How to remove your personal information from people-search sites

We sell people search. So it is fair to be suspicious of a guide from us about getting out of it — and fair to expect that guide to start with our own front door rather than end with it.

Here is the honest version, including the parts that are inconvenient for us: removal works, it is slower and more repetitive than most articles admit, and no one can make it permanent.

Removing yourself from DeepSearch

Email support@deepsearch.app with the details of the profile you want removed. We handle removal requests directly; there is no form to hunt for and no fee.

Two things worth separating, because they get confused constantly:

• Removing a profile from results is what you want if you appear in searches and would rather not. That is the email above.
• Deleting your account closes an account you created and removes the data attached to it. It does not remove you from results, because the two are unrelated — most people who appear in results never had an account.

If you want both, say so, and say it in one message.

If you live in California, start with DROP

California residents now have something no one else does: one request that reaches every registered data broker at once, backed by law rather than goodwill.

The Delete Request and Opt-out Platform (DROP) was created by the Delete Act (SB 362) and run by the California Privacy Protection Agency. You submit a single deletion request at consumer.drop.privacy.ca.gov and every registered broker has to act on it.

The timing matters, and it is why this is worth doing now rather than last year:

• DROP opened to consumers on 1 January 2026
• Since 1 August 2026, data brokers must check DROP at least once every 45 days and delete matching records within 90 days

Before August, a request sat in a queue waiting for an obligation that had not started. It has started.

What to expect: you must be a California resident, and you verify your identity through the California Identity Gateway or Login.gov before the request goes out. It is free.

The real limit is the word registered. DROP reaches brokers on California's data broker registry. A site that has never registered is not reached by your request, which is exactly the kind of site least likely to honour a manual opt-out either. Use DROP for the bulk of the work, then handle stragglers by hand.

If you do not live in California, DROP is not available to you. The manual loop below is the route.

The manual loop, everywhere else

There is no federal law compelling a people-search site to remove you. Most maintain an opt-out anyway, and the shape of it is nearly identical from site to site:

1. Find your listing first. Search your name, then your name with a city you have lived in, then your phone number and email. You cannot request removal of a record you cannot point at, and most sites require the exact URL.
2. Find the opt-out page. It is almost always in the footer, under Privacy, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, or Opt out. If the footer has nothing, check the privacy policy — the mechanism is usually described there even when it is not linked prominently.
3. Submit the listing URL, not just your name. Name-only requests are the ones that quietly fail, because the site cannot tell which of six people you are.
4. Confirm by email. Most send a verification link, and the request does nothing until you click it. Check spam.
5. Write down what you did. Site, date, listing URL, confirmation. You will need this in three months, and by then you will not remember.

Give it a few weeks. Some sites act in days, some take the better part of a month, and a few need a second request before anything happens.

Never pay a site to remove a listing it published for free. A removal fee is a business model, not a process, and paying it marks you as someone who will pay again.

What opting out actually achieves

This is the part most guides skip, and it is the part that determines whether you are satisfied a year from now.

Removal is partial by design. As the FTC sets out, these sites will let you opt out of some categories — an address, a phone number — while continuing to publish others.

You still appear inside other people's records. Your name can remain in the listings of relatives, former neighbours, and associates, because it is their record, not yours. Opting out does not reach into it.

It undoes itself. These sites rebuild from public records and commercial feeds on a schedule. When the underlying record changes — you move, register a vehicle, update a licence, buy property — a fresh entry can be created that your old opt-out has no relationship to. Reappearance is not a sign the opt-out failed. It is the system behaving normally.

So the honest framing is not delete yourself from the internet. It is reduce your exposure and keep it reduced, which is a maintenance task rather than a project with an end.

Cut the supply, not just the listings

Opting out treats the symptom. A smaller amount of work upstream lasts longer:

• Public records are the raw material — property, voter, court, licensing, business filings. Some jurisdictions allow suppression of a home address for specific reasons, such as documented safety concerns. Ask the office that holds the record what it offers; the answer varies enormously by state and by record type.
• Search engines are a separate step. Removing a listing from a site does not clear it from search results immediately, and the cached copy can outlive the page. Major search engines run their own removal request processes for personal information; use them after the source page is gone, not before.
• Old accounts leak. Dormant profiles and forgotten forum posts are frequently the origin of a "current" detail. Closing them removes a source that would otherwise keep feeding.

Are the paid removal services worth it?

They do what is described above, on a schedule, across dozens of sites. That is genuinely valuable if the alternative is that you do it once and never again — and doing it once and never again is what most people actually do.

What they cannot do is exceed your own authority. They submit the same public opt-out forms with the same standing you have. Any service promising permanent or total removal is overselling; nothing on this page is permanent.

Two things to check before paying: whether the service itself sells data, and whether it will hand you a record of the requests it has made on your behalf. A service that will not show you its work is asking for a lot of trust.

A cadence that works

Once, properly: DROP if you are eligible, then the sites where you actually appear, then the upstream sources. After that, re-search your own name once a quarter and clear whatever has come back. Ten minutes, four times a year, holds the ground you took.

Why we published this

Because the objection is legitimate, and answering it with silence would be worse than answering it plainly. A search product that only works when people cannot get out of it is a product with a problem.

Our position: we search public information, we show the source for every claim so it can be checked rather than trusted, and we remove people who ask. If you want out, the email is at the top of this page.