How to stop getting spam emails

Online Security
Written By Lester Dechos

The complete guide to removing your personal information from the internet

Another ding in your email and there you have it: a flood of spam messages promising get-rich-quick schemes or exclusive offers on products you stopped purchasing years ago. 

So you go through the whole rigamarole of deleting: you mark them as spam, move them to junk, click the unsubscribe link, but they keep coming.

 

The thing is that your email address is being bought and sold across dozens of data broker websites right now. These companies scrape public records, social profiles, and other methods to build profiles about you (complete with your email, phone number, address, and more). Then they ship this out and sell it to marketers, scammers, and whoever else is willing to pay for it.

But there is a way to fight back, and we’re going to walk you through exactly how to remove your personal information from the major data broker sites and reduce the spam in your inbox.

P.S. There’s a long way and a short way. The long way is, erm, painful. The short way requires help from platforms like Yorba, who find and delete accounts you forgot about. This won’t get you OFF data broker sites, but it will clean up the number of accounts and personal details you have living on the web. 

That’ll compound exponentially. 

 

The economy hiding in your personal data

Before we get too deep, let’s go back a bit and talk about wtf is happening. Every time you sign up for something, purchase a product, or browse the web, you’re dropping digital breadcrumbs. 

Data brokers like Whitepages, True People Search, and Been Verified have sophisticated data collection systems that harvest your info.

Here’s a quick look into how they do it:

  • These companies aren’t manually going through the web looking for data, they’re using the worst kind of robot (web scraping bots) that scan public records like gov databases, court records, property transactions and all the rest. So whenever you buy a house or register to vote, that information is captured and populated into their system.

  • You think your social media posts are private, but all those connections, check-ins, and images are being analyzed for metadata. Even if you have privacy settings turned on, a lot of brokers can infer relationships, locations, or interests from publicly available info. The TL;DR here is that your mom was right. Whatever you put online stays online. 

  • When companies get breached, data brokers often soak up that info through nefarious methods and integrate it into their systems. That being said, they’re not often housing or selling your passwords or banking data, but the same idea applies to scammers.

The long and short of it is your data is floating around on the internet and it’s being picked up, packaged, and sold.

 

Once they have it, they do a few things to make more money:

They categorize your data based on targeted categories. So if you just bought a house in Spain and you refurbished your Mercedes, you’d be labeled as a high-income professional interested in investments. If you spend most of your money on supplements, you might be categorized as a health-conscious millennial.

Marketing companies, scammers, and other businesses buy these lists. Brokers sell these lists for profit and companies might pay $100-$500 per thousand email addresses, depending on how valuable the targeting is.

But hold on, one quick caveat. You might be reading this and thinking wait…isn’t it illegal for brands and people to buy your data and send outreach campaigns that you haven’t signed up for? It’s complex. 

In the U.S., businesses don’t need your consent to collect or sell your info. Unless you explicitly opt of it, you’re opted in. 

The CAN-SPAM Act doesn’t require explicit consent before sending commercial emails, but they are required to give you an easy way to unsubscribe and they must honor your opt-out requests within 10 business days. 

But let’s be real. How often does THAT really happen?

So anyway, once you’re there, you get a ton of emails you don’t want, and then you try to solve spam with a few common approaches like setting up email filters, clicking unsubscribe links, or even going to great lengths like changing your email address.

But here are some easy ways to combat this (without having to change your identity).

 

Option 1 - The manual way

Step 1: Target major data brokers

The first step to cleaning up your private data is to target the main players that are collecting your data in the first place. Here’s a few key ones you might want to explore:

Whitepages

  • Opt-out URL: whitepages.com/privacy/consumer-rights

  • Process: Paste the URL of your profile and click “Submit Request”

  • Verification: Phone number or email is required to submit the form

  • Timeline: Up to 15 days

TruePeopleSearch

  • Opt-out URL: truepeoplesearch.com/do-not-sell

  • Process: Search for yourself, click on your listing, then scroll down to "Record Opt-Out"

  • Verification: Email verification required

  • Timeline: 48-72 hours for removal

FastPeopleSearch

  • Opt-out URL: fastpeoplesearch.com/removal

  • Process: Fill out the opt-out form with your details

  • Verification: Email verification required

  • Timeline: 3 business days

BeenVerified

  • Opt-out URL: beenverified.com/app/optout/search

  • Process: Search for your record, select it, provide email and reason for removal

  • Verification: Email verification required

  • Timeline: 24-48 hours

FastBackgroundCheck

  • Opt-out URL: fastbackgroundcheck.com/opt-out

  • Process: Fill out the opt-out form with your details

  • Verification: Email verification required

  • Timeline: 3 business days

Nuwber

  • Opt-out URL: nuwber.com/removal/link

  • Process: Paste the URL of the listing you want to remove. Enter your email and follow the prompts

  • Verification: Email verification required

  • Timeline: up to 48 hours

PeopleLooker

PeopleConnect

  • Opt-out URL: Visit their Suppression Center

  • Process: Fill out the suppression form with your details

  • Verification: Email verification required

  • Timeline: 2-3 business days

MyLife

Step 2: Document Everything

For each site, record:

  • Date of opt-out request

  • Confirmation emails received

  • Screenshots of removal confirmations

  • Any follow-up required

Step 3: Follow Up and Monitor

Data brokers sometimes "forget" to honor opt-out requests, or your information gets re-added from new sources. Set calendar reminders to check these sites every 3-6 months and repeat the process if necessary.

Step 4: Expand Your Efforts

The sites listed above are just the tip of the iceberg. There are hundreds of smaller data brokers operating online. Search for your name and email address regularly to discover new listings, and always opt out when you find them.

While this manual approach can work, it’s annoying and takes tons of time.

 

Option 2 - With a little help from your friends

Instead of trying to do it all yourself, you can partner with companies like Yorba to find accounts associated with your email address and act on your behalf to protect your data.

It’s not going to necessarily remove your data from every single data broker, but you’ll get:

  • Fewer accounts (which means less personal data moving through the web)

  • A cleaner inbox (which means you’ll have fewer headaches)

  • More control over your digital footprint (which means you’ll have fewer data breaches and a cleaner digital life. Ahh). 

The thing about your data is that it’s always floating around the internet. Every time you sign up for a service, your data is at risk. Every time you join a new app, your data is at risk.

And we’re not trying to scare you, but the fact is that the less data you have out there, the better.


So while you can–and should–delete your info from data broker sites, you can also take more control over the accounts you currently have (and prevent that data from being sold later on).

If you need help, check out yorba.app/register and sign up for free. Premium users can access the personal deletion agents. 

Lester Dechos
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