How to Prevent Identity Theft by Removing Your Personal Data From Search Engines

Stop identity theft.

Identity theft is becoming a major problem. As more and more data gets linked together online, your privacy is at greater risk. Many common search engines can pull up your name, address, phone number and more with a simple free search. Here are ways to delete your data from several major search engines and help stop identity theft.

Instructions

1. If you type your phone number into the Google search engine box, it will return your name, address, phone number and a map to your house. Scary! Thankfully, Google provides a link below the search result that can be used to delete your personal contact information from its database, or you can go to google.com/intl/en/help/pbremoval.html to do it. Access to this type of personal data can lead to identity theft.

2. The Yahoo search engine returns the same data as a Google search. Yahoo is serviced by a data intelligence company named Intelius. It provides data to marketers to predict Internet trends and buying patterns. Intelius also offers an option to delete your personal information from its white pages search at yahoo.intelius.com/optout.php. Getting your data off these two major search engines is a good start in thwarting identity theft.

3. Search for your information and click on the listing details for your listing at Whitepages.com. Then navigate to "Privacy options" on the bottom of the page and select "Remove your listing." A drop-down box appears, requesting the reason why you are deleting your listing. Select "General Privacy Concerns."

4. Do a reverse phone number search at Switchboard.com. In the Results box, click on the link to remove your listing. You'll notice that several of these search engines are linked to Intelius. The Intelius website indicates that it pulls your data from public records (deeds, phone book listings and tax records). Thus, there is no master database from which it can delete your data. You must delete it individually at each of these search sites. At least the company allows you to block this information from searches (some companies don't).

5. Do a reverse Lookup search at Anywho.com. Click on your name in the results and select "Remove Listing." Anywho also uses Intelius.

6. Do a reverse phone search at Phonenumber.com. Click on your name in the results, go to privacy options at the bottom of the page, and select "Remove your listing." Phonenumber.com is affiliated with Whitepages.com, so if you delete your listing from one of the sites, it may be deleted from both.

7. Do a reverse phone lookup at Addresses.com. Click on your name in the results, then go to "Help" all the way at the bottom. Next, select "Remove my listing" in the menu on the left side of the next page.

8. Do a reverse phone search at 411.com. Click on your name in the results, go to the privacy options at the bottom and select "Remove your listing."

9. Lxquick.com accesses an international phone directory. Click the international phone directory button, select "Reverse" and enter your phone number. Go all the way to the bottom where it states "Lxquick protects your privacy" and click on it. On the next page, go to the bottom of the left-side menu where it states "IPD opt-out" and enter your data. After receiving email notification, verify your opt-out request for it to take effect.

10. Don't forget to check what is available to outsiders on any social networking pages you have, like Facebook and MySpace. You can adjust access through your account page. Consider only making your data available to friends you have approved to keep identity theft to a minimum.

    This is only a start, but it does help block your personal data from common searches. If you go back and try again at sites you blocked, you'll see that the data is still accessible to anyone who is willing to pay for it. You've just made it a little more difficult and expensive to access it.

Tips & Warnings

• If your searches turn up alternate spellings of your name, you'll need to delete each one individually.

• Remember to delete family members as well as yourself.

• Check reverse phone search in addition to name and address search; sometimes phone results are more complete.

• Data pulled from public records could be re-indexed in some of these search engines, so you may want to consider redoing this scrub every six months or so.

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish
• Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
• "50 Ways to Protect Your Identity and Your Credit"; Steve Weisman; 2005
• "The Wall Street Journal Complete Identity Theft Guidebook"; Terri Cullen; 2007
• "Identity Theft, Inc."; Glenn Hastings and Richard Marcus
• "Stealing Your Life: The Ultimate Identity Theft Prevention Plan"; Frank W. Abagnale; 2007