USPhoneBook is an online platform that compiles and allows users to purchase public records. This lets anybody carry out comprehensive background checks. The scope of personal data available from people finder sites like USPhoneBook raises concerns, and it’s a good idea to remove yourself.
USPhoneBook compiles a sizable amount of personal details, including names, former names, aliases, birthdates, addresses, work histories, and other sensitive information. This reservoir of data is readily accessible to anyone willing to pay, resulting in substantial risks such as phishing attempts, fraud, identity theft, and stalking.
The privacy risks associated with data broker and people finder sites ought to be prohibited by law, but current regulations allow publicly available data to be compiled and sold without oversight. Luckily, some services specialize in removing your data from people finder sites.
In this guide, we will explain how to invoke your data privacy rights to opt out of USPhoneBook. To help you further, we will also provide tips and tricks for protecting your data and gaining privacy online.
The top data removal service: Incogni
When it comes to securing your online privacy and removing your data from USPhoneBook and a vast network of over 180 data brokers, aggregators, and people-finding websites, Incogni is by far our favorite.
It is operated by the same company behind Surfshark; a globally recognized VPN brand renowned for its commitment to consumer privacy.
We prefer Incogni over competitors due to its minimal upfront data requirement. Other options, such as DeleteMe, require you to fill in lengthy forms and provide copies of personal documents. This makes the onboarding process more involved and creates some privacy risks (more on this later).
Incogni, by contrast, keeps things more straightforward, allowing you to start removing data from the internet without providing your data to yet another service.
Performing data removal without keeping your data on file reduces the risk of data exposure to hackers, eliminates the potential for accidental data leaks, and you don’t have to worry about the company being served warrants by the authorities.
Incogni continuously sends requests until each data broker has either confirmed the absence of your data or has complied with your opt-out request. To ensure transparency throughout the process, you can track your progress using a handy dashboard.
Another advantage of Incogni is its cheap subscription cost. You can opt for an annual plan at just $77.88, which breaks down to only $6.49 per month. That pricing is per person, so if you have multiple family members, you’ll need separate subscriptions. If you prefer a monthly payment option, Incogni offers a plan that costs $12.99.
Incogni is available for users in the US, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe. This sets it apart from many of its competitors, which typically limit their services to consumers based in the US.
How to remove your data from USPhoneBook with Incogni:
Incogni makes it almost completely effortless to remove your data from USPhoneBook and over 180 data brokers. If you have never used a data removal service before, we have included a walkthrough to help you understand the process:
- Register for an Incogni account. You can pick between a monthly subscription for US$12.99 or get even bigger savings with the yearly plan.
- Provide Incogni with permission to manage take-down requests on your behalf. Only minimal info is required.
- Monitor your dashboard: Requests should start almost immediately. In approximately one month, the majority of contacted data brokers should have successfully removed your information.
Once you have completed the steps above, Incogni will carry out all your requests automatically, without any further action on your part. It currently works with over 180 data broker sites and is continuously expanding its service to ensure your data is removed from the most invasive data aggregators.
If you have any questions or require help removing data from a specific service, you can feel free to contact Incogni via email or the form on its website. The service has a bunch of useful resources on its website, including information that teaches you to remove data from data brokers yourself, FAQs, and more.
How to remove your data from USPhoneBook.com manually
Although a service like Incogni will massively reduce the work associated with removing data from people finder websites, you can manage the takedown request yourself. In this section, we will explain how anybody can remove their data from USPhoneBook.
How to remove your data manually from USPhoneBook:
- Head over to the USPhoneBook website and navigate to the opt-out page: https://www.usphonebook.com/opt-out
- Agree to the terms and conditions and provide your email address
- Complete the Captcha to prove you are human
- Click the button that says Begin Removal Process
- Search for the entry you want to delete and click VIEW FULL ADDRESS & PHONE
- Click the button that says Remove Record
- You will now get a confirmation email that says your request is being processed. Removal should happen within a few days.
Please note that the terms for removal on USPhoneBook says:
“I understand that USPhoneBook.com will block the selected record from being shown on USPhoneBook.com. USPhoneBook.com will also endeavor to block public records as they are updated but identifying future records are not 100% accurate and cannot be guaranteed.“
As with other data brokers, USPhoneBook can re-acquire your data. You must check back every few months to ensure your data hasn’t been made available to the public again.
Furthermore, when you remove your data manually from USPhoneBook (or any other individual data broker), it remains available on hundreds of other websites. To completely cleanse your digital footprint, you will need to contact each service one at a time. Alternatively, you can pay Incogni a small fee to remove your data from more than 180 different data brokers on your behalf, and keep it that way in the future. This makes the entire process much less laborious.
How do companies like USPhoneBook gather data?
Every time you search the web, join a new service, provide personal information in forms, apply for licenses, buy a house, get married, etc, your data accumulates in public databases. USPhoneBook and hundreds of other data brokers and people finders make it their business to harvest this personal data.
USPhoneBook and other data brokers can compile detailed profiles of individuals by scraping the web, which means that the data you provide on social media and other sites could eventually end up for sale. They can also enter into contracts with apps and online services, which feed them additional data about users.
