You open your inbox and find another spam message addressed to you by name. A robocall interrupts dinner. A targeted ad shows the exact product you browsed last week — but on a site you never visited. These annoyances share a common root: your personal data has been collected, packaged, and sold without your knowledge or consent. Data brokers have built a billion-dollar industry by harvesting information like your phone number, email address, home address, and even your Social Security number. They assemble detailed profiles and auction them off to marketers, employers, landlords, and criminals. The good news is you can fight back. If you want to remove personal data online, you need a clear plan. Below are seven actionable steps to reclaim your privacy.
Why Your Data Is Already Out There
Before diving into the removal process, it helps to understand how your information ended up in broker databases in the first place. Data brokers collect data from dozens of sources. Every loyalty card swipe at the grocery store, every public record filing, every social media post, and every online form you fill out becomes a data point. Brokers combine these fragments into a detailed profile tied to your name, address, and other identifiers. They then sell access to these profiles to the highest bidder. No one asks for your permission. No one pays you for the value of your data. The entire system operates in the background, and most people do not realize how much of their private information is already for sale.
The scale of this industry is staggering. According to a 2023 report from the Federal Trade Commission, the top data brokers in the United States hold profiles on hundreds of millions of individuals, with some databases containing over 3,000 data points per person. These profiles include not just contact details but also inferred characteristics like income level, health interests, political leanings, and purchasing habits. Once your data enters this ecosystem, it spreads rapidly across hundreds of companies. That is why a single opt-out request is rarely enough. You need a systematic approach to remove personal data online from multiple sources at once.
These seven steps form a complete privacy cleanup strategy. You can tackle them in order, or focus on the steps that address your biggest concerns first. Each step builds on the previous one, so following the sequence gives you the best results.
Step 1: Audit Your Digital Footprint
You cannot remove data you do not know exists. The first step is to map where your personal information currently lives online. Start by searching for yourself on major search engines. Use variations of your name combined with your city, state, and former addresses. Look for people-search sites like Whitepages, Spokeo, BeenVerified, and MyLife. These sites aggregate public records and often display your phone number, age, relatives, and home address for anyone to see.
Next, check your email accounts for data breach notifications. Services like Have I Been Pwned let you enter your email address and see which breaches have exposed your credentials. If you find your email in a breach, that information is likely circulating on the dark web and may also be in broker databases. Make a list of every site and service where you have an account, especially older accounts you no longer use. Abandoned accounts are a goldmine for data brokers because they often contain outdated but still valuable personal details. Document everything you find. This list becomes your roadmap for the removal steps that follow.
Step 2: Opt Out of People-Search Sites Manually
People-search sites are the most visible source of your personal data. They are also the easiest to remove yourself from, though the process is deliberately tedious. Each site has its own opt-out procedure, and they rarely make it straightforward. You typically need to find your profile, copy the URL, fill out a removal request form, and confirm via email. Some sites require you to verify your identity by providing additional personal information, which feels counterintuitive but is necessary to prove you are the person requesting removal.
Plan to spend about 15 to 30 minutes per site. There are dozens of these sites, so manual removal can take weeks if you do it alone. Focus on the ones that appear highest in search results for your name. Common targets include Whitepages, Radaris, Intelius, CheckPeople, and TruthFinder. Keep a spreadsheet with the date you submitted each request and whether the removal was confirmed. Many sites reprocess your data after a few months, so you will need to revisit this step periodically. If the manual process feels overwhelming, you are not alone — that is by design. Brokers make opt-out confusing to discourage people from following through.
Step 3: Use Automated Removal Services Like Incogni
Manual opt-out works, but it is slow and exhausting. For a faster and more thorough approach, consider using a dedicated data removal service. Incogni, built by the Surfshark team, is purpose-built to remove personal data online from over 250 data broker databases automatically. Instead of spending months hunting down each company, you submit your information once, and Incogni handles the rest. The service sends removal requests on your behalf, follows up with brokers that ignore or reject requests, and monitors whether your data reappears after removal.
Incogni leverages privacy laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the United States. These laws give you a legal right to demand that companies delete your personal data. Incogni uses these laws as leverage, making it much harder for brokers to refuse. The service works for residents of the US, Canada, the UK, the EU, and Switzerland. A comprehensive dashboard shows you how many databases potentially contain your information, how many removal requests have been sent, how many removals are completed, and which cases are still ongoing. This transparency lets you see real progress without doing the grunt work yourself.
Step 4: Lock Down Social Media Privacy Settings
Social media platforms are major feeders for data brokers. Every post, like, share, and comment adds to the profile that brokers build about you. Even if your account is set to private, the platform itself still collects and can share your data with third parties. Start by reviewing the privacy settings on every social network you use — Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, TikTok, and any others. Set your profiles to the most restrictive visibility options. Disable data sharing with third-party apps and partners. Turn off location tagging for posts and photos.
