Privacy 101 if you're on the job

Why your address is online in the first place

You didn't put it there. You don't need to have done anything online for your home address to be searchable on Google in three seconds. Here's how it got there.

Every time you registered to vote, the state added your address to the voter file. Most states allow candidates, parties, and certain researchers to obtain that file. Downstream, it leaks into commercial broker feeds.

Every time you bought a house, the county recorder published the deed. Every refinance, every tax assessment update, every transfer — all online, all public, all scraped by brokers within weeks.

Every time you appeared on a court document — civil suit, divorce filing, traffic court, sworn statement — the address that appeared on the filing went into the public record. Court-record aggregators scrape these continuously.

Every utility bill, every credit card, every address you've ever used. It's all in commercial data sets. Brokers buy them. None of this required your permission.

The result: your name and home address are on dozens of broker pages. Anyone with a credit card — and for some sites, anyone at all — can pull the file in 30 seconds.

What "data brokers" actually are

Data brokers are websites that scrape your personal information from public records and commercial data sets, then sell it. The category includes:

• People-search sites like Spokeo, Whitepages, TruePeopleSearch, BeenVerified, MyLife. The free preview shows your name, address, and relatives. The paid report adds court records, criminal history, and contact info.
• Background-check sites like Intelius, TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate. Same data, marketed at landlords and HR.
• Reverse-lookup sites like USPhoneBook, ThatsThem. Search a phone or an email and get back your name and address.
• Aggregators like ClustrMaps and VoterRecords that overlay address data on a map or republish voter files directly.

There are about 200 broker sites that matter for first responders. Some are bigger than others. All of them are searchable by anyone willing to pay or, for many, by anyone with a browser.

The 5 sites you should know

If you only check five, check these:

1. Spokeo — the household name. Heavy SEO presence; usually the top result for any name search.
2. Whitepages — second most-cited; offers the paid Premium tier with deeper data.
3. TruePeopleSearch — free, no signup, no paywall. The site a stranger ends up on.
4. BeenVerified — deep background-check data; includes court and criminal records.
5. Radaris — known to slow-walk opt-outs and re-list aggressively. FTC settled an action against them in 2023.

Run a free scan to see all 200+ at once.

Past addresses linger

Most officers don't realize their address from eight years ago still shows up tied to their current name. Brokers maintain prior-address history going back decades. A defendant looking you up today can find where you lived during academy, where you lived during your first marriage, and where you live now — all on the same page.

The same applies to past employers, past family addresses, and the address of an adult kid who used to live with you. Anything that ever connected to your name is in the database somewhere.

What you can do today, free

Three things, no signup, no upsell:

1. Run a free scan on your name. It tells you which brokers currently have your information. No account required, no email required.
2. File the public-records confidentiality election with each agency that holds your records. Your department, your county clerk, your appraisal district, your elections office. Most states have an election form for sworn personnel. Free. Takes ten minutes per agency.
3. Lock down your social media. No location tagging, no public bio that includes your employer, no tagged photos at recognizable home locations. Family members on your accounts should do the same.

That's the first hour of work. It locks down what state agencies hand out going forward, and gives you a baseline view of what's out there on you.

What we do that you can't easily do alone

The broker opt-out flows aren't hard. They're just numerous, repetitive, and never finished. Most officers can do the first round on their own in a Saturday afternoon. Doing it forever, every two weeks, is the part that breaks people.

The every-two-weeks part is what we do. We file across 200+ broker sites, click the verification emails through a managed inbox, and re-check every two weeks. When a broker re-lists you — and most do inside 3-6 months — we file again the same day.

No countdown timers, no fake scarcity. The tool either fits your situation or it doesn't.

When to think about this for your family

Your spouse, your kids, your parents are usually findable through you. Brokers structure the data so a search on your name returns your relatives. A search on any one of them returns you. Why this matters: when an adversary can't reach you, they sometimes reach for the family.

Run the scan on your spouse's name. The result is usually more surprising to them than to you. We sweep the whole household — spouse, parents, adult kids if they live with you — for the same reason brokers list them: closing one address closes the others.

For NJ officers, Daniel's Law — a state statute that lets covered officers, judges, and prosecutors force brokers to remove their home address — explicitly covers spouses, parents, and minor children living with you. The federal Lieu Act covers immediate family of federal judges. For everyone else, the standard broker opt-out path covers the household the same way.

Laws that work for you

• Daniel's Law (NJ) — you can sue a data broker yourself. $1,000 per violation. Covers active and retired sworn personnel, judges, prosecutors, and their spouses, parents, and minor children. The strongest tool in this space.
• Lieu Act (federal) — Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act. Covers federal judges and immediate family. Enroll through the AOUSC for batched broker demands.
• NY Civil Rights Law §50-a (repealed 2020 but the historical context still matters for NY officers).
• CA Safe at Home, TX ACP, FL Marsy's Law — state-level address-confidentiality programs. Each has specific eligibility requirements; see the linked pages.
• DPPA (federal) — restricts what state DMVs can disclose. Civil cause of action against anyone who pulled your DMV record without a permitted purpose.

For your state, check /states. About 14 states have Daniel's-Law-style statutes now. Most cover only judges; NJ, NE, and FL have the broadest coverage.