Thanks to public records, your personal information is available for anyone to find online. This includes your full name, address, phone number, police record, property record, employment information and more.
People search sites scrape this information and make it available for anyone to see. Anybody can get the info — hackers, scammers, jealous exes or anyone else who seeks to do you harm. All you can do is opt out from these sites, one by one. Tap or click here for detailed instructions on removing yourself from these creepy sites.
For this entry in our weekly Opt-Out Tuesday series on removing yourself from people search sites, we’ll show you how to remove yourself from FreePhoneTracer.
Avoid people search sites at all costs, especially if it costs you
Don’t ever pay for any people search service. Many of these sites are scammy in nature. You may think you’re paying for one report and find that you’ve been roped into recurring charges.
And never pay to remove your information from any site. This process must be provided for free.
When trying to remove your data from people search sites, be careful which links you click. They’re often ads that lead you to another site that requests payment. We’ll provide accurate links to remove yourself from these sites with each Opt-out Tuesday report.
Do you have older relatives who may not know about people search sites? While you’re opting out yourself, why not do the same for them? Just type in their information as you would your own and follow our steps to completion.
Finding friends and family? Not really
People search sites advertise their services for finding people who mean something to you. The truth is that bad actors with bad intentions mostly use these sites.
FreePhoneTracer offers a reverse phone lookup service, which the site says is an “excellent way to keep in touch with those you may have lost contact with over the years.”
Plug in a phone number, and the results will include information such as the target’s current address, relatives, other members of their household and additional contact information.
You’ll want to remove yourself from this site as soon as possible. We’ll show you how below.
Get your data out of there
Many people search sites are owned or affiliated with similar sites. A commonly shared feature is the opt-out process. In this case, FreePhoneTracer uses the same process as BeenVerified, which we covered here.
Now let’s get on with removing yourself from FreePhoneTracer:
- Go to beenverified.com/app/optout/search.
- Enter your first and last name and select your state from the drop-down menu. Then hit the Search button.
- Select the correct match from the search results and click Proceed to Opt-Out.
- Fill in your email address and click Send Verification Email.
- Open the email and click the link inside. This will bring you to a confirmation page.
- Expect it to take several days to weeks before your information vanishes.
For customer support, write to [email protected].
Keep reading
Opt-Out Tuesday: How to remove your info from Instant Checkmate
Political email might be coming to your inbox — How to block what your spam folder doesn’t catch