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Cornerstone guide
How data brokers get your data
Nobody hacked you. The profile a stranger can pull up in ten seconds was assembled legally, from sources you mostly can’t avoid — and partially dismantled for free, if you know the order of operations.
Affiliate disclosure: Hexento has a pending partner application with one data-removal service (Incogni; unlinked until accepted). This guide’s advice starts with the free path regardless. See disclosure · methodology.
Where the profile comes from
- Public records — the backbone Property deeds, voter rolls, court filings, professional licenses, marriage records. Legal to compile, cheap to buy in bulk, and refreshed every time you move or refinance. This is why homeowners and long-time residents have the fattest profiles.
- Commercial trails Warranty cards, loyalty programs, magazine subscriptions, catalog purchases, sweepstakes entries. Marketing brokers like Acxiom segment you (“suburban pet owner, likely golfer”) and sell the segments.
- Apps and ad tech Location pings, install data, and identifiers sold through the ad ecosystem end up enriching broker files — the part you “agreed” to on page 34 of a privacy policy.
- Other brokers People-search sites buy from each other and mirror each other’s listings. Remove yourself from one and its sibling repopulates it — which is why opt-outs decay and cadence beats intensity.
- Breach spillover Breached emails, phones, and addresses circulate and get merged into files. Not every broker touches this data; enough do that breaches make profiles more accurate.
Who buys it
Marketers (segments), people-search sites (anyone with $3 and your name), insurers and employers via specialized risk brokers (LexisNexis-class, largely outside consumer opt-out), scammers doing target research, and occasionally harassers. The people-search tier is the one that hurts ordinary people most — it’s also the most removable.
The free way out (in order)
- Californians: file once with DROP. The state’s Delete Act portal (consumer.drop.privacy.ca.gov) makes registered brokers honor one deletion request within 90 days, with suppression lists so you stay deleted. Enforcement began August 1, 2026.
- Everyone: hit the people-search majors. Spokeo, Whitepages, BeenVerified, Intelius, Radaris, PeopleFinders, MyLife, TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate, FastPeopleSearch, TruePeopleSearch. Search “<name> opt out”, file, save the confirmation. 15–30 minutes each.
- Go upstream once: Acxiom’s free opt-out (acxiom.com/optout) cuts a marketing source many others drink from.
- Calendar the decay. Consumer Reports found every tested participant reappeared somewhere within weeks. A quarterly 30-minute re-check is the actual fix.
Receipts: in Consumer Reports’ 2024 study — the only rigorous independent test — this manual approach removed 70% of found records in four months, beating every paid service tested. The paid services’ real product is doing the re-filing forever so you don’t have to.
What you can’t remove
- Risk brokers (LexisNexis-class): consumer suppression is limited to narrow safety categories — judges, law enforcement, documented endangerment.
- News articles, court records, social posts — removal services can’t touch them, whatever the ad implied.
- Data already sold — opt-outs stop future sales; they don’t claw back last year’s.
Reduce what flows in
- Use email aliases for signups (built into Proton Pass, NordPass Premium, and others) so lists can’t be joined on one address.
- Skip optional fields everywhere. Loyalty programs work fine with a nickname and a dedicated email.
- Deny location access to apps that don’t navigate you somewhere.
- If you move, expect a profile refresh — that’s a good quarter to re-run your opt-out circuit.
If you’d rather pay
Rational when your hours are worth more than the fee, when you know the quarterly DIY re-check won’t happen, or when you’re covered by a service’s geography. The data-removal hub has the honest comparison table — including measured effectiveness where it exists, the renewal terms vendors don’t advertise, and which names are (pending) partners of ours.