Data Brokers Exposed: How to Remove Your Personal Information from the Internet in 2026

Every time you visit a website, make a purchase, fill out a form, register to vote, or apply for a loan, your personal information is collected, aggregated, and sold. Data brokers — companies whose entire business model is built on collecting and monetizing your personal information — have assembled profiles on virtually every American adult that include your name, home address, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives’ names, workplace history, income estimates, property records, court records, and in many cases, your daily movement patterns inferred from location data.

In 2026, this industry operates largely in the shadows and faces growing scrutiny. Thousands of data broker companies hold your information, most of which you never consented to share with them. The consequences are not abstract: data broker profiles fuel spam calls, phishing attacks, targeted scams, stalking, identity theft, and social engineering attacks. This guide explains exactly how the data broker industry works, which sites hold your information, and — most importantly — how to systematically remove it.

How Data Brokers Collect Your Information

Understanding where data brokers get your information is essential to stemming the flow at the source. Data brokers aggregate personal information from an enormous variety of public and commercial sources, including voter registration records (public record in most US states), property deed and tax records, court and legal filings (including civil cases, criminal records, bankruptcies, and divorces), social media profiles and the data you make publicly visible, loyalty programs and retail purchase history sold by retailers, marketing surveys and sweepstakes entries, census data, phone book records, magazine subscription lists, data from other data brokers, and location data purchased from mobile apps that include data-sharing clauses in their terms of service.

The aggregation of these individually innocuous pieces creates surprisingly intimate profiles. A data broker profile might show that you live at a specific address, own a Honda CR-V, have two adult children named in property records, earn approximately $85,000-$95,000, have a civil judgment from 2019, and visit a specific gym three mornings per week. This level of detail makes data broker profiles a goldmine for identity thieves, scammers, and anyone with malicious intent toward you specifically.

The Major Categories of Data Brokers

People-Search Sites

People-search sites are the most visible form of data broker and the most directly harmful to individual privacy. Sites like Spokeo, WhitePages, BeenVerified, Intelius, PeopleFinder, and TruthFinder display detailed personal profiles — addresses, phone numbers, relatives, criminal records, property ownership — to anyone willing to pay a few dollars per search. These sites are frequently used by stalkers, harassers, and scammers to identify and locate specific individuals. They are also used by employers, landlords, and reconnecting relatives for more benign purposes, but from a privacy standpoint the harm potential is substantial.

Marketing Data Brokers

Companies like Acxiom, Oracle Data Cloud, Experian Marketing Services, and LiveRamp build detailed consumer profiles used by advertisers to target specific audiences. These profiles include demographic data, estimated income, purchase history, political affiliation, health interests (inferred from searches and purchases), and thousands of other attributes. You are unlikely to find a searchable profile of yourself on these sites, but your data is actively bought and sold among advertisers without your knowledge or meaningful consent.

Financial Data Brokers

Credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion) are a regulated category of data broker covered by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), giving you specific rights including free annual credit report access and the ability to dispute inaccurate information. Consumer reporting agencies like LexisNexis Risk Solutions and CoreLogic maintain financial and background check data used by insurers, landlords, and employers. These are covered by FCRA and you have the right to access and dispute your files.

How to Remove Your Information: A Systematic Approach

Manually opting out of every data broker is a time-consuming but achievable process. There are hundreds of data broker sites, but focusing on the most prominent and harmful ones delivers the greatest privacy improvement for your effort. Here is a systematic approach.

Step 1: Conduct a Self-Search

Before you can remove your information, you need to know where it appears. Search for your full name in quotes (“John Smith”) combined with your city and state on Google and Bing. Also search for your phone number and email address in quotes. Make a list of every people-search site and data broker site that returns results about you. This becomes your opt-out checklist. Note that results may vary — some sites are not indexed by Google, so you may need to visit major people-search sites directly and search for yourself there as well.

Step 2: Opt Out of People-Search Sites Manually

Each people-search site has its own opt-out process, and most require you to submit a removal request that is processed over days or weeks. The key sites to prioritize include Spokeo (opt-out at spokeo.com/optout), WhitePages (opt-out at whitepages.com/suppression_requests), BeenVerified (opt-out via their suppression form), Intelius (opt-out at intelius.com/optout), PeopleFinder (opt-out page on their site), TruthFinder (opt-out via their opt-out form), Radaris, FastPeopleSearch, Pipl, and USPhoneBook. For each site, search for your record, locate the opt-out process (usually a link in the footer labeled “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” or “Opt Out”), and submit your request. Document each submission with the date — you may need to follow up if records reappear (they often do).