Data brokers can sell your data with little oversight and without even questioning why someone wants to access your personal information. As a result, data brokers are often exploited by hackers and online criminals.
Fortunately, data privacy regulations like GDPR in Europe and CCPA in the US give consumers the right to:
- Ask to discover what information a company holds about them.
- Request for their data to be removed
How can I remove my personal data from all data brokers permanently?
Unfortunately, there is no way for users to manually request for their data to be removed from all data brokers in a single step. Instead, you need to approach each service one at a time.
Data brokers continually scrape the web for additional data. As long as they acquire your data from public sources, they are doing nothing illegal.
Anybody wanting to remove their data from USPhoneBook or any other service will need to keep checking back to persistently request for their data to be removed, in case your data is re-added at a later date.
This puts a huge burden on consumers and makes it extremely hard for individuals to gain online privacy without the help of a service like Incogni.
Why should I opt out of USPhoneBook?
No matter which way you look at it, there is no upside to having your data published by data brokers and people finder sites. Chances are they will cause you to get an old bill, or some other outstanding obligation you had forgotten about. Worse yet, they can be used by cybercriminals and scammers.
Data broker websites jeopardize your privacy and allow any person to track your details down. They cause serious repercussions for people attempting to escape abusive relationships, and for influencers with unwanted stalkers.
In a perfect world, governments would crack down on these dangerous services. For now, however, the responsibility for safeguarding your privacy remains your prerogative.
We recommend you do everything you can to stem the flow of data, by using anti-tracking extensions, private search engines, VPNs, and data removal services like Incogni to remove your data from data brokers like USPhoneBook.
Below, we have compiled a list of data that people can buy on data broker and people finder websites:
- First name, surname, previous aliases.
- Present and past addresses
- Email addresses
- Phone numbers
- Photographs
- Your age, date of birth, and potentially a copy of your birth certificate
- Profiles from social media and dating platforms, including your usernames
- Educational and employment background
- Vehicle details
- Hunting licenses, weapons permits, or concealed carry permits
- Professional licenses
- Marriage and divorce records
- Records related to bankruptcy
- Criminal records, speeding tickets, etc
- Voter registration information
- Details concerning your neighbors, relatives, and cohabitants
- Purchase history
- Amazon wishlist
- Evictions and foreclosure information
- Bankruptcies, liens, and other legal judgments
- Assets and properties
See also:
USPhoneBook opt-out FAQs
Can USPhoneBook re-add my information after I’ve opted out?
Unfortunately, the answer to this question is yes. Data brokers are aware of this loophole, and they can use this to their advantage by re-adding your data to their database after a few months.
Data brokers also know that each profile is valuable, which is why some don’t actually delete your data when you ask to be removed. Instead, they remove it from public view and put it on ice. This ensures that when they add you back to their profile, they still have all of your data.
Are people search sites legal?
Yes. People search sites gather personal information from publicly available sources, which means that they are technically legal. As long as the service provider doesn’t use your data for anything malicious, and they do not attempt to gather any private data without your permission, then they are acting lawfully.
Why does my USPhoneBook profile include incorrect information?
Data brokers use automated systems to gather as much data as possible from thousands of different public sources. These automated systems “scrape” the web and scan public databases for information.
Data brokers spend little time analyzing the data they hold. They don’t attempt to verify the data or check the accuracy of the results.
Due to the automated methods employed by data brokers, your profile may contain data that belongs to someone with the same name as you. Your profile could also contain erroneous information if you have ever lied on a form, provided false information, or made a mistake when providing data.
The good news is that false information can be beneficial. The more false data about you is disseminated, the harder it is for people who buy your records to differentiate between what is accurate and what is incorrect. For this reason, we recommend providing fake details whenever it is feasible to do so (when signing into a public wifi hotspot, or other unimportant services, for example).
How can I improve my digital footprint?
Removing your data from people finder websites is only one part of the bigger picture when it comes to protecting your privacy online. Below, we have included a list of tips and tricks we recommend that you follow to vastly improve your digital privacy:
- Review your social media profiles and delete any personally identifiable information like your date of birth, address, and phone numbers. Always avoid sharing personal data, documents, or anything else that can be used to track you down in public profiles.
- Whenever possible, use pseudonyms or provide false information for non-essential accounts, apps, or services.
- Carefully analyze and clean up your online presence by deleting any unused accounts to minimize available data about you.
- Avoid sharing personally identifiable information in public posts or forums where it can be easily accessed, and never, ever take photos of official documents.
- Safeguard your identity by using disposable email addresses and temporary phone numbers when signing up for online services.
- Protect your online activities and communication data by connecting to a reputable VPN to stop ISPs, local networks, and other businesses from tracking you.
- Be careful about the apps and services you engage with, stick to the ones you actually need, and always check app permissions before granting access to your device
- Enhance your online privacy by using anti-tracking browser extensions such as Privacy Badger, NoScript, and uBlock Origin whenever you search the web.
- Opt for private search engines and browsers like StartPage, DuckDuckGo, Brave, and MoreLogin to minimize data collection by invasive companies like Microsoft and Google.
- Consider signing up for Incogni or another data removal service. This will remove your data from people finder sites and data brokers.
