Guide How to remove your info from Intelius

Intelius doesn't run its own opt-out. The form at intelius.com/opt-out sends you to the PeopleConnect Suppression Center, and one pass there hides you on Intelius, TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate and US Search at once. It's free. It's also a suppression rather than a deletion, and it asks you for more personal detail than the listing already showed. Here's the procedure, in order, and the one thing that stops it working.

Suppressed, not deleted

The toggle hides your Background Report from a name search on Intelius, TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate and US Search. The record itself stays. PeopleConnect's own page says suppression does not affect whether the information will be available from other sources, including the third-party sources. Every record defaults to Displayed until you change it.

No ID, but your birthdate is permanent

There's no license upload, no selfie, no notarization. What it takes instead is your email, your full legal name plus any previous or informal names, every current and prior address, and every phone number and email you've used. Then your date of birth, which is mandatory and can never be edited once you save it.

The verification trap

To suppress a record you have to prove you control a phone number or email that already appears in that record. If it's built on a number you gave up years ago, the code never reaches you, the match lands in Unverified Matches, and you're into a manual email queue with no timeline attached.

Go straight to the Suppression Center

The removal form isn't on Intelius. Intelius.com/opt-out redirects to the PeopleConnect Suppression Center, so go there directly and skip the hop. The address bar will read suppression.peopleconnect.us and the branding stops saying Intelius, which is correct and not a sign you've been sent somewhere wrong. Open it in a normal browser window, because the whole domain sits behind a bot challenge and anything scripted gets a block page instead of the form.

One pass here covers four sites. PeopleConnect states the tool manages your Background Report on all people search sites in the PeopleConnect family including TruthFinder.com, InstantCheckmate.com, Intelius.com and USSearch.com. So you don't file this four times, and if you already did one of the other three, Intelius is already done. Search your own name on all four afterward anyway.

Step 2: the Identity page, and the birthdate you can't undo

The link lands you on the Identity page, and this is the expensive part. It wants your current legal name plus any previous legal or informal names you use, all current and previous residence addresses, all emails that you use or have used in the past, and all phone numbers past and present. Write that list out before you start. Maiden name, the apartment before this one, the old work email, the cell number you dropped two carriers ago.

Then date of birth, and it's mandatory. You have to tick "I have verified that the birthdate entered above is correct, and understand that this cannot be changed once saved." Read the date twice before you save it, because a typo here isn't fixable in the tool and drops you into customer support to unpick it.

You're handing a data broker your exact birthdate and every name and address you've held, to hide what it already published about you. There's no way around that: the tool's own floor is "You must include your date of birth and name to see any results." Leave the field empty and there's nothing to suppress.

Step 3: verify a phone or email that's already in the report

Before anything can be suppressed you have to prove you control at least one contact point that already appears in the report on you, and the verification controls don't exist until you save. While you're still filling the form, the page's own instruction reads "Once you've entered the information, select 'Save' at the top or bottom of the page, and visit the Suppression Setting page to see your results." So click Save at the top or the bottom of the Identity page first. The page then redraws as a saved view, each entry badged Verified or Unverified with a Begin Verification button beside it. Click that, pick a phone number or an email address from what you entered, and you'll get a text with a unique code at standard message rates, or the same by email, to type back in.

Pick the contact point you're surest of. A phone number and an email address both satisfy it, so if the only number in the report is dead, try an email you still hold before you give up on this route.

This is a second, separate loop from the login link, so getting the magic link doesn't count as verifying anything. Once the code clears, that entry shows as Verified, and you move on to the Suppression Setting page.

Step 4: switch every record to Suppressed

Go to the Suppression Setting page. It runs "Searching for reports that match your verified data..." and splits what it finds into Verified Matches and Unverified Matches. The verified ones are the ones you can act on right now.

It's a toggle per record, not one delete button, and records default to Displayed. The instruction on the page reads: "To control the visibility of a verified Background Report (1) select Displayed or Suppressed, and (2) select Save." Do that for every record in the list, one at a time, pressing Save each time. A record you scrolled past stays live.

Coverage is bounded by what you typed on the last screen. PeopleConnect's rule is that only results matching the information you provide will be displayed, so a record filed under a maiden name or an address you forgot is neither shown to you nor suppressed. Incomplete recall is incomplete suppression, and the tool won't tell you. If something's missing, go back to Identity, add the name or address, and run the search again.

If your match lands in Unverified Matches

This is the failure the tool has a whole bucket for. When the record is built on a phone number you gave up or an address you left, no code can reach you, so you can't self-verify it. The route out is manual: email privacy@peopleconnect.us with the subject line Unverified match suppression request. There's no ticket number and no stated response time on that queue.

Two faster routes exist when they apply. Washington residents with a Washington area code cell phone can call (888) 245-1655 to have that number checked and removed, and the policy says to tell the agent that's specifically what you're doing. Judges, law enforcement officers, public officials and others covered by a state address confidentiality law get a separate and stronger route at privacy@peopleconnect.us, which wants the law you're citing, proof of your status, and the record itself.

Don't spend a day on the wrong lever. The Intelius privacy policy says the state privacy rights it lists, California's included, do not apply to this Publicly Available Information and Public Data, and that the company has voluntarily elected to offer suppression anyway. Intelius also states it isn't a consumer reporting agency under the FCRA. So there's no statutory demand to make over a Background Report and no dispute process to file.

Check it again, and know what it never covered

Nobody can give you a date. There's no timeline in the tool, no confirmation window, no ticket and no service level anywhere in PeopleConnect's material, so there's nothing to chase. Any guide quoting you a turnaround for Intelius invented it. What you control is the toggle, which you set and save yourself, so search your name on all four sites the next day, and again a week later.

Suppression covers a name search and nothing else. PeopleConnect writes that your information may continue to appear in connection with certain features, for example, in phone, address or email reports that are accessible when someone searched by those criteria, or on registered sex offender lists. A reverse phone or reverse address lookup can still surface you. Classmates.com is explicitly excluded from the tool and needs its own visit.

It never reaches the source, either, and that's why these listings come back. The same page states that suppressing your report does not affect whether the information will be available from other sources, including the third-party sources of the information, so the upstream vendors keep selling the same records. A new listing keyed to a new address or a new phone number falls outside the identity you built, and the tool matches on that identity. Go back in, add the new detail, re-suppress, and put a quarterly reminder on it.

The rest of the network still has your address

One pass clears four PeopleConnect sites. It doesn't touch Whitepages, Spokeo, BeenVerified, PeopleFinders or the rest of the network, and each of those runs its own form, its own proof rules and its own way of failing quietly. Personal Information Removal is $399, one time: we file across the broker network for you, then watch for twelve months and re-file every listing that comes back.

Have us do it.

Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee.

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Written by Drew Chapin, who ran all of this on his own name first.