How To Remove PeopleConnect Profiles: addresses.com, ussearch.com, intelius.com… & More

How to remove yourself from PeopleConnect

Some data brokers are more harmful than others. The quantity of data they collect, the reach they have helping bad actors, and the level of disregard they have for personal privacy all factor into how worried we should be about a site.

PeopleConnect is by far the worst data broker Kanary facilitates removal requests for. Go to https://peopleconnect.us/ and see their vision statement: The most popular place to learn about people. What’s missing from that statement is “without their consent and despite their protests.”

Sites run by PeopleConnect make up the majority of blocked results requiring attention from Kanary members. These sites include https://www.intelius.com/, https://www.addresses.com/, https://www.ussearch.com/, https://www.zabasearch.com/, https://www.classmates.com, https://www.truthfinder.com/, https://www.publicrecords.com/, https://easybackgroundchecks.com/ , https://www.anywho.com/, https://www.yellowpages.com/, https://www.instantcheckmate.com/. You may have seen them on your ‘blocked’ section of your Kanary results 👿

Why are they difficult to remove?

PeopleConnect’s suppression process requires you to have access to an email or phone number they already have on file to confirm that you are who you say you are. So, if they store [email protected], you’d need to initiate a request, log into your Gmail, click a confirmation, select a profile, then again confirm the request. Dark patterns abound.

And what if they have an old email or inaccurate record? Doesn’t matter. They require this absurd ‘verification’ in order for you to remove data they had no right selling in the first place.

Kanary doesn’t have access to your email inbox and doesn’t believe we should need to have that level of access. But because of this, escalating removal requests to PeopleConnect sites can be slow or blocked.

How to escalate or unblock a removal.

To escalate a suppress or removal request, you can do one of two things. Either submit a request which requires you to verify identity using an email or phone number and your full date of birth. Or contact them via email to report that their process is not working because of issues with their data and their form.

Suppression Form

If you’re trying to clean up your information as quickly as possible, the fastest way to complete the request is for you to directly submit it. It should take about 5 minutes if you follow these steps:

1. Start on here suppression page: https://suppression.peopleconnect.us/login

2. Enter your email, agree to terms and click “Continue.”

3. Go to your inbox and click “Verify Email.”

4. Provide your full birth date and click “Continue.”

5. Provide your legal name and click “Continue.”

6. You will be directed to a “Matching Records” page.

7. Select the record matching your information and click “Continue.”

   1. If you do not see your record, we'll need to escalate.

8. You will be directed to a verification page. If you’ve provided an email matching one, they already had in their system, you will automatically be verified. Click “Continue”.

   1. (If you did not provide an email already matching one in their system, you will see a list of emails and phone numbers they’ve collected about you, and you will be required to verify using one of those emails.)

9. You will be directed to a Control page. Here you will click the drop down and select “Suppressed.”

10. Click “Save” and your info should then be suppressed from publicly being shown on sites run by PeopleConnect.

11. Kanary will rescan the exposure and confirm if the data is no longer publicly exposed.

Escalation Email

If this process does not work for you, you can send an email to [email protected] and cc the specific contact for the site you’re escalating.

TruthFinder.com: privacy@truthfinder.com 
InstantCheckmate.com: privacy@InstantCheckmate.com 
Intelius.com: privacy@intelius.com 
USSearch.com: support@ussearch.com 
Classmates.com: privacy@classmates.com

Subject: Urgent Suppression Request 

Please suppress and delete all data about me. Do not send me to your suppression form - it is not working and has inaccurate data about me. Any record matching the following should be removed from your system per my privacy rights. Here is where you are posting my information without my consent: [link to result] My name is [your name], my location is [city, state], my age is [your age]. If you need further verification, let me know. I will continue to escalate until this is resolved

After sending this email, they may send an automated reply directing you to their suppression form. If they do this, you can reply to that email requesting support and immediate resolution of the request. This should route your message to a human support flow.

We’re here to help.

Our team appreciates your understanding and willingness to work with Kanary on keeping your information private. If you try the escalations in this post and have questions or feedback, we’d love to hear from you on our reddit or email ([email protected]).