Step 3: Use Automated Data Broker Removal Services

Manually opting out of hundreds of data broker sites is a significant time investment — and because brokers re-acquire your data over time, the process needs to be repeated regularly. Several services automate this process by submitting opt-out requests on your behalf and monitoring for reappearances.

DeleteMe ($129/year for individuals) submits opt-out requests to over 750 data broker sites, provides quarterly reports on your removal status, and re-submits requests when your data reappears. Kanary and Privacy Bee offer similar services with varying breadth and pricing. Incogni (from Surfshark, approximately $6.49/month) is particularly strong at handling data broker opt-outs across a wide range of sites and is one of the better values in the category.

These services are not perfect — no service can remove you from every data broker — but they dramatically reduce your data broker footprint with far less effort than manual opt-outs, and their ongoing monitoring catches reappearances you would miss doing it yourself.

Removing Information from Specific High-Impact Platforms

Google Search Results

Google provides a tool to request removal of specific types of personal information from search results, including home addresses, phone numbers, personal photos, and financial information. Visit Google’s “Remove outdated content” tool for cached pages from sites that have already removed your data, and use the dedicated personal information removal request form for sensitive data appearing in active search results. Approval is not guaranteed — Google evaluates requests individually — but the process is straightforward and often successful for clear privacy violations.

Social Media Profiles and Data

Audit your privacy settings on all social media platforms. On Facebook, restrict who can see your friend list, posts, and profile details. Remove your phone number and address from your profile. On LinkedIn, disable the public visibility of your connections list and limit what non-connections can see. Review and revoke third-party app permissions on all platforms — these apps often collect and resell your data. Consider whether old, inactive accounts should simply be deleted rather than maintained with residual personal information.

Data Broker Opt-Outs for Marketing Data

Opting out of marketing data brokers like Acxiom and Oracle requires separate processes. Acxiom’s AboutTheData portal allows you to view and opt out of marketing data they hold about you. The Digital Advertising Alliance’s opt-out tool (optout.aboutads.info) submits opt-out requests to dozens of participating ad networks and data brokers simultaneously. The Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page covers additional members. These opt-outs apply to targeted advertising use of your data but do not delete the underlying data from the broker’s systems.

Preventative Measures: Stop the Flow at the Source

Removing your data is only half the battle — if you continue the same behaviors that led to your data being collected, it will reaccumulate over time. The following preventative measures reduce the rate at which new data enters the ecosystem.

• Use a PO box or mail forwarding address for subscriptions, online shopping, and forms that request a physical address, keeping your home address out of commercial databases.
• Use a secondary email address for accounts you do not fully trust — services like SimpleLogin and AnonAddy generate disposable email aliases that forward to your real inbox.
• Use Google Voice or a secondary phone number for business registrations and commercial forms rather than your personal cell number.
• Opt out of data sharing with retailers when purchasing in-store or online — loyalty programs are data collection engines. Many states now require retailers to honor opt-out requests under consumer privacy laws.
• Review app permissions regularly and revoke location access for any app that does not genuinely need it — location data is among the most valuable data sold by mobile apps to data brokers.
• Freeze your credit at all three major bureaus (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion) — a credit freeze prevents financial data brokers and identity thieves from opening accounts in your name.

Your Legal Rights Against Data Brokers

In 2026, consumer privacy rights have expanded significantly in the United States. California’s CPRA (California Privacy Rights Act), Virginia’s CDPA, Colorado’s CPA, and a growing number of state laws give residents the right to know what data companies hold about them, request deletion, opt out of data sales, and enforce these rights through state attorneys general. Several states have enacted specific data broker registration laws requiring brokers to list themselves with the state and honor consumer deletion requests.

At the federal level, the FTC continues to take enforcement action against data brokers that violate consumers’ rights or engage in deceptive practices. Under FCRA, you have specific rights against consumer reporting agencies including the right to a free annual report, the right to dispute inaccurate information, and the right to know when your report has been used against you in a credit, insurance, or employment decision. Understanding and exercising these rights is an important complement to the technical opt-out process.

Conclusion

Removing your personal information from data brokers in 2026 requires sustained effort — it is not a one-time task but an ongoing practice of monitoring and re-opting out as your data reappears. The good news is that even partial removal significantly reduces your exposure to spam, scams, targeted attacks, and privacy violations. Start with the manual opt-outs for the highest-impact people-search sites, invest in an automated removal service for ongoing maintenance, implement preventative measures to slow data reaccumulation, and exercise your legal rights under applicable consumer privacy laws. Your personal information has value — to you and to the brokers who sell it. Taking control of it is one of the most meaningful privacy improvements you can make in 2026.