Go a step further and remove personal details from your profile fields. Delete your phone number, home address, birth date, and workplace if they are listed. Replace your profile photo with a generic image if you are comfortable doing so. Review your friends and followers lists and remove anyone you do not know personally. Data brokers often use automated bots to scrape public profile information, so reducing what is visible reduces what they can collect. Remember that even deleted information may still exist in broker databases if it was collected before you changed your settings. That is why this step works best in combination with the others on this list.
Step 5: Remove Your Address from Public Records and Business Listings
Your home address is one of the most sensitive pieces of personal data. Once it is public, anyone can find where you live — including stalkers, harassers, and identity thieves. Start by checking data broker sites that display your address. Many of the people-search sites mentioned in Step 2 prominently show your home address. Use the opt-out procedures on those sites to have your address removed.
Next, look at business listings and public records. If you own a small business or have an LLC, your home address may be listed on state business registry sites. Contact the relevant state agency and ask if you can use a registered agent address or a PO Box instead. Google My Business listings often display business addresses publicly. If your business operates from home, consider using a virtual mailbox or co-working space address for the listing. Also check voter registration records and property tax records. These are public by law in most states, so removal is not always possible. But you can sometimes request that your record be flagged for privacy protection, especially if you have a documented safety concern such as being a victim of stalking or domestic violence.
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Step 6: Tighten Browser and Device Privacy
Even after you remove your data from existing broker databases, new data is being collected every day. If you do not address the sources of ongoing collection, your information will eventually reappear. Start with your web browser. Use a privacy-focused browser like Brave or Firefox with enhanced tracking protection enabled. Install browser extensions such as uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials. These tools block tracking scripts that data brokers use to follow your activity across the web.
Adjust your browser settings to block third-party cookies and clear cookies automatically when you close the browser. Use a search engine that does not track your queries, such as DuckDuckGo or Startpage. On your smartphone, review app permissions. Many apps request access to your contacts, location, camera, and microphone even when those permissions are not needed for the app to function. Revoke permissions for apps that do not genuinely need them. On iOS, Apple’s privacy features like App Tracking Transparency and Mail Privacy Protection help limit some tracking, but they cannot undo data already collected. On Android, use the Privacy Dashboard to see which apps access your data and when. Combining these browser and device changes with the removal steps above creates a two-pronged defense: clean up existing exposure and prevent future exposure.
Step 7: Monitor and Repeat the Process Regularly
Data removal is not a one-time task. Data brokers constantly re-collect information from public records, new data breaches, and your ongoing online activity. A profile you cleaned up six months ago may reappear because a broker scraped a newly updated public record or purchased a fresh data set from another source. That is why monitoring is essential. Set a recurring reminder on your calendar to check the major people-search sites every three months. Re-submit opt-out requests for any profiles that have reappeared.
If you use a service like Incogni, the monitoring is handled for you. The dashboard shows which databases still hold your data and which removals need to be re-submitted. Incogni also offers an Unlimited plan that goes beyond standard data brokers. This plan enables custom removal requests for nearly any website that exposes your personal data. Dedicated privacy agents handle these requests personally on your behalf. (Social media platforms, government records, and forums are excluded.) For ongoing protection, consider combining data removal with a credit freeze at the three major credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. A credit freeze prevents criminals from opening new accounts in your name, which adds a layer of security even if some of your data remains exposed.
Real Benefits of Removing Your Data
Taking these seven steps delivers tangible results that you will notice in your daily life. Your phone will ring less often as robocallers lose access to your number. Spam emails will decrease. Targeted ads will become less eerily specific. Your home address will no longer appear in search results for anyone who looks up your name. These improvements reduce your risk of identity theft, financial fraud, and physical stalking. They also give you back a sense of control over your own information.
The peace of mind that comes from knowing your data is not being sold to the highest bidder is hard to overstate. Every time you opt out of a broker database or tighten a privacy setting, you are pushing back against an industry that profits from your exposure. The process takes effort, but the alternative — doing nothing — leaves you permanently vulnerable. Data brokers will continue to collect and sell your information until you take action to stop them.
Exclusive Pricing for Readers Who Want to Act Now
If the manual steps feel too time-consuming or overwhelming, automated services like Incogni offer a practical shortcut. Incogni handles the entire removal process across more than 250 data brokers, using legal leverage from privacy laws to get results. The service offers both individual and family plans, covering up to four additional people. The Unlimited plan goes further by handling custom removal requests for any website exposing your personal data, with dedicated privacy agents managing each request.
Readers of this publication can access exclusive pricing by using the discount code 9TO5MAC at checkout. The monthly Standard plan is $16.58, and the monthly Family plan is $32.98. Annual plans offer better value: the annual Standard plan is $99.48, the annual Family plan is $197.88, the annual Standard Unlimited plan is $179.99, and the annual Family Unlimited plan is $359.88. These rates represent substantial savings compared to standard pricing. Getting started takes only a few minutes, and the dashboard lets you track progress in real time from the moment your first removal requests go out.
Whether you choose the manual route or an automated service, the important thing is to start. Every day you wait, your personal data continues to be sold and shared without your consent. The seven steps outlined here give you a clear path forward. Pick the first step and begin today.
