How to Remove Your Personal Information From the Internet

Published July 5, 2026

Heads up: this post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend what I’ve used or genuinely evaluated. Full disclosure here.

Here’s something most people over 60 never find out until a scam call gets a little too personal: your name, home address, phone number, age, and even the names of your relatives are probably already listed on dozens of websites right now. Not because you did anything wrong — but because an entire industry quietly collects those details and sells them.

The good news is that this is fixable. You can’t scrub yourself off the internet completely, and anyone who promises that isn’t being straight with you. But you can remove a lot of it, make yourself a harder target, and cut down on the scam calls and junk mail — mostly for free, one step at a time. This guide walks you through exactly how, in plain English, at a pace that won’t overwhelm you.

What Data Brokers and People-Search Sites Actually Are

A data broker is a company whose main business is gathering personal information about you from lots of different places, bundling it together, and selling it. They don’t usually get it from you directly. Instead, they pull it from public records (property records, voter rolls, court filings), from companies you’ve done business with, and from other data companies. The Federal Trade Commission has warned for years that this happens largely without people’s knowledge.

You’ll also run into people-search sites — the ones with names like Whitepages or Spokeo. Type your own name into one and you’ll often see your age, current and past addresses, phone numbers, and a list of possible relatives, all on a single page. These sites are the storefront version of the data-broker business.

How big is this industry? Bigger than most people realize. California now keeps an official registry of data brokers, and it lists more than 600 registered companies. That’s just the ones that register in one state — so “a lot” is a fair way to think about it.

Why This Matters for Seniors — Without the Scare Tactics

Let’s keep this calm and honest. Having your information out there doesn’t mean something bad will happen. But it does make a few everyday annoyances and risks more likely:

Targeted scam calls. When a caller already knows your name, your town, and a grandchild’s name, their story sounds more believable.
Junk mail and robocalls. Your details get sold to marketers, which is why the offers keep coming.
Identity theft groundwork. The more of your information is floating around, the easier it is for someone to piece together enough to cause trouble.

Reducing what’s out there won’t make you invincible, but it takes away raw material that scammers and marketers rely on. Think of it like closing the blinds — you’re not building a fortress, you’re just not leaving everything on display.

First, See What’s Already Out There

Before you fix anything, take five minutes to look. Open a search engine and type your full name in quotation marks, then try it with your city (“Jane Smith” Tampa). Do the same with your phone number. You’ll likely find yourself on a few people-search sites. Don’t be alarmed — this is normal, and it’s exactly what you’re about to start cleaning up. Jot down which sites list you; that’s your to-do list.

The Free Way to Remove Your Information

Start here. Every step below is free (with one small-fee exception noted), official, and something you can do yourself. Do them in any order — even doing one or two makes a difference.

1. Stop Pre-Screened Credit and Insurance Offers

Those “you’re pre-approved” envelopes come from companies buying your info from the credit bureaus. There’s one official, free site to stop them: OptOutPrescreen.com (or call 1-888-5-OPT-OUT / 1-888-567-8688). It’s the only site authorized for this by the nationwide credit bureaus. Opting out online or by phone lasts five years; to opt out permanently, you finish by signing and mailing a form the site provides.

One heads-up so you’re not caught off guard: the site asks for your Social Security number and date of birth to confirm it’s really you. That feels uncomfortable, but this is the legitimate, industry-run site the FTC points people to.

2. Cut Down on Junk Mail

To reduce marketing mail, use DMAchoice, the mail-preference service run by the Association of National Advertisers. There’s a small fee, and your registration lasts about 10 years. It won’t stop everything — companies you’ve done business with recently can still write to you — but it noticeably thins out the pile over a couple of months.

3. Reduce Sales Calls

Register your home and cell numbers free at DoNotCall.gov (or call 1-888-382-1222). Registration never expires, so it’s a one-time job. Be clear-eyed about what it does, though: it stops legitimate telemarketers, but scammers ignore it — they’re already breaking the law. So this cuts the annoying-but-legal calls, not the criminal ones.

