Yonkers, NY – A Consumer Reports study into the effectiveness of people-search removal services, which can range in cost from $19.99 to $249 per year, found many of them largely ineffective.
People-search sites are a type of data broker that collects data from public records, commercial data sources, and even social media websites. While much of this information is compiled from public sources, bundling it all together and making it so easily accessible can make people feel their privacy has been violated, or they might worry about what may happen if the information gets into the wrong hands. This has led to an industry of services that claim they can help you remove your personal information from these sites.
“People-search sites collect information that was never shared voluntarily with the sites, and they create profiles of private individuals without their knowledge or consent,” said Yael Grauer, a program manager for Consumer Reports. “These kinds of data brokers can pose a real danger by making it easier for stalkers or harassers to find and contact you, facilitating identity theft, and revealing personal information you’d prefer to keep private.”
Grauer said, “It’s not surprising that many companies are taking advantage of this situation by offering services that claim they can erase or reduce the information collected by the sites. But our study shows that many of these services fall short of providing the kind of help and performance you’d expect, especially at the price levels some of them are charging.”
CR conducted this study over a four month period using 32 volunteer test subjects, each of whom agreed to allow us to use people-search removal services to attempt to delete their personal data profiles from people-search sites and then evaluate the results. CR used seven people-search removal services to attempt to delete participant profile data from 13 people-search sites.
Key findings from the study are below:
- Private information about each participant on the people-search sites decreased after using the people-search removal services. And, not surprisingly, the removal services did save time compared with manually opting out.
- Without exception, information about each participant still appeared on some of the 13 people-search sites at the one-week, one-month, and four-month intervals.
- Some services performed better than others. EasyOptOuts and Optery did the best, with success rates of 65 percent and 68 percent, respectively, after four months. (Notably, EasyOptOuts was also the least expensive service we evaluated, at $19.99 per year.) Confidently and ReputationDefender did the worst, at 4 percent and 6 percent, respectively.
- Manual opt-outs were more effective than people search removal services and had quicker results, with 70% gone within a week, compared with anywhere from 0% to 58.7% removed in the first week via the people-search removal services.
- The three people-search sites from which removal services had the most difficulty removing data were CheckPeople, PublicDataUSA, and Intelius. The three that were the best at complying with requests from removal services were PeopleFinders, ClustrMaps, and ThatsThem.
CR has long been an advocate for the data rights of consumers. There is currently no federal law that gives consumers the right to “opt out” of people-search sites. CR most recently supported the signing of California’s Delete Act into law, a historic pro-consumer bill that allows consumers to request universal deletion of their information from more than 500 registered data brokers with a single click. CR encourages other states to follow the lead of California by introducing similar legislation that provides individuals with the ability to take back control of their personal information from data brokers.
CR has also developed technical solutions to empower people to take control of their data. Permission Slip is a free app that helps individuals learn about the data collected on them and stop companies from collecting it. Security Planner is a free, easy-to-use tool that helps people reduce the data collected about them and keep their data secure with a personalized plan.
Cyrus Rassool, cyrus.rassool@consumer.org