How to Remove Your Personal Information From the Internet (2026 Guide)

Why your information is online in the first place

Data brokers and people-search sites buy and scrape information from public records, social media, loyalty programs, app permissions, and other brokers. They assemble it into a profile and publish it — or sell it to advertisers, recruiters, and anyone running a background check.

There are hundreds of these companies. The largest, like Whitepages, Spokeo, and BeenVerified, get millions of visits a month. Removing yourself from them meaningfully shrinks your exposure to spam, scams, identity theft, and stalking.

The 5 steps to clean up your digital footprint

• Find where you are exposed. Search your name, your name plus your city, and your phone number. Note every people-search site that lists you.
• Opt out of each broker. Every major broker has an official opt-out page. Submit a request and confirm it via email — this is the most time-consuming part.
• Remove outdated results from Google. Use Google's "Results about you" tool to request removal of pages exposing your contact information.
• Lock down the source. Tighten social media privacy settings and stop volunteering your data to apps and loyalty programs that resell it.
• Re-check every few months. Brokers routinely re-list people they previously removed, so opt-outs are not permanent.

The catch: opt-outs do not stick

The dirty secret of manual data removal is that it never ends. Brokers re-acquire your data from new public records and re-publish it, often within months. Doing this by hand across 100+ sites, several times a year, is a part-time job.

This is the entire reason automated services exist: they run the opt-outs for you, monitor for re-listings, and re-submit removals automatically when your data comes back.

Do it yourself, or automate it

If you have time and only care about a handful of sites, the manual route is free — start with our individual opt-out guides. If you want continuous coverage across 100+ brokers without the busywork, an automated service handles the scanning, removals, and re-removals for you.

Eraze scans 100+ brokers, files removals on your behalf, and — uniquely — flags when a broker misses the legal deadline to remove your data, so you can claim compensation. The free plan covers the top 20 brokers with no credit card.