2012-03-10 07:11:09 - Do you know what kind of personal information about you can be found from Internet? Do you know how to remove your name, address, phone number, pictures, bad comments and negative reviews from Google and other search engine results? Do you know how to delete your personal information from online people search database records?

You’ll be surprised to see what information others can find out about you. Without your knowledge and permission, most your personal records are published on Internet and are available to be searched at background search websites. With your name or a phone number, anyone can pinpoint the house you live in and learn all kinds of personal information you don’t want strangers to know.

Criminals can use your personal information to harass or even harm you or your family. If you are serious about protecting your identity and personal security, you should take actions now to block yourpersonal information from public viewing.

“How do I get my information off the social networks, “how to take my name from Google search results, “How to stop others from searching my information from people search You will find answers to these questions and much more in this article. You can find advices, steps, valuable tools and online resources to help you get rid of your personal information from hundreds of people search databases, major search engines, and popular social network websites.

Exposing your personal information to the Internet is

easy, finding your personal information on the Internet is fast, but removing your personal information from the Internet can be very difficult without the right help.

Internet is such a great place to look for information, you can easily search and find information from search engines like Google.com, Yahoo.com, Bing.com, Ask.com, or at specialized people search databases and social networks.

It is quite easy to search private information on Internet on almost everyone. As you will see next, there are hundreds people search or background check websites on the Internet. You can make a background check on a lost friend, a missing relative, a potential date, a new neighbor, a prank caller, a ruthless car driver, an unknown mobile number, an unlisted phone number, your boss, your coworker, or strangers you never meet.

On the flip side, not only you can find anything about others, people can also find anything about you - which includes your personal records and private information.

Creditors, banks, political parties use your personal data for legitimate purpose. However, unscrupulous individuals and criminals can use the same information to harm you and your family. With the full availability of your personal information, your identity can be stolen or exploited in illegal activities such as identity theft, predatory marketing, credit fraud, Internet stalking, and etc. It is very important to utilize an online identity protection company such as LifeLock to monitor and protect your identity continuously.

Online identity thieves always try to steal your personal and financial information. With the cost of several dollar or even free, they can also obtain your information legally from online background check sites. The personal information available at these sites are not basic information about your name, address, or phone numbers, the information obtained at these sites are serious Personal and Private Information. To many people, the availability of these information on Internet invades their privacy and could potentially put their family and children on the risk.

What kind of personal information can people see about you? A picture worth thousands words. This is what the search result looks like with reverse phone number lookup at the popular people search site – Intelius:

At most background check and people search sites, a comprehensive background search on a person may include:

* Up-to-date contact information includes address history, phone numbers, cell phone numbers , email addresses, and P.O. box;
* Names and alias used;
* Relatives, household members, neighbors, and associates;
* Marital, family status, marriage history, marriage / divorce records;
* Nationwide criminal record check, sex offender check;
* Bankruptcies, liens, judgments, court records: dates, parties, lawyer names for both parties, verdicts;
* Criminal & background records. police files, arrest records jail records, inmate records;
* Age and DOB – birth records and hospital records;
* Property and real estate records;
* Business ownership and professional listings;

It is true that there are hundreds online people search websites, and even Internet search engines also lead you to background check sites when your name is appeared in their search results. However, most these people search sites are associated with several powerful people databases behind the scene. Do you need to visit them all to remove your information? The answer is no, and it is time consuming and almost impossible to go through every search website.

As a matter of fact, the basic people search data feed at Google, Yahoo, Lycos, Bing etc is provided by one company – a little surprised?

Clearly, the best way to keep personal information off the internet is find the data sources which are feeding these people search sites – find effective ways to stop them from providing your information to the public.

Many folks asked questions such as “Is it possible to block my cell phone number from internet search “How to remove my name and address from Google search engine and people search sites The answer is yes and no – depends on what approaches you use. The truth is, at most Internet search engines and people search websites, you can make a request to remove your personal information through an opt-out process under its privacy policy.

The issue is, with so many people search websites, search engines, and social network websites, the opt-out process is quite complicated and length, the privacy policy is also vague and interpreted differently by each website. Also, if you want to remove negative information such bad reviews and comments about yourself from search engine results,it is a complicated task and sometimes are impossible to get ride of without spending money.

