How to Remove Your Name from Search

Remove your name from search and protect your online privacy with our step-by-step guide. 

You may have done a Google search to get someone’s home address. Or, perhaps you’ve Googled yourself recently and have been surprised at the results in the search engine. It’s crazy how much information is readily available!

Your Google search results reveal much more than the address you were looking for. You may get current and previous addresses, phone numbers (cell phone and landline if you still have one), email address, family member names, including parents, children, and siblings, and ex-husbands or wives.

 

You also have the ability to see photos from social media accounts (Instagram, Facebook) and even tweets from your Twitter account, as these are listed in your search results. Google maps will show where you live. Account credentials like user names and passwords may also be found online. Your health and medical info may even be searched.

 

As great as the Internet is for a lot of things, it’s also a treasure trove for people to get, not only their hands on personal identity information, but also account information, data, and other details, including from your Facebook profile, blog posts, or online news article. This information can be used to steal your identity, commit financial fraud, and spread negative information.

Data Brokers Collect Your Personal Information

In addition to your search engine results revealing basic information about you, there may also be a list of websites for people to find out more about you. Your Google search results will list websites that collect and house your data with additional information including if there are any arrest records, court records, and other public records available. These data broker sites, for a price, will unlock a plethora of personal information including driving records, background reports, social profiles/social media accounts, assets owned, occupation, and education.

 

Just go to a site like Truthfinder (there are many data brokers sites, by the way, like MyLife, Rodaris, Social Catfish, WhitePages, and Spokeo, to name a few), and you will get a list of personal information about an individual that you can access for a fee: estimations for income and net worth, ethnicity, religion, political affiliations, mugshots, sexual offenses, bankruptcies, felonies, weapon permits, misdemeanors, and other data.

How Does All Your Personal Information Get onto Google’s Search Results and on Data Websites?

Data brokers collect information directly from websites and apps, or they may purchase it from third parties such as consumer and credit card companies. Sites operated by data brokers are often referred to as people search sites. Then they buy and sell the data. In fact, they have created an incredibly profitable business out of collecting and selling people’s personal information.

 

Some data brokers search the Internet for information and combine it with information from offline sources. As a result, data brokers can gather a tremendous amount of personal information. When you want to remove your name from search, you have your work cut out for you.

 

Sources of Data for Data Brokers

 

Data brokers use a variety of methods, including your IP address, your smartphone’s device ID, and other methods to get info. They look at the following in search results:

 

• Web page history
• Social networking sites and new social media accounts
• Online purchases
• Offline purchases
• Consumer businesses’ warranty information
• Credit card information
• Offline government documents
• Census information
• DMV files
• Marriage certificates
• Business permits
• Lawsuits and other types of public legal proceedings
• Voter registration
• Political and charitable contributions if part of public record
• Bankruptcies
• Land use documentation

 

You May Be Surprised At How Much Data Is Available in Government Records

Public records also reveal a lot about a person… more than we like to think.

 

• Your birth certificate contains your birthday, the city and hospital where you were born, your parents’ names, and even the name of the physician attending the birth.
• If you get a driver’s license, your local department of motor vehicles contains personal information such as your name, Social Security number, weight, height, and traffic violations.
• Your marriage certificate is usually filed in your local county clerk’s office. The public can gain access to such information as the name of your spouse, the county where your marriage certificate was filed and the date of your marriage.
• If you purchased a home, your county assessor’s and county recorder’s office will hold records of the real estate transaction. These files include the location of the home, the date of the sale, a description of the property and the estimated value of the home.
• Court records and arrest records are also public information that anyone can gain access to.

 

Getting and housing this information is perfectly legal. In fact, every time we consent to the privacy preferences policy, we are saying it’s okay to share our personal info. This ends up on search results and on these data websites. The search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) then display your info and list the data broker sites for users to obtain more information about you.

The Risk to Your Personal Information in Google Search Results

While these data sites may be used by some to reconnect with people like long-lost friends from high school or college, they are also used for nefarious purposes. They are used to commit identity theft and fraud by cybercriminals, spammers, phishers, doxers, stalkers, criminals — and even by people who may have a vendetta and want to damage someone’s reputation. This can be a disgruntled former employee, a former partner, an ex-husband or ex-wife, or competitor.

 

In recent years, “doxxing” of public and private individuals has become du jour. Doxxing is defined as the “act of searching for and publishing private or identifying information about a particular individual on the Internet, typically with malicious intent.”

 

“Doxers” are hackers that dig up personal information and documents to expose the real identities of people wishing to remain anonymous. The goal of doxers is to harass or embarrass their victims. They may expose someone’s telephone number, home address, employer, bank information, credit card numbers, personal pictures, and social media profiles.

 

An example of doxing: Scott Bixby, a reporter at the online news site The Daily Beast, published a story in which a staffer for Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign made disparaging remarks about other candidates. In the wake of Bixby’s story, several Sanders supporters launched an online campaign against him and made public the price and address of an apartment they claimed Bixby rented.

 

With so much personal data available online, you’re also exposed to fraud. If a bad actor gets ahold of your email, you can end up receiving deceptive emails (known as social engineering) that dupe you into thinking the message is coming from a legitimate, reputable company or person (like your bank or credit card union). These emails are designed to get access to your bank account, Social Security number and other data for financial gain. According to Experian, 31% of data breach victims have their identity stolen.

 

So what can you do to remove your name from search?

Remove Your Personal Information from Google Searches, Protect Your Privacy and Reputation

Contact Google and Other Search Engines

In addition to watching what you post, including any comments you write on social media, you can make a removal request. You can contact search engine Google to get personal data like your phone number and address removed from search results. However not all removal requests will get approved and it’s not so easy. For example, Google may not remove your personal data from its search results if the information is newsworthy. The info may have appeared, for instance, in a relevant news article – or if it is included on a government website or another official source, Google will most likely deny your request. The removal process involves sending a written request to Google online.

 

Bing, one of the other search engines, suggests you make a direct request to the website owners displaying your private information. If you don’t get anywhere with them, then you can contact Bing via its online Support platform.

 

Contact the Website Owner

You can opt to contact the website owner to see if they will take down your personal information. Often, a site owner will grant your request. Reputable sites exist that will remove your personal information if it’s deemed to be harmful. But other sites will simply ignore your request.

 

Work with an Online Reputational Management (ORM)/Removal Company

You may have no luck with Google or with the web site owner where your name and personal data reside. There is another very viable option: An ORM with removal services will develop a strategy to get your data and info removed, including from the various websites, blog post, social media accounts, cached images, new stories, and web pages that display your private and personal info. An effective strategy includes removal and suppression in addition to creating positive content that ranks high on search engines.

 

Removepersonalinformation.com is a removal company whose goal is to remove traces of private account and info, including names, addresses, children and other family members, ages, places of birth, income, social media, as well as negative information if it exists, such as criminal records and mugshots. Our strategies are handled discretely and confidentially. Each analysis is carried out by reputation experts with more than 10 years of experience. Our team will search the Internet for unwanted or negative content mentioning your name. We will go over our strategy with you, and before beginning any type of online removal, you will receive a detailed statement of work.

 

To learn more about how you can protect your internet privacy and remove personal information from the web, contact RemovePersonalInformation today by dialing 844-445-6096 .