Now into the second decade of this century, the risk of your personal information being hacked, stolen, and sold to the highest bidder is exponentially higher than it was 20 years ago. You may already have been notified by any number of corporate behemoths such as—Wawa, Yahoo, Marriott International, and First American Financial Corporation—informing you of what happened, when it happened, and how it happened. You then read that the company is committed to better safeguarding your private data in the future, and your gut starts to turn, wondering whether to untether yourself from the Internet for the rest of your life or feel assured it only happened to one of your online or app-based accounts.
Whether you are an OSINT/SOCMINT investigator working for a client or someone concerned about your own Personally Identifiable Information (PII) at risk, it’s important to know how to “Opt-Out” of sites that collect your private information. In this blog post, we share with you three sites you can access and “Opt-Out,” often within 24 hours.
Radaris.com
Radaris is a comprehensive database that gathers public records from federal, state, and local governments on persons, properties, businesses, and professionals. It allows not only professional investigators to conduct a background check on you with a few key words but also Nosey Neighbor Ned down the block from you.
To remove your data within 24 hours from this website and app, follow these steps:
- Search for your listing by First and Last Name plus City, State, or Zip Code.
- Click on Full Profile to see the details of the record.
- Click the drop-down arrow next to the orange “Get Report” button and select “Control Information.”
- Select “Remove Information.”
- You will then be prompted to create a free account.
- Go through the above steps once again and receive your confirmation email/text code to complete the opt-out process.
If you have multiple listings to remove, you may have exceeded the amount of information you can control. In this case, send a message to customer service with the topic “Technical Issues,” and include the URL of the information you want removed. Radaris will respond stating that your record has been removed within 24 hours.
Intelius.com
Intelius.com is a website that provides easy access to personal public records. The site locates ages, phone numbers, current and prior locations, employment and educational records and a list of relatives. As of this writing, Intelius says their database is composed of over 20 billion public records.
To remove information from the site, simply search for the desired profile through Intelius’ opt-out page. Once the desired profile is located click on that profile and proceed to enter an email the confirmation of removal will be sent to. Once the confirmation of removal email is received, opening the email and following the instructions will grant removal promised within 48 hours.
If this process does not work, contact Intelius through their support contact page, and request for the removal of your personal information form their website.
Mylife.com
MyLife is the only reputation platform focused on making consumers safer and marketplaces more trusted through proprietary Reputation Profiles & Scores. Mylife.com is also dedicated to helping people manage and monitor their own reputation to help them look their best, personally and professionally, to the people searching for them online.
Mylife.com allows for the easy removal of this reputational information from appearing on their website.
To remove personal information from Mylife.com, search for the desired profile. Once the profile is located, email their privacy email: privacy@mylife.com and request what information you want to be removed, such as the entire profile encompassing your information or bits and pieces such as, name and locations. Removal is never guaranteed with this method as requests are sometimes skipped over or straight up denied. In this case, contact Mylife’s support number, (888) 704-1900, and state you have submitted a removal request, but the information has not been removed. Typically, the representatives are very good at removing the information once followed up.
Like what you’re reading? Maximize your online investigations with shortcuts, tips, trending investigative tools, and advanced research techniques for all skill levels at the 6th Annual OSMOSIScon in San Diego, October 11 – 13. Join 100s of other cyber intel specialists and immerse yourself in engaging OSINT/SOCMINT workshops (up to 16 CEUs) and explore the Expo, where on-point solution professionals offer experiential learning on their latest products and services to enhance your research and investigations.
Matt and Trevor are investigative analysts at Hetherington Group, where they use their open source research skills to extract data from social media accounts, conduct risk assessments, and monitor subjects for clients in pharma, tech, retail, and entertainment. Both are contributing writers to Hg’s Data2Know, Industry Undercover, and OSINT Slack channels. On their lunch breaks, they can be found outside playing frisbee with their four-legged colleagues.
