How to remove your home address from the internet

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You searched your name. Your address came up, maybe your spouse's name, your kids' ages, a map of your street. Now you want it gone.

You can get most of it down. But "get it down" isn't one action. Your address doesn't live in one place. It lives in three, and each one needs a different fix.

This guide is the map. Read it once, then go handle each piece.

The three places your address lives

Data broker and people-search sites. Spokeo, Whitepages, TruePeopleSearch, BeenVerified, and hundreds more. These sites buy and scrape public records, then package your name, address, phone, relatives, and property value into a free or cheap report. This is the biggest chunk of your exposure and the fastest to fix.

Public records aggregators. County assessor sites, voter rolls, court dockets, and property tax records. This is the source data the brokers scrape from. Some of it you can shield directly, through an Address Confidentiality Program if your state runs one. An Address Confidentiality Program is a state service that gives you a substitute mailing address so your real one stays off public records. You can also shield some records by filing specific exemption paperwork with the county. The rest you can't remove, only make harder to link back to you.

Old social media and forum posts. A check-in from 2013. A local Facebook group post with your street name in it. A Nextdoor comment. A property you tagged on Instagram. Nobody scrapes this systematically, but it's the piece that shows up when someone specifically searches your name.

Three different problems, three different fixes. Most people handle only the first one and think they're done.

Why deleting it once doesn't work

Opting out of a broker site isn't a one-time job.

Brokers don't hand-maintain your listing. They run automated feeds that pull fresh data from public records every few months. Your opt-out removes today's listing. It doesn't stop the next feed from adding you back.

Refresh timing varies by site. Some pull new data every few months, some sooner. Across hundreds of sites, a listing you cleared can be back before you ever notice. That's the trap. Most people opt out once, feel covered for a few weeks, then stop checking. A year later they're listed again and don't know it.

What to actually do about each one

Data brokers: opt out yourself or automate it. For the eight biggest sites, you can handle the opt-outs yourself. Our guide on opting out of the major brokers walks through each one: the exact form, what it catches you on, and how to confirm it stuck. Past those eight, there are hundreds more, most of them smaller and harder to find.

Public records: know what's actually shieldable. If you're sworn law enforcement, corrections, or in some states a judge or prosecutor, you likely qualify for an Address Confidentiality Program or a records exemption tied to your job. That's a state-by-state filing, not a website opt-out. See privacy 101 on the job for how that process works and what it does and doesn't cover.

Old posts: manual cleanup, no shortcut. Search your own name and address together. Check Nextdoor, local Facebook groups, old check-ins, and tagged photos. Delete what you can, and ask group admins to pull what you can't. This one has no automation. It's you and a search bar. If your address also leaks through a spouse's or kid's account, the family privacy stack covers locking down the whole household.

Where the free scan and full removal fit

If you want to know where you actually stand before doing anything, run a free scan. It checks the major broker sites against your name and tells you what's live right now. There's no point opting out of eight sites when only four of them have you.

From there you have two paths. Do the broker opt-outs yourself and repeat the cycle every few months. Or let removal run in the background: we monitor the same sites, catch the re-listings, and file the opt-outs again. We handle most of that process and tell you clearly when a site needs something from you.

The public records piece and the old-post cleanup stay yours to handle. No service files an Address Confidentiality Program application or deletes your old Facebook check-ins for you. What we take off your plate is the part that never ends, the broker sites that keep coming back.

Your address belongs to you. Getting it back means covering all three fronts, not just the easy one.