers to know.

The openness of Twitter--anyone can follow anyone else, and posts are indexed in search engines--makes it a nirvana for spammers and privacy intruders. You probable heard someone was tweeting from the start of vacation and during the vacation - telling the world include the theft where he is about, by the time the family got back from vacation, guess what happened? Not quite smart to tell your personal information on Tweeter.

Third, some websites use techniques to trick users to register their personal information.. Some users want to save a few dollars and provided their personal information. They don't aware these information in turn were sold by data brokers at hundreds of dollars. These data brokers sell the same information to hundreds of people search databases. Save a few dollars could cost you hundreds of dollars later. Removing personal information from hundreds of Internet databases is not an easy task.

In a recent news reported by CNN, one of the popular social websites - Classmates.com is selling your credit card numbers and personal information to other credit card companies and businesses without telling you. You should not give any personal or financial information to classmates.com, for these have enrolled to classmates.com and paid their premium services, you should be aware what personal information you have given out to them.


Are these personal information obtained legally?

Several years back, only organizations could access to your personal information were federal government agencies, police departments, and licensed private investigators. Thanks for Internet and newly passed laws such as Open Public Records Act or Public Records Act from different states, databases such court records, county property records, state records are open to public to search online. People search databases obtained your data from OVER 20,000 publicly available government records and commercial data sources, the information obtained is from legal sources. As a result, anyone can investigate and locate private information LEGALLY on anyone - potential job applicants, newl dates, neighbors, relatives, celebrities, coworkers, friends, and of course, on yourself too.

How to Remove Information from State and City Records?
Varies depends on the state and city rules and polices on personal records
Interestingly enough, most sensitive personal information can be found from online public records in various states and counties.

How to remove information from public records in the states and counties? Some states and counties would allow you to remove/block some personal records from showing in the public through legal process.

In most cases, it would require a court order to stop showing your private information from state or county public records.

I have collected all necessary information on how to remove your sensitive personal data from each state. Because this report is growing bigger as more information is added, I have to dedicate a separate lens. It is very lengthy, each state treats the situation differently, I've to list all 50 states.

Meanwhile for more information on state records, please read:

(1) Report from NASS.ORG, it contains very detailed information on how the states put public records on the Internet, and they have proposals to the state on how to protect sensitive information.

(2) Open Government Guide - it contain information on every state's open records and open meetings laws. Each state's section is arranged according to a standard outline, making it easy to compare laws in various states.

Tips for Protecting Your Personal Information from FTC and Others Sources
Protect your privacy and protect your personal information - from the government and reliable sources.
FTC Privacy: Tips for Protecting Your Personal Information


From FTC.GOV - the FTC website has an excellent article on how to protect your personal information. This is a substract from the FTC article:

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) encourages you to make sure your transactions - online and off - are secure and your personal information is protected. The FTC offers these tips below to help you manage your personal information wisely on Internet, and to help minimize its misuse by others.From FTC:

(1) When you are buying online, before you reveal any personally identifying information, find out how it will be used and whether it will be shared with others. Ask about company's privacy policy - this is very important - how to use of your information and are they kept the information confidential?

(2) Read the privacy policy on any website directed to children. Websites directed to children or that knowingly collect information from kids under 13 must post a notice of their information collection practices.

(3) Put passwords on your all your accounts, including your credit card account, and your bank and phone accounts. Avoid using easily available information - like your mother's maiden name, your birth date, the last four digits of your SSN or your phone number - or obvious choices, like a series of consecutive numbers or your hometown football team.(3) Minimize the identification information and the number of cards you carry to what you'll actually need. Don't put all your identifying information in one holder in your purse, briefcase or backpack.

(4) Keep items with personal information in a safe place. When you discard receipts, copies of credit applications, insurance forms, physician statements, bank checks and statements, expired charge cards, credit offers you get in the mail and mailing labels from magazines, tear or shred them. That will help thwart any identity thief who may pick through your trash or recycling bins to capture your personal information.

(5) Consider ordering a copy of your credit report from each of the three major credit reporting agencies (CRAs) every year. Make sure it's accurate and includes only those activities you've authorized. CRAs can't charge you more than $9.00 for a copy and in some states, your credit report is free.

(6) Use a secure browser when shopping online to guard the security of your transactions. When submitting your purchase information, look for the "lock" icon on the browser's status bar to be sure your information is secure during transmission.

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 16.09.2011

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