Most Internet search websites are data terminals to display your name, address and other information, they cannot remove your information directly, as a matter of fact, they have to forward your request to their data providers, this is a length process. And no website would tell you where their data feed comes from – their business secrets.

Even if you have found the data source providers, it’s not easy to opt-out your information. Keeping and selling your personal information is their business. It costs a lot of money and efforts to attain, maintain, and update millions of personal records, they need to sell these records to get their money back.

Removing your personal information from these powerful online databases by yourself will take time and efforts. Another reason why it takes so long to hide your information was because some search sites require you to send a formal removal request through a regular U.S. mail. Of course, it can take weeks to get an answer or no answers at all. It makes us wonder why would they want to take this traditional approach in the days of Internet and electronic age. Of course, the laws have not changed much to take into consideration of digital Internet information age. To get immediate results, you may consider to use professional companies to help you as will be discussed later.

After extensive research, the following are some major players in people search on the Internet (not inclusive):

(1) Intelius.com
(2) Acxiom.com
(3) USsearch.com
(4) Yahoo.com’s People Search
(5) Google.com
(6) ZabaSearch.com
7) PeopleFinder.com

To stop people from getting your personal information, we will discuss people search sites and data sources such as 411.com, Intelius, Acxiom, US Search, Peoplefinder, Yahoo.com, Whitepages.com, whowhere.com, zabasearch.com, privateeyes.com, infospace.com and many others in the next section. One section is dedicated to deleting your information from Google search engine.

With hundreds of people search databases and sites contain your personal information, removing your name and personal data from the Internet is a tedious task. As we mentioned above, you don’t need to go through all these sites to remove your information from the Internet. You need to go to the data sources to stop personal information from being searched by others. This is what this article is trying to accomplish – help you get your information off the Internet.

(1) Intelius is a most well-known people search engine on Internet, its targets every Internet visitor. Many background search websites are affiliated with Intelius. Many popular people search websites are associated with Intelius. Intelius sells background information to anybody on anyone regardless who you are (unless you take an action to block it). The famous DateCheck site is also hosted by Intelius. Their reports include your name, address, date of birth, court records, unlisted or mobile number, and other personal info as described in the last section. You can search personal records by name, SSN, or by phone number, etc through Intelius.

As a courtesy, Intelius can ‘opt out’ your specific information from the Intelius’s Search service. Your name as it appears in a particular record and the associated identifying information such as your address and phone number will be suppressed.

To remove your personal information from Intelius, they need some documents from you to confirm your identity. There are two ways to show your identity: (1) You would need to fax a copy of your driver license, you can cross-out your photo and license number, they only require your name, address and DOB; (2) Send them a notarized form confirms your identity.

At Intelius’s website, under their Privacy section, there are instructions on how to remove your personal information from Intelius.

(2) Acxiom.com is probable the biggest personal information data provider behind the scene. It has been described as “one of the biggest companies you’ve never heard of I used to trade its stock – ACXM. From reading their 10Q and 10K annual reports, I learned all big search engines such as Google.com, Yahoo.com, Lycos.com, WhoWhere.com etc are powered by Acxiom. Last year, Acxiom generated over $1.2 billion revenue from selling personal information. If you want to remove your private information from major search engines like Google or Yahoo, this is the first step you should take – have Acxiom remove your personal information from its data source either through your own effort or through other online personal information removal websites.

Acxiom has two databases. One database provide background check for businesses and law enforcements, and another database is provided for general public which powers the search engines. The data for businesses and law enforcements includes very sensitive financial information and social security numbers, your personal information cannot be removed from this database, but you can select to remove your personal information from the general public database. You can make such a request through email or phone call. Visit Acxiom website for details on how to remove your data from Acxiom or email privacy@acxiom.com, check their Privacy Statement. Be warned, it won’t be easy to get it done without giving them more personal information first.

(3) US Search : You might have heard or seen US Search from TV or radio advertisements. Many websites are affilated with USsearch. Like Intelius, they sell your background information to anyone. You can make a request to remove your personal records from them via a postal mail. You need to include your name and DOB in the mail letter. In addition, they want you to list the former addresses of 15 years as well as the aliases you use. As readers pointed out, US Search also require you to pay to remove. The best way to get updated information is go to US Search and check out its new Privacy Policy.

