How to opt out of CocoFinder (and other data brokers)

People-finder sites like CocoFinder harvest your personal information and make it available in an online database. This allows anybody to purchase your sensitive personal information. In this guide, we explain how to opt out of CocoFinder so you can stop this dangerous website from selling your personal information.

Data brokers like CocoFinder sell records of your phone numbers, current and previous addresses, employment history, and even sensitive records like your Social Security number. Scammers can use this data to track you down and engage in malicious activities such as phishing, ID theft, and fraud.

CocoFinder and other people-finder websites pose an enormous privacy threat. Unfortunately, current laws do not protect consumers. Instead, they allow data brokers to sell publicly available data online. This puts you at great risk, so you must take your privacy back into your own hands.

This guide explains how to stop CocoFinder from selling your data. We’ve included the process of manually opting out of CocoFinder. We have also included the best service to remove your data from all data brokers for the best protection possible.

What is CocoFinder? And why opt out?

CocoFinder is a people search website that sells millions of people’s personal information. This worrying data broker collects information about individuals from various public sources and publishes it in a database that anybody can pay to access.

This data broker’s website includes highly sensitive information such as your names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and employment history. CocoFinder will add anything about you that it can find legally in public sources.

This is why CocoFinder (and all other data brokers) put you at so much risk. The amount of data these websites hold is like a treasure trove, and because anybody can access it, scammers can easily use your data to impersonate you and engage in fraud.

It is common for scammers, stalkers, and many other malicious actors to misuse your data through these websites. For this reason, most people nowadays are waking up and wondering how to opt out of CocoFinder and similar platforms.

The risks of being listed on CocoFinder

Having your information publicly listed on CocoFinder is a severe privacy threat. When your data is easily accessible online, you become a target for identity theft, scammers, and other malicious activities.

Even regular people who don’t have a big social following are sometimes accosted by ex-partners or family members they don’t want to see—all because of these websites. As you can imagine, this causes a lot of pain and stress for these people.

In addition, criminals may use this information to impersonate you, commit fraud, or attempt phishing attacks. When scammers already have some of your information, phishing becomes much easier because they can make it seem like they already hold your data, allowing them to impersonate accounts or services that you subscribe to – to trick you and defraud you of money.

We believe websites like CocoFinder should be illegal because of their dangers. Unfortunately, legislators allow these businesses to continue operating with little oversight. This means you need to protect yourself to avoid negative repercussions such as harassment, unwanted contact, or stalking.

Where does CocoFinder gather my data?

CocoFinder gathers its data from multiple sources—public records, social media, government databases, and any other public repository that might hold your data. It searches far and wide to get as much of your information as possible. The more data about you it holds, the more valuable your file becomes, allowing it to profit from you more and more.

Below, we have included a list of sources that CocoFinder can use:

• Social media profiles (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn)
• Public records (e.g., voter registration, property records, court documents)
• Government databases (e.g., DMV records, business registrations)
• Online directories (e.g., Whitepages, Yellowpages)
• Business websites and online portfolios
• News articles and press releases
• Professional licensing boards
• Data broker partnerships and exchanges
• Public forums and discussion boards
• Blogs and personal websites
• E-commerce websites and customer reviews
• Job posting websites and professional networking platforms
• Real estate listing websites
• Obituaries and genealogy websites
• Marketing lists and online surveys
• Vehicle licensing databases
• Court records and legal filings
• Educational institutions and alumni directories
• Charity and nonprofit donor lists
• Phone books and contact aggregators
• Utility records and service providers
• Health provider directories
• Property sales and mortgage records
• Financial records accessible to the public
• Company filings and employment records
• Public government meeting minutes and agendas

Is it legal for data brokers to publish my data?

Yes, they can. It seems crazy that this kind of business is still legal in 2024. Unfortunately, the government is doing nothing to protect ordinary people. This means that you must opt out of data broker websites yourself.

By opting out, you can regain some control over your personal information. However, it is important to remember that data brokers like CocoFinder, Instant Checkmate, Truthfinder, Spokeo, and hundreds more will re-harvest and re-add your data to their database, even after you request removal.

This means that it is only a matter of time before your data reappears in those databases, and you need to opt-out again. Thankfully, there is a service that permanently removes your data from people-finder websites.

The service is called Incogni, and later in this guide, we will explain more about it, how it works, and why it is beneficial.

How to opt-out of CocoFinder: Step-by-step

If you want to remove your data from CocoFinder yourself, we have included all the steps below. Just remember that you will need to repeat this process around once every six months to ensure your data stays removed.

