Can you remove phone number/address from public people searches?
June 2, 2017 7:32 AM Subscribe
I searched my phone number/address on a free public website (bnverified), and I'm surprised how much information comes up associated with mostly my cell phone number to include old e-mail addresses, several mailing addresses (one of which is in a state I have never even visited), and other personal information. When I search others phone numbers sometimes the results come back and say they are private, or unidentified... is there a way to change your number to unidentified or remove yourself or certain information from these free people searches? Or would my only choice be to get a new phone number? I just don't like how easy it is for someone to type in my phone number or address and learn so much about me. Can you change your phone number to private? Anyone have any ideas?
Get a cabin in the woods and live off the grid? Seriously, welcome to surveillance economy. Anybody can scrape publicly available information and package it up for resale, or try to "add value" by correlating it with other data. Google is now correlating your moves in the physical world with their ads. If you see an ad for a lawn mower and them you buy one the following weekend at Home Depot, Google that can track that. Facebook too. It's the new reality and it's probably only going to get more invasive, especially here in the US where privacy is just another thing for sale.
Your phone number and address were published in the phone book for decades, so this isn't really new. It's just much more accessible to everybody.
So basically, nothing you can do without making incredibly drastic lifestyle changes.
posted by COD at 8:37 AM on June 2, 2017 [4 favorites]
Your phone number and address were published in the phone book for decades, so this isn't really new. It's just much more accessible to everybody.
So basically, nothing you can do without making incredibly drastic lifestyle changes.
posted by COD at 8:37 AM on June 2, 2017 [4 favorites]
Getting your information off data aggregation sites is like Whack a Mole. Many if not all of the major sites that collect this information have some sort of opt out feature in exchange for jumping through various hoops, but as soon as you get your information off one site, it'll pop back up on another.
There are a few things you can try to mitigate it, though.
You can get a new number and pay for it to be unlisted and unpublished, and then you guard it carefully. Don't give it out to businesses or even to friends who are rude and sloppy with others' information, because if someone who has your information runs a contact scraper, your information can get out that way. Maybe you could get a free number that you can forward to your real number, and give out the free number instead and then recycle that free number periodically. (I once had some relatives manually enter a ton of my private information, including my unlisted number, into some corporate database in order to send me an invitation to some awful thing, so believe me, all the work you do can and likely will be undone by the biggest dingleberry who has your info.)
You can go through all the organizations you do business with and find their opt out policies and procedures and opt out of what you can. Many, many of the companies that have your information are running side businesses selling your information to marketers and data brokers.
Here's an article from the World Privacy Forum about opting out. See the data broker opt outs in particular. Those are the companies that are responsible for your information being publicly searchable.
It's an uphill battle. You'll never totally win, and there are virtually no real privacy regulations in the US* protecting us from predatory dataminers. But you can sometimes obfuscate and mess up the data they already have. So if you see something wrong in one of your reports, don't correct it. It's not your job to fix their database, and having incorrect information on your records can obfuscate your real information a little.
* I'm assuming you're in the US simply because this is happening to you. Because we suuuuuuck at individual privacies, and the ultimate irony is that we will never fully know just how much of our personal information is available and what's being done with it because that information is considered trade secrets, which are privacy protections for corporations.
posted by ernielundquist at 8:58 AM on June 2, 2017 [3 favorites]
There are a few things you can try to mitigate it, though.
You can get a new number and pay for it to be unlisted and unpublished, and then you guard it carefully. Don't give it out to businesses or even to friends who are rude and sloppy with others' information, because if someone who has your information runs a contact scraper, your information can get out that way. Maybe you could get a free number that you can forward to your real number, and give out the free number instead and then recycle that free number periodically. (I once had some relatives manually enter a ton of my private information, including my unlisted number, into some corporate database in order to send me an invitation to some awful thing, so believe me, all the work you do can and likely will be undone by the biggest dingleberry who has your info.)
You can go through all the organizations you do business with and find their opt out policies and procedures and opt out of what you can. Many, many of the companies that have your information are running side businesses selling your information to marketers and data brokers.
Here's an article from the World Privacy Forum about opting out. See the data broker opt outs in particular. Those are the companies that are responsible for your information being publicly searchable.
It's an uphill battle. You'll never totally win, and there are virtually no real privacy regulations in the US* protecting us from predatory dataminers. But you can sometimes obfuscate and mess up the data they already have. So if you see something wrong in one of your reports, don't correct it. It's not your job to fix their database, and having incorrect information on your records can obfuscate your real information a little.
* I'm assuming you're in the US simply because this is happening to you. Because we suuuuuuck at individual privacies, and the ultimate irony is that we will never fully know just how much of our personal information is available and what's being done with it because that information is considered trade secrets, which are privacy protections for corporations.
posted by ernielundquist at 8:58 AM on June 2, 2017 [3 favorites]
Don't give it out to businesses or even to friends who are rude and sloppy with others' information
Don't give it to people who will put it in their phones, because Facebook (and presumably other apps) will scrape their contact info, and god knows what they do with it.
So realistically, there is no way to stop it altogether, if you want to own a phone.
posted by AFABulous at 10:01 AM on June 2, 2017 [4 favorites]
Don't give it to people who will put it in their phones, because Facebook (and presumably other apps) will scrape their contact info, and god knows what they do with it.
So realistically, there is no way to stop it altogether, if you want to own a phone.
posted by AFABulous at 10:01 AM on June 2, 2017 [4 favorites]
Facebook is incredibly sleazy and intrusive, and it does sell your and your contacts' personal information. But it is very unlikely that they're the ones selling your phone number to those publicly available people finder sites, primarily because your personal information is much more valuable to them if they keep it fairly proprietary by selling it in 'anonymized' form for targeted advertising. They also, if I'm not mistaken, have privacy controls for users, so if you have an account, you can set that yourself, and it's always bad publicity for them when that stuff gets leaked out. And while they keep shadow profiles on non-users, they're really cagey about it and almost definitely wouldn't go selling that information to random people finder sites, because that'd draw attention to it. They are selling your information, but not the way that people seem to think.
You're at much greater risk from lesser known sources, such as sketchy little game apps and things like that that depend on technically naive people not to even read the permissions before installing them. So if you did want to put in the effort to get your personal information more private, you could limit your real contact information to people you trust with it, and use throwaway numbers for the rest.
posted by ernielundquist at 6:48 PM on June 2, 2017
You're at much greater risk from lesser known sources, such as sketchy little game apps and things like that that depend on technically naive people not to even read the permissions before installing them. So if you did want to put in the effort to get your personal information more private, you could limit your real contact information to people you trust with it, and use throwaway numbers for the rest.
posted by ernielundquist at 6:48 PM on June 2, 2017
Don't give it to people who will put it in their phones, because Facebook (and presumably other apps) will scrape their contact info, and god knows what they do with it.
Facebook and companies aren't really the issue here. Leftists activists were getting doxxed in my area by fascists recently. All you need is a name, and bam, fascists can find your home address within the first few pages of Google, and then post it to all their online communities, and all of a sudden thousands of crazed fascists know where you live.
posted by Dalby at 10:57 AM on June 3, 2017
Facebook and companies aren't really the issue here. Leftists activists were getting doxxed in my area by fascists recently. All you need is a name, and bam, fascists can find your home address within the first few pages of Google, and then post it to all their online communities, and all of a sudden thousands of crazed fascists know where you live.
posted by Dalby at 10:57 AM on June 3, 2017
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Candleman at 8:15 AM on June 2, 2017