Privacy Protection is a subscription based add-on to the Nomorobo app. Privacy Protection helps you remove personal, sensitive, or unwanted information from the web by finding and helping to remove or opt out your information from dozens of people search sites and data brokers. The subscription for Privacy Protection is $4.99/month or $49.99/year, and can be added to your Nomorobo subscription by selecting "See Your Exposed Info" under Nomorobo Privacy Protection on the Robocalls page of Nomorobo.
What is a people search site?
According to the FTC, it is a site that provides/shares information about nearly every US consumer (and beyond)--without their consent--publicly to anyone, usually through a simple search.
What is a data broker?
According to the FTC, it is a site/service that compiles information about virtually every US consumer (and beyond) and resells/shares it to advertisers, ad agencies, marketers, people search sites and more.
Why should you remove your personal info from data brokers & people search sites?
According to the FTC:
-Nearly every US consumer has personal or unwanted info found on data broker and people search sites.
-People search sites and data broker sites can make you vulnerable to serious threats that can cost significant time and money to fix (identity theft, hacks, robocalls/spam, doxxing/stalking, harassment, and other privacy threats).
-Finding and removing yourself from these sites is something everyone should do, but it is a very time consuming process. Our technology helps consumers find and remove personal or unwanted info from these sites - then monitors these sites on an ongoing basis to verify information has been removed and to identify if new information has been populated.
How does the personal info protection service work?
1. Search/Find: We scour dozens of data brokers and people search sites to find where you might have accessible information like your phone number, email address, family members, government records and more that you may not want online or could put you at risk.
2. Help Remove and Opt Out: We help you remove your information from those sources and opt out of its sale by acting on your behalf to send deletion or opt out requests - or, when required, streamlining the process so you can easily delete or opt out yourself.
3. Monitor/Track: We monitor these sources on an ongoing basis to verify if the information has indeed been removed or opted out as well as track them to ensure new information hasn't surfaced.
How long does it take to remove/opt out my info?
The time it takes for a people search or data broker site to honor an opt out request varies. Some sites will remove it within hours, while others take longer, even months. We continue to recheck the site until the opt out request is honored and we've verified the information has been removed - all records we're verified as removed will show under "Complete."
It's possible the site requires additional action from you to complete the opt out process. You can find which sites have pending actions under "Action Required."
Why are you showing me a record that "isn't me" or has partially incorrect information?
It might help to clarify a bit about how these sites work. Data brokers and people search sites obtain your personal information multiple ways, such as purchasing it from other data brokers, scraping other websites, etc. They then attempt to combine records for the same person into a single record on their site. Sometimes they combine records that are actually different people by mistake and create inaccuracies in their own data. Some of that is exposed before the paywall, some is sold after the paywall. The records we return are the records the site is actively promoting when someone searches for you. We will cast a wider net to ensure we are catching all records the site may have about you.
Will you find 100% of my information on these sites?
Our technology is extremely effective at finding records and references to your personal information, however, we can't guarantee that we'll catch every instance. Here are a few reasons why we might not find every record:
• Information submitted is incomplete or incorrect
• A site is temporarily down or offline
• A site has created a record about you after the most recent scan
• A site does not show records due to security rules or other issues
These are all issues a consumer can run into by conducting searches manually. By allowing us to run scans on a regular basis we can minimize these types of issues and make sure your data is found and removed.
Why does a record say removed when I can still find it on the broker site?
There are many reasons this may happen.
Broker sites often have multiple records for the same person and can republish records once they've been removed. It's also possible that the record found is a new or different record from the one removed. We typically catch these records on your next scan and submit them for removal.
It's also possible that the scan was unable to find the information because of a change in the way the monitored site stores or presents its data, for example, showing different results for the same search. The good news is that we continually monitor and rescan broker sites for your records to make sure they stay removed.