About OptOut Shelf

In early 2024 I Googled my own name and found my home address, my wife's maiden name, and entries going back to my grandparents on three people-search sites I'd never touched. I run a digital marketing firm, so I understand how data gets aggregated. Still a strange afternoon.

I paid for a data removal subscription that week. Then a second one. The first wasn't reaching the brokers where my address kept coming back. I manually opted out of about 50 in total: Spokeo, WhitePages, BeenVerified, FastPeopleSearch, and a string of smaller sites that had me listed despite no obvious source. I kept a spreadsheet: which ones confirmed removal, which re-listed me at 60 days (several did, without notice), which removal services sent polished progress reports that, when I cross-checked against actual searches, hadn't removed much behind the summary text.

After 18 months and a few hundred dollars in subscriptions, that spreadsheet became this site. OptOut Shelf covers data removal subscription services: what they actually remove across which brokers, what re-lists and when, and where the gap is between the marketing claim and what a Google search shows. Tested with my own name, my own data, my own money. Not every privacy topic. Just this one.

Find out more on the author page.

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