(4) WhitePages.com – just like a regular hard copy white page book, whitepages.com has an online directory which is available to anyone on Internet. The White page lists your name and address in its search results if your phone number is not under unlisted number. This information is not more serious than others mentioned above. Most info can be found on hard copy phone books. You can remove your information via an online form avaliable on their website. In the form, you fill in your name, city, and state, and give a reason to remove, in the drop down list, you can select General Privacy Concerns as the reason to remove. Of course, the most serious personal information can be found at its Sponsor links after your name.

(5) Yahoo and Lycos’s People Search are also powered by Acxiom. If you just want to remove very basic search info from Yahoo, visit Yahoo Privacy Policy .

(6) Peoplefinders.com is a People Search site actually associated with Intelius. The company helpspeople find family members, friends, classmates, military buddies, old flames and most anyone else in the United States. People Finders also provides more than 40 years worth of historical records. Peoplefinders.com require you to write a letter and signed by you with the following information in the letter, your name, address, former addresses going back up to 20 years. Refering to Peoplefinders.com‘s private policy for details on opt-out process.

(7) Anywho.com, Address.com, Infospace.com, 99lists.com, Peoplelookup.com, Phonebook.com, thepublicrecords.com, Zabasearch.com, backgroundcheckgateway.com, etc are all linked Intelius on personal background information check. Most of these sites provide phone number and address search only, but background and personal information check is done through Intelius.

(8) If you concerned about name/address search at ZabaSearch (which shows your history of address changes), you can contact ZabaSearch to remove you information from their search engine. ZabaSearch has an option out feature right after you clicked your name.

This is just a partial list of the Internet people search sites, data providers, and search engines. It is obvious that going through these people search sites and search engines to remove your personal information is not easy, don’t even mention new sites pop up every week. As readers pointed out in the comment area, they had to go through a lot hassle to get them opt out, in most cases, they have to pay and fill out many paperwork to remove their names and personal information, it could take weeks if not months to clear personal information if even possible. So how to remove unwanted informationabout you from Google and people search engines besides do it yourself?

This section has just updated and is dedicated to remove information from Google search results – the most popular and widely used search engine on the Internet. A recent study shows about 54% of the adults used Google to search each other’s name and information. So how to prevent your name, phone, addresses, images, photos, bad comments, and other sensitive information from appearing on google search results?

Google’s main people search data feed is from Acxiom.com. Put your home phone number at Google search box, you can instantly see your name, home address, map, and driving direction etc. How to remove your name and address from this type of Google search results? If you want to remove your name, home phone number, and address from Google’s phone listings, it is pretty easy, here is thelink, choose “privacy concern” as the reason to remove, in my experience, the next day, this information will disappear from its search results.

Google’s search engine robots search millions of websites every minute to collect and index information. Google’s website aggregates information already published on various websites, even if Google were able to eliminate the page in question from Google index through talks with Google or through a formal court order, it would still exist on other websites or other search engine databases.

Do you need to remove sensitive information from Google? Found a dead link in Google search results? Want to help Google to improve their SafeSearch filter? Sign up a Google account, give Google webmaster tool a try. This tool suppose to help webmasters to control information or image that appears in the Google search results. If you find a page in Google search results that lists your social security or credit card number, submit a webpage removal request. Google will contact the site’s hosting company to request that the page be taken down from the Web. Google also take steps to remove the information from its search results, you can also send a request to removals@ google.com to eliminate the sensitive personal information from Google index or cached pages. If everything fails, use Reputation Planet.

If your name or other information appeared on a site that you don’t own or have control over. The first step is to contact the owner of that site or domain and ask him/her to remove or block the content. Only the website’s owner or webmaster can, by removing the content (or including code that blocks Google robots), prevent a page from appearing on Google search results. You can find who owns a domain or website through www.whois.net.

Is it possible to remove all my information from Google? If you want to delete or block all information related to your name from Google search results, it would be a very tough task and maybe hard to do so since there are other people may have the same name as you in the world, in some cases, a formal court order will help.

