It's Not Worth Paying to be Removed From People-Finder Sites, Study Says

hubie writes:

The best removal rate was less than 70%, and that didn't beat manual opt-outs:

If you've searched your name online in the last few years, you know what's out there, and it's bad. Alternately, you've seen the lowest-common-denominator ads begging you to search out people from your past to see what crimes are on their record. People-search sites are a gross loophole in the public records system, and it doesn't feel like there's much you can do about it.

Not that some firms haven't promised to try. Do they work? Not really, Consumer Reports (CR) suggests in a recent study.

"[O]ur study shows that many of these services fall short of providing the kind of help and performance you'd expect, especially at the price levels some of them are charging," said Yael Grauer, program manager for CR, in a statement.

Consumer Reports' study asked 32 volunteers for permission to try to delete their personal data from 13 people-search sites, using seven services over four months. The services, including DeleteMe, Reputation Defender from Norton, and Confidently, were also compared to "Manual opt-outs," i.e. following the tucked-away links to pull down that data on each people-search site. CR took volunteers from California, in which the California Consumer Privacy Act should theoretically make it mandatory for brokers to respond to opt-out requests, and in New York, with no such law, to compare results.

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