How to keep yourself safe in a world of creepy websites filled with personal data
In an era dominated by tales of embarrassing and politically devastating email hacks, the need to protect yourself online is all the more real.
From phone numbers and addresses to the names of your parents and relatives, your personal information is sitting on a number of websites, for anyone to peruse and misuse.
But there's a way to stop it.
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Genealogy websites like FamilyTreeNow and people-search sites like Spokeo all publish this sort of info by pulling it from public records. Some of them make this material even easier to access than others. For instance, FamilyTreeNow is free and you don't even need to sign up.
This means basically anyone with internet access can very easily get hold of your personal info — all they need to do is fill in the name and city. Even information like the names of co-workers and addresses dating back over 50 years can be found.
But it's not all bad. In many cases, you can go to the sites directly and remove your information.
On Tuesday, writer Anna Britain tweeted a warning message that's since gone viral, offering a quick and easy way to get your most sensitive information off of one site in particular: FamilyTreeNow.
📢 ONLINE SAFETY THREAD 📢
Heads up. This is super important.— Anna Brittain (@Almost_Anna) January 10, 2017
2) *your spouse
*your children
*your extended family members
*your last several addresses & the dates you lived there (mine went back 10yrs)— Anna Brittain (@Almost_Anna) January 10, 2017
If you visit the FamilyTreeNow website, you can see everything that's available about you by just filling in your name and state on the first page. Go have a look. It's frightening.
If you don't want this personal info just floating around for anyone else to see, you can "opt out" by visiting the privacy settings, as Brittain explains in the online safety thread.
On any page of the website, you can scroll down to the very bottom and you'll see the word "Privacy." Click on that.
It will take you to a page about privacy that has a lot of text. You need to scroll down about halfway to a section that looks like the image below. Where it says "Opt Out of Living People Records," you want to click on the link that says "opt out here."
The next page will give instructions on how to opt out of releasing all your records to the site.
From there, you just follow the 4-step process and the records will be removed. By the end of it, you should end up at a screen that looks like the image below.
And 'opting out' is an option you have at other websites, too.
Spokeo also has an opt-out form, and it's found on the Privacy page just like FamilyTreeNow.
Another popular people-search site, aptly called PeekYou, also allows you to fairly easily remove your information by filling out an opt-out form, which is linked towards the top of the site's privacy page.
On WhitePages, the process is a bit more difficult but still doable. If you scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Help, you can find instructions on the next page that show how to remove your listing. It does require creating a login, but could be well worth it. The full opt-out instructions can be found here.
Instant Checkmate meanwhile is a people-search site that mostly flaunts its vast data tank of arrest records and criminal filings. However, it does not appear to offer an opt-out form, and instead, its privacy policy page just advises you to email unsubscribe@instantcheckmate.com to have your info removed.
You never know where that very sensitive info may be hiding, so you might just want to take a look. And opt out.
