Spokeo
A people searchsite that exposes your name, address, phone, and relatives. Here's what they collect, how to opt out, and why it matters if you're on the job.
What Spokeo collects
- Full name and aliases
- Current and prior addresses going back 20+ years
- Phone numbers (cell and landline)
- Approximate age and date of birth
- Relatives, household members, and known associates
- Email addresses tied to your name
- Social media profile links
How to opt out yourself
Direct opt-out: https://www.spokeo.com/optout
- Open https://www.spokeo.com/optout in a private window.
- Search your name and town on the main site first. Copy the URL of the listing that's actually you.
- Paste that URL into the opt-out form. Add a working email address.
- Solve the captcha and submit.
- Click the verification link Spokeo emails you. The removal won't process until you do.
- Allow 24-72 hours for the listing to drop. Re-check by searching your name again.
What Spokeo knows about you
Type your name into Spokeo and you'll usually see the right person inside three seconds. Current address. Phone. A list of relatives. Old addresses going back two decades. Email. Approximate age. Source: public records, court filings, voter rolls, property records. Plus commercial data sets they buy from other brokers. None of it required your permission to be there.
The free preview shows enough for someone to find your house. The paid report adds phone numbers, relatives' details, and what they label "lifestyle data." Anyone who pays $5 can see all of it.
Why it matters if you're on the job
Spokeo is the search someone runs when they want to find where a cop lives. It's free to start, fast, and the result drops your home address inside one page load.
For a sworn officer, that's the file someone walks to your door with. For a firefighter or paramedic who took the job partly so the family had a stable address, it's the same problem. Old addresses pull in your spouse, your parents, and any adult kid who's lived with you. That means your daughter's dorm down the road becomes a search hit too.
How to opt out
The Spokeo opt-out works, but it's two-step. You search the site first to grab your listing's URL, then submit it to the opt-out page, then click a verification email. Skip the email click and the request dies.
If you've moved, search every prior address. Spokeo treats each as a separate listing. Removing the current one doesn't touch the old ones, and old listings still tie back to your name.
Steps are in the optOutSteps field above.
How long until you're back
Six months is what we see in practice. Spokeo doesn't promise removal stays — it promises the request was processed. New data feeds rebuild the listing automatically. A one-time opt-out is not a fix; it's a delay.
If your information moved through a court filing, a property transfer, or a voter-roll update during that six months, you can re-list faster than that.
What we do that's faster
We file the opt-out for you, click the verification email when it lands, and re-check Spokeo every two weeks. When you re-list, we file again before you'd notice on your own. Same drill across 200+ broker sites in parallel, so you're not doing this one by one for the rest of your career.
Doing this for one broker is straightforward. Doing it for 200, on a continuous basis, is what we do.
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