How to remove your personal information from the internet
Your name, address, phone number and family ties are scattered across data brokers, search results, old accounts and breach dumps. This is the complete, free playbook for removing them — in priority order — and keeping them gone.
To remove your personal information from the internet: opt out of data brokers and people-search sites first (highest impact), use Google’s “Results about you” tool to clear search results, change any passwords exposed in breaches, take your phone number off broker sites, and lock down or delete old social and unused accounts. None of it is one-and-done — brokers re-list you within weeks, so removal has to be repeated or automated.
“Removing your personal information from the internet” means deleting or suppressing the copies of your identity that strangers can find: the data-broker profiles that list your address and phone, the search results that surface them, the breach dumps that leak your logins, and the public social profiles that tie it all together. There is no single delete button, because your data lives in many places at once and is continuously re-collected from public records. The practical goal is not a one-time wipe but getting your information off the sources that actually expose you, then re-removing it as it reappears.
The areas below are ordered by impact, top to bottom. If you only do one thing, do the first — data brokers are the most public and most-used source of your personal data.
1. Data brokers & people-search sites (start here)
Data brokers and people-search sites (Spokeo, Whitepages, BeenVerified, Radaris and hundreds more) are the most public copy of your personal information — they publish your name, current and past addresses, phone numbers and relatives, and sell access for a few dollars, which is how most spam, scams and doxxing start. Removing these listings has the highest impact, so do it first. Each broker has a free, legally-required opt-out; the hard part is scale — hundreds of sites, each with its own form, and they re-list you within weeks. Budget a couple of hours for the major ones, then re-check every 30–90 days. Our free data-broker opt-out guide gives step-by-step instructions for 100+ brokers — start with the highest-traffic ones (Spokeo, Whitepages, BeenVerified, Radaris, Intelius, MyLife) and work down the list.
2. Search engine results (Google & Bing)
Removing the source page doesn’t always clear it from search results immediately. Use Google’s “Results about you” tool to find pages exposing your contact info and request their removal from Search, and the “Refresh outdated content” tool for pages you’ve already taken down. Bing has an equivalent Content Removal request form. These don’t delete the underlying page — they remove it from the results that surface your name — so pair them with removing the source (the data-broker opt-outs above).
3. Data breaches & the dark web
Old breaches leak your email, passwords and sometimes phone and address into dumps that are traded and re-traded. You can’t “delete” a breach, but you can neutralize it: find out where you’re exposed, then rotate the affected passwords and turn on two-factor authentication. Check your email free with our data breach & dark-web check (checked against billions of leaked records), then fix what it finds. You can also browse the data breach directory to see which known breaches exposed your accounts and exactly what each one leaked.
4. Your phone number & spam calls
Your phone number spreads through the same broker and lead-generation pipeline, which is why the spam calls keep coming. Beyond carrier filters and the Do Not Call Registry, the durable fix is getting your number off the sites that publish it. See our guide to stopping spam calls for the free steps and the root-cause removal.
5. Social media & old accounts
Public social profiles and forgotten accounts are a rich, freely-scraped source of your data. Lock down privacy settings on active accounts (limit what’s public, remove your phone/address from profiles), and delete or deactivate accounts you no longer use — old profiles on defunct services are frequently scraped into broker databases. Search your own name in an incognito window to see what’s publicly visible, and work down the list.
6. Your photos & facial-recognition search
Face-search engines like PimEyes and FaceCheck.ID let anyone upload a photo and find other pictures of you across the web — a serious stalking and doxxing risk that ordinary opt-outs miss. Submit their opt-out / remove-my-photos requests (they verify it’s really you, sometimes with an ID), and tighten privacy on the social and profile photos that feed them so the images can’t simply be re-indexed later.
7. Government & public records
A lot of what brokers resell starts as public record — voter registrations, property deeds and court filings. You usually can’t erase the underlying record, but you can suppress the sites that republish it: opt out of voter-record and property-record aggregators, and ask your county clerk whether an address-confidentiality or redaction program applies — these exist specifically for survivors of stalking, domestic abuse or harassment.
8. Credit offers & junk mail
Pre-screened credit offers and marketing mail feed the same data ecosystem that brokers buy from. Opt out of pre-screened credit and insurance offers for free at OptOutPrescreen.com (or call 1-888-5-OPT-OUT), and cut marketing mail through DMAchoice. This won’t remove existing broker listings, but it shrinks the marketing-data feeds brokers resell, so less new information about you enters circulation over time.
9. Keep it removed (ongoing monitoring)
Removal is not one-and-done. Brokers re-scrape public records and rebuild your profile within weeks to months, so without monitoring your exposure quietly creeps back. Re-check the major sites on a schedule (every 30–90 days), or automate it so re-listings are caught and removed again without you having to remember.
Do all of it automatically
The steps above are free but add up to hours of work and need repeating. PersProtect finds where you’re exposed across 499 broker and people-search sites, files the removals, and re-checks on a schedule so your data doesn’t creep back. Start with a free exposure scan.
See where I’m exposed — free scan →Removing your information, answered
Can you ever fully remove yourself from the internet?
Not permanently in one pass. You can remove the large majority of your exposure — data-broker listings, old accounts, indexed pages — but public records and new data collection mean some information returns over time. Realistic success is getting your information off the sites that actually expose you and then re-removing it on a schedule, rather than a one-time “delete everything forever.”
How long does it take to remove your personal information from the internet?
Doing the major sources yourself takes several hours of work spread over a few weeks, because each data broker, search engine and platform has its own request and processing time (anywhere from minutes to six weeks). Keeping it removed is ongoing, since data brokers re-list people every few weeks to months.
Is it free to remove my information from the internet?
Yes — every data broker, Google’s “Results about you” tool, and the major platforms all offer free removal/opt-out. You never have to pay to delete a listing. People pay for automated services only to avoid the recurring manual work across hundreds of sites.
Where does my personal information online actually come from?
Mostly public records (voter rolls, property and court records), data brokers that buy and resell those records, marketing and loyalty data, social media profiles, and data breaches. Brokers aggregate these into a single searchable profile — which is why removing the broker listing removes the most visible copy.
Why does my information come back after I remove it?
Data brokers continuously re-scrape public records and buy fresh marketing data, so a profile you deleted is rebuilt within weeks to months. This is the single biggest reason a one-time cleanup doesn’t hold, and why removal has to be repeated or automated.
What is the most important first step?
Remove yourself from data brokers and people-search sites. They are the most public, most searchable, and most-used source of your personal data — and getting off them cuts the spam, scam and doxxing risk fastest. Start with our free data-broker opt-out guide.
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