How to remove your data from CocoFinder:

1. Search for Your Record: Go to CocoFinder.com and enter your name to locate your record.
2. Check Details: When you find your record, click “Check Details” to see what information CocoFinder holds.
3. Copy the URL: Copy the link to your record from your browser’s address bar.
4. Access the Opt-Out Form: Head to the CocoFinder opt-out page at https://cocofinder.com/remove-my-info. Click the link to fill out the form.
5. Fill Out the Form: Paste the copied URL, provide the necessary information, and click “Submit” to request the removal.

Once you’ve submitted the form, CocoFinder will process your request, and your information should be removed from their site within a few days. Keep checking back regularly to see whether it re-adds your data, and if it does, make the removal request again.

Tips to minimize your digital footprint

Removing your data from CocoFinder is a great step, but there are other ways to reduce your digital footprint and protect your privacy online:

Opt-out of CocoFinder and other data brokers

CocoFinder isn’t the only site collecting and selling your personal information. To ensure your privacy is protected, you will need to remove yourself from many other people search sites and data brokers. Doing this manually can be tedious, so consider using a service like Incogni, which does it for you (more on this later).

Use privacy tools

Protecting your online activities is easier when you use privacy tools like VPNs, private browsers, and tracker blockers. We advise installing privacy-enabling browser extensions such as uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, and AdBlock Plus. These all help to prevent online tracking and block unwanted banners and popups when you surf the web.

The most valuable privacy tool available is called a VPN. A VPN hides your IP address and encrypts your internet traffic, making it harder for local networks, ISPs, and government agencies to track your browsing. It also prevents websites from knowing where you are.

Using a VPN prevents your ISP from selling your browsing history to data brokers, reducing the amount of data they can gather about you. A VPN also prevents local networks such as workplaces, schools, and public Wi-Fi hotspots from monitoring your online activities.

Limit information sharing

We recommend always being mindful of what you share online. Avoid providing unnecessary information when signing up for services, and use disposable email addresses and phone numbers whenever possible. Services like Google Voice and private email services make getting forwarding numbers and email addresses easy, allowing you to protect your primary account from public view.

Also, remember that you don’t always have to provide real information. For example, when you go to a mall, and it asks you to sign up to use the free Wi-Fi, you can often provide a false name and email address. This kind of protective measure helps to stem the flow of personal information. So always consider who and what you are sharing—and try to avoid it when possible.

When using services like social media, don’t provide your telephone number, address, or other personal information in your profile. Also, ensure that all your accounts and profiles are set to private or friends only. This will make it harder for data brokers to scrape your accounts for information.

Monitor your financial accounts

Identity theft can result in unauthorized access to your financial accounts. Regularly monitoring your bank and credit reports helps detect suspicious activity early and minimize potential damage.

Delete old and unused accounts

Old accounts you no longer use can become easy targets for hackers. We advise that you tidy up your online presence by unsubscribing from services you no longer use and deleting any online accounts or apps you don’t use anymore. This will stop hackers from accessing your old accounts, which could allow them to impersonate you and engage in ID theft or fraud.

How Incogni can help you stay private online

If manually opting out of data brokers sounds like too much work, Incogni is the perfect solution. Incogni automates the opt-out process by contacting data brokers on your behalf, ensuring that your information is removed from all those databases.

With Incogni, you don’t just get a one-time removal, either. The service keeps checking back to ensure your data isn’t re-added, a common tactic among data brokers.

By permanently removing your information from people-search sites with Incogni, you lower the chances of identity theft, avoid unwanted marketing, and can even improve your eligibility for loans and insurance.

Incogni reaches out to over 180 different people search sites and data brokers, including to opt out of CocoFinder. This ongoing process prevents your personal information from being used for marketing, recruitment, profiling, or scams.

The best part? Incogni lets you track the entire process via a snazzy dashboard. This means you can easily see all your removal requests in one place and check how they are going.

Incogni will inform you each time it starts searching for your data and each time a request has been made. Finally, it will inform you when the data removal request was successful.

According to Incogni, it would take 304 hours to remove yourself from all the data brokers it works with. This is a lot of time, considering that you need to do this at least twice a year to ensure your data isn’t re-added!

Keep your data off CocoFinder permanently

Following the link in this guide, you can get a one-year subscription to Incogni with a massive 50% discount! This brings down the price for our readers to just $7.49 per month. This is an absolute bargain for a service that completely cleans up your digital footprint on all major data broker websites.

Opt-out of CocoFinder FAQs