Work from what's actually published about you, not from a generic top-100 list. The brokers that matter are the ones showing your details when someone searches your name — and that set differs by person, country and how much public record you generate. Build your own priority order in ten minutes, then work down it. The opt-out pattern is nearly identical everywhere once you've seen it twice.
Step 1 — Build your own list
Generic lists waste effort on brokers that don't hold you and miss the ones that do.
- Search your full name in quotes, with your city or state.
- Repeat with a previous address, and with your phone number.
- Open the people-search results. Note the site, what it shows, and the URL of your specific listing.
- Rank by exposure: sites showing your home address and relatives come first; sites showing only a name and city come last.
That ranked list is your actual priority order, and it's the thing to keep — you'll need it again to check whether anything worked. The wider audit
Step 2 — Check the free consolidated routes
California residents: use DROP before doing anything manual. One verified request reaches every registered broker, and since 1 August 2026 they've been required to process it. Source: CPPA. Checked: 2026-08-19.
EU and UK: GDPR erasure requests are per-broker but legally binding. How to write one
Step 3 — The opt-out pattern
Nearly every broker follows the same shape:
- Find the opt-out page — usually footer-linked as "Do Not Sell My Personal Information", "Privacy", or "Opt Out".
- Search for your own listing on their site and copy its URL. Most require the specific record, not just a name.
- Submit the request with that URL.
- Confirm by email. Use an alias — you are handing an address to a data broker, and it's a poor moment to use your main one.
- Record the site, the date and any reference number.
Verification is legitimate — they mustn't let someone else delete your record, or delete the wrong person's. But a form demanding a government ID to remove a listing showing only your name and city is asking for far more than the task needs.
Provide enough to match the listing you found and nothing beyond it. The process in more detail
Step 4 — Watch for sister sites
Several branded people-search sites frequently run on shared infrastructure and shared data. Removing yourself from one often doesn't propagate. Re-run your name search a few weeks later — the same profile reappearing under a different brand is common, not a sign you did it wrong.
Step 5 — Re-check, and decide about paying
A month later, run your original searches again and compare against your baseline. What's still listed is the gap a paid service would be filling — and now you can price that decision instead of guessing at it. The decision · All the free routes
How long it stays done
It doesn't. Brokers re-ingest continuously from public records and from each other, so records reappear from sources nobody can be deleted from. Plan on repeating the check every few months. That recurring effort is exactly what a subscription buys. Why
Which is also why it pairs with the other half — reducing what flows in from here. Prevention