Spokeo is one of the largest people-search websites in the United States. Founded in 2006, it aggregates personal information from public records, social media profiles, marketing databases, and other data sources to create detailed profiles on over 200 million Americans.
When someone searches your name on Spokeo, they can see your current and past addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, estimated age, relatives, and sometimes even your estimated income and home value. This information is available to anyone with an internet connection.
Spokeo makes money by charging users for "full reports" that include additional details like criminal records, court filings, and social media accounts. Your personal information is literally being sold for profit.
A typical Spokeo profile includes:
You can check what Spokeo has on you by visiting our free Search Yourself tool, which checks Spokeo and 14 other major people-search sites instantly.
Go to spokeo.com and search your full name. If you have a common name, add your city and state to narrow the results. Click on the profile that matches you. Copy the URL of your profile page from the browser address bar. You will need this URL for the opt-out form.
Visit spokeo.com/optout. This is the official removal page. Do not use third-party removal tools that claim to do this for you, as they may collect your data in the process.
Paste the URL of your Spokeo profile into the opt-out form. This tells Spokeo exactly which listing to remove.
Enter a valid email address. Spokeo will send a verification email to this address. You must click the verification link to complete the removal. Consider using a disposable email address so Spokeo does not add your email to their database.
Solve the CAPTCHA to prove you are not a bot. Spokeo uses standard image-based CAPTCHAs.
Check your email for a message from Spokeo. Click the verification link to confirm your removal request. If you do not see the email, check your spam folder.
Spokeo typically processes removal requests within 24-48 hours, though they state it can take up to 2 weeks. Your profile should no longer appear in search results after processing.
Important: If you have multiple profiles on Spokeo (different name variations, different cities), you need to submit a separate opt-out request for each one. Removing one profile does not remove the others.
Spokeo states that removal requests are processed within 2 weeks, but most removals happen within 24-48 hours. After processing, your profile will no longer appear when someone searches for you on Spokeo.
However, there are some caveats. Spokeo may retain your information internally for legal and compliance purposes even after removing it from public view. And cached versions of your profile may still appear in Google search results for several weeks until Google re-indexes the page.
To remove cached results from Google, you can submit a removal request through Google Search Console or wait for Google to naturally re-crawl the page, which usually happens within 2-4 weeks.
Yes. This is the most important thing to understand about data broker removal. Spokeo continuously collects data from public records, marketing databases, and other sources. Your profile can reappear within 30-90 days after removal as Spokeo re-ingests data from these sources.
This is not unique to Spokeo. All data brokers re-collect information on an ongoing basis. A one-time removal is not a permanent solution. Effective privacy protection requires ongoing monitoring and re-submission of removal requests.
This is why privacy protection services exist. Manually re-submitting opt-out requests to Spokeo (and hundreds of other brokers) every 90 days is not realistic for most people.
Removing yourself from Spokeo is a good first step, but it is just one of 2,359 data brokers that may have your information. While you were spending 5 minutes removing your Spokeo profile, your data remained exposed on thousands of other sites.
Other major people-search sites that likely have your data include:
And beyond people-search sites, there are hundreds of marketing data brokers, B2B lead generation companies, background check services, and retailers that also have your data. See our complete data broker opt-out list for the full picture.
To truly protect your privacy, you need a comprehensive approach:
Doing all of this manually takes hundreds of hours. Vigilant Privacy automates the entire process for $9.95/month.
You removed yourself from 1 broker. There are 2,358 more. Vigilant Privacy monitors and removes your data from all of them, plus requests your consumer reports, disputes credit errors, and handles prescreened offer opt-outs automatically.
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