4. Opt Out of People-Search Sites

This is the one that removes your address-and-relatives listings. The general process is the same on most sites: find your listing, look for the “opt out” or “suppression” link (often at the bottom of the page or under privacy), submit the request, and confirm it — usually by clicking a link in an email, sometimes by a quick phone verification. Removal typically takes anywhere from a few days to a few weeks.

You don’t need to chase down dozens of these. Start with the largest, best-known people-search sites where you actually found yourself in the step above, and handle those first. That covers most of the visibility for the least effort. (When you’re ready to do this, look up each site’s current opt-out page directly, since these links change over time.)

5. California Residents: Use the Free DROP Tool

If you live in California, you have a shortcut nobody else has yet. The state’s new DROP tool (Delete Request and Opt-out Platform) lets you send a single deletion request that reaches every data broker registered in California — hundreds of them at once — for free. Registered brokers are required to act on those requests. If you’re a California resident, this is the highest-value free step available. (It’s a California program, so it only covers California residents.)

6. Set Realistic Expectations

Here’s the honest part. Removals take time — often weeks — and they don’t always stick. Data brokers frequently rebuild their listings from fresh public records, so your information can quietly reappear months later. That’s not a sign you did it wrong; it’s just how the industry works. The practical takeaway: this is less a one-time chore and more like weeding a garden — worth doing, and worth revisiting once or twice a year.

If You’d Rather Not Do It by Hand

The steps above are free, and for a lot of people that’s the right choice. But if the idea of opting out site by site — and then repeating it every few months — sounds like more than you want to take on, there are paid services that do the legwork for you.

Opting out one company at a time works, but there are hundreds of these brokers — California’s official registry alone lists more than 600 — and many quietly add your information back over time, so it becomes a recurring chore. A data-removal service like Incogni sends and repeats those opt-out requests for you across many brokers, and keeps doing it in the background. It won’t erase every trace of you from the internet — no service can promise that — and it won’t make you scam-proof. But for a lot of people it’s worth paying to save hours of tedious, repeating work. The free steps above cost nothing but your time; a service like this simply trades a monthly fee for that time.

What Data-Removal Services Can and Can’t Do

So you can decide clearly, here’s the plain truth about any service in this category:

They can save you a lot of repetitive work, cover many brokers at once, and keep re-sending requests as your data reappears.
They can’t guarantee that every trace of you is gone. Some brokers are slow, some fall outside a service’s reach, and public records keep refilling the well.
They won’t stop scams or identity theft on their own. Reducing your exposure is one layer of protection — it works best alongside the basics like freezing your credit and being cautious on the phone.

A paid service is a convenience, not a magic eraser. If that convenience is worth it to you, it’s a reasonable buy. If you’d rather pocket the money and spend the time, the free steps get you most of the way.

Your Simple Plan for This Month

Search your own name and phone number to see what’s listed.
Opt out of pre-screened offers at OptOutPrescreen.com.
Register at DoNotCall.gov (it’s free and permanent).
Opt out of the two or three biggest people-search sites where you found yourself.
If you’re in California, send one deletion request through DROP.
Reduce junk mail through DMAchoice if it’s worth the small fee to you.
Decide whether a data-removal service is worth paying for to keep it all going automatically.

You don’t have to do it all in one sitting. One step this week is real progress.

References

Federal Trade Commission — What To Know About Prescreened Offers for Credit and Insurance (consumer.ftc.gov)
OptOutPrescreen.com — the official prescreened-offer opt-out site
Association of National Advertisers — DMAchoice mail preference service (ana.net / dmachoice.org)
Federal Trade Commission — National Do Not Call Registry FAQs; DoNotCall.gov
California Privacy Protection Agency — DROP (Delete Request and Opt-out Platform), privacy.ca.gov/drop
Federal Trade Commission — Data Brokers: A Call for Transparency and Accountability (2014)

Tagged data broker removal, identity theft protection, online privacy, senior online safety

How to Remove Your Personal Information From the Internet: A Plain-English Guide for Seniors