How to Remove Your Personal Info From the Internet

Type your full name into a search engine and you'll probably be unsettled by what comes back. Your address, phone number, age, relatives, even your old apartment — all neatly packaged on people-search sites you've never heard of. Learning how to remove personal info from the internet is one of the most impactful things you can do for your privacy.

It takes time, but it's absolutely doable. Here's the playbook.

A handful of people-search sites — Whitepages, Spokeo, BeenVerified, MyLife, Radaris, and a dozen others — power most of the results you'll see. Each has an opt-out page, usually buried, but they exist.

Search for '[site name] opt out' and follow the steps. Most require email verification. Expect this part to take a couple of hours total. To remove personal info from the internet effectively, you have to hit these sites first.

Behind the people-search sites is a larger ecosystem of data brokers — companies like Acxiom, LexisNexis, and Epsilon — that aggregate and resell personal info. Each has its own opt-out form. Some require mailing a written request.

If doing this manually sounds exhausting, paid removal services exist (Optery, DeleteMe, Kanary) that handle the grunt work for you.

Delete old accounts you no longer use — JustDelete.me lists direct links for hundreds of services. Tighten privacy settings on social media. Remove your phone number from public profiles. Ask Google to remove search results containing your personal info via their personal-info removal request form.

Data brokers re-list information constantly. To truly remove personal info from the internet and keep it that way, you need to repeat the opt-out cycle every six months or so.

And remember — even after you scrub the surface web, your data may still be circulating from old breaches. Checking your exposure tells you what's already out there so you know what to lock down first.

You don't need to guess whether your information is floating around in a breach dump. ThreatRidge cross-references billions of leaked records and gives you a plain-English Cyber Health Score in about ten seconds. No signup. No credit card. We don't store or sell the email you enter.

If your score comes back low, you'll see exactly where the exposure is and what to do next. If it comes back clean, you'll know you're ahead of most people online — and what to do to stay there.

The best time to check your exposure was yesterday. The second best time is right now. Check your free Cyber Health Score at ThreatRidge.com.