The following example could help you on removing your information from Google. In a recent news, Johnston County officials in North Carolina mistakenly posted a file with thousands of names, addresses, Social Security numbers and cell phone numbers on the county Web site. Of course, the speedy Google search robots indexed these personal information quickly. Even after the information was removed from the county website, the information was still available at Google search. To remove the information from Google, a judge ordered Google to remove remnants of personal information on Johnston County residents that still show up on Google search engine. Officials said the information might have been online for as much as six weeks before they found out, but getting the private information removed from Google search took a court order, and it is a tough task for Google to filter out too.

Again, all these private information won’t escape the greedy eyes of online data brokers, even after Google stopped indexing your information, your private information can still be in people search databases and websites.

Famous stars, celebrities, businessmen, or even regular Joe are at risk when our private and personal information is easily accessible from Internet.

To get information off the internet search, you have to understand there are many ways that your name, address, telephone number, date of birth, neighborhood information are ended up in online peoplesearch databases.

To protect personal information online, you should take actions to remove your personal informationfrom Internet as mentioned above, but most important of all – be conscious of protecting your personal information daily is essential.

The people search databases are collected and purchased from various public or commercial data sources. Data brokers buying and selling personal information collected through state or county public records, paid surveys, sweepstakes, vacation giveaways, and through confidential sources. Have you filled out a detailed form to win a brand new car at a mall during Christmas shopping? That’s one of the ways data brokers to collect information on you. In situations when you provide information to the government, or to a private company — without a binding assurance that the information cannot be sold or distributed, that information, in effect, becomes part of the public domain sooner or later.

When your computer is connected to Internet, every move you make on your computer, including all of your Internet activities and email browsing, is being recorded whether you realize it or not. If someone else has access to the computer you use either physically or remotely, such as a friend, a boss, a co-worker, a spouse, or a hacker, they can see every single thing you’ve done on that computer and they don’t even have to know much about technology to accomplish such a feat. By simply using one of many common software applications available online, almost anyone can retrace every computer move you’ve ever made.

First, does your PC have an anti-spyware program installed? Does it have the latest updates and pattern files? Spyware (malware) are much worse than virus, their goal is to steal your personal information and take advantage of you. Make sure you have installed a good anti-spyware software program. A spyware can steal sensitive information stored on your PC or hijack your Internet activities.

So how to keep your Internet activities private? It is very important DO NOT let malicious spyware steal yourpersonal information.

Second, have you joined any social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Myspace or other social networks? You may have the public know too much information about you. These days, peopleare spending more and more time on tweaking Facebook or tweeting Twitter. People are updating their status and checking friends’ tweets constantly. That’s all well and good if you have time to spend, of course, on the flip side, the amount of personal information you share in real time with others, and the level of trust implicit with the social networking sites, do pose particular personal security and privacy problems.

Have you posted personal information you don’t want public to see on your personal profile? Make sure you have provided your private information as little as possible on your personal profile at these social networks. To checkout your profile, logout your account and check it as a regular visitor or another user. Some social networking websites DO expose and disclose your email address, name, and location information to the public by default. Very often, your personal information was published to the Internet unintentionally.

In a recent study from security firm Sophos, they found that Facebook users reveal more than adequate personal information to new friends, including ones they really don’t even know or have never met in the past. Using fake profiles, Sophos sent out friend requests to 100 random Facebook users, more than 40 percent users blindly accepted the requests, giving the company access to their birth dates, e-mail addresses, phone number and addresses– quite private information you don’t want strangers to know.

The openness of Twitter–anyone can follow anyone else, and posts are indexed in search engines–makes it a nirvana for spammers and privacy intruders. You probable heard someone was tweeting from the start of vacation and during the vacation – telling the world include the theft where he is about, by the time the family got back from vacation, guess what happened? Not quite smart to tell yourpersonal information on Tweeter.

Third, some websites use techniques to trick users to register their personal information.. Some users want to save a few dollars and provided their personal information. They don’t aware these information in turn were sold by data brokers at hundreds of dollars. These data brokers sell the same information to hundreds of people search databases. Save a few dollars could cost you hundreds of dollars later. Removing personal information from hundreds of Internet databases is not an easy task.

In a recent news reported by CNN, one of the popular social websites – Classmates.com is selling your credit card numbers and personal information to other credit card companies and businesses without telling you. You should not give any personal or financial information to classmates.com, for these have enrolled to classmates.com and paid their premium services, you should be aware what personal information you have given out to them.