Step 1: enter an email address you can open right now
The first screen is one field. It reads Free - Start Here, Step 1, Enter your email address, and underneath: "Upon submission of your email address you will receive a verification email with a link to proceed." Nothing past this screen loads without that link, so use an inbox you can get into in the next few minutes, not one you check on a laptop at home.
You have to tick the box that reads "I agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, and consent to receive transactional emails regarding my use of the Suppression Tool." It isn't optional, and it signs you up for transactional email about the request. It also binds you to PeopleConnect's Terms of Use, which carry a mandatory arbitration agreement and a class action waiver. Opting out of the data broker opts you into arbitration with the data broker.
Step 2: verify the email, then confirm who you are
Open the verification email and click through. The portal's own step rail reads Start Here, Identity, Suppression Settings, and Identity is the real gate. TruthFinder states what it wants: "You will need to confirm your identity by providing your full name, date of birth, and a phone or email address that you can verify." Their terms add that you must verify at least one email address or phone number to complete the request.
Pick a contact point that already appears in the report they hold on you. TruthFinder's own explanation for why it asks: "If you can verify that you still have access to one of the emails or phone numbers listed in the Background Report, we will be able to confirm the report is a match." An address you've never used anywhere may match nothing and leave you stuck at this screen. Your date of birth is used to find the right record because many people share names.
That's the whole identity check. No government ID, no selfie, no notary, no postal step. If you verify by phone you'll get a text, and their terms warn that standard text messaging rates may apply.
Step 3: set your suppression rules
The last screen is Suppression Settings, and one completed suