opted out of 14 people-search sites in august, three of them are back

Spent a Sunday in August going through the opt-out forms on the big people-search sites. Whitepages, Spokeo, that tier. Roughly four hours including the ones that make you confirm by email and the two that wanted a photo of an ID (skipped those!)

Twelve of fourteen came off within about two weeks. Three of them are back as of last week. Not new records either, the same listing with the same old landline on it.

The reason, as far as I can tell, is that most of these sites don't hold their own data. They license it from a smaller number of upstream brokers; removing the display copy doesn't remove the source, so the next refresh puts it back. Which means opting out isn't a task you finish, it's a thing you redo.

Still worth the four hours. Just wanted to set expectations for anyone about to spend their weekend the same way, because I went in thinking it was one-and-done.