How to Stop People from Finding You Online

If someone wants to find you online, they probably can. Your name, address, phone number, and email are likely published on people search sites, visible in public records, and indexed by Google. You can change that. It takes work, but you can make yourself significantly harder to find.

Last updated March 18, 2026

> What to do

  1. 1

    Find out what is currently findable

    You can't fix what you don't know about. Run a people search on EXPOSE or Google your name in quotes with your city. Check the first five pages of results. Note every site that shows your personal information. This is your hit list.

  2. 2

    Remove yourself from people search sites

    Data broker sites are the number one way people find you. Submit opt-out requests to Spokeo, WhitePages, BeenVerified, TruePeopleSearch, Radaris, and Intelius. Each has its own removal process. Most require email verification and take 24 to 72 hours to process.

  3. 3

    Make social media profiles unsearchable

    Set all social media accounts to private. Turn off the "allow search engines to index my profile" setting (Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter all have this). Remove your real name, photo, location, and employer from public-facing profiles. Use a display name that is not your legal name.

  4. 4

    Stop using your real info for signups

    Every time you use your real name, email, and phone number to sign up for something, that data enters the pipeline. Use email aliases, a Google Voice number, and a PO Box going forward. Keep your real contact information limited to banking, government, and trusted personal contacts.

  5. 5

    Ask Google to remove results with your personal info

    Google has a removal request tool for pages that display your phone number, email, or physical address. This doesn't delete the data from the source, but it removes the Google search result, which is how most people would find it.

    Google removal request tool →
  6. 6

    Monitor for new exposure

    People search sites rebuild your profile every few months from public records. New breaches expose your data on different platforms. Without ongoing monitoring, everything you removed will reappear. EXPOSE monitoring checks monthly and alerts you when your data shows up again.

> Why people can find you so easily

The internet was built for sharing, not privacy. Every account you create, every property you buy, every time you register to vote, data gets generated and stored. Data brokers scrape public records and sell the aggregated profiles. Social media platforms default to public visibility. Search engines index everything they can find. The result is that your personal information is scattered across hundreds of databases, all searchable by anyone with a web browser. Making yourself unfindable requires systematically reversing this process across every platform and data source.

> SCAN_NOW

See how easy it is to find you right now

EXPOSE searches the same sources that people use to look you up, so you can see exactly what they find and start removing it.

Start People Search

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I make myself completely unfindable online?▼
Not 100%. Public records like property deeds and court filings exist in government databases that you cannot control. But you can remove yourself from the vast majority of searchable sites, which makes you much harder to find for casual searchers.
How long does it take to become hard to find?▼
The initial cleanup takes a day or two. Broker opt-outs process within 24 to 72 hours. Within a month, most of your easily findable profiles will be gone. But you need ongoing monitoring because brokers re-list profiles every 3 to 6 months.
Will removing my data affect my credit score?▼
No. Data broker profiles are completely separate from credit bureau records. Opting out of Spokeo or WhitePages has zero impact on your credit score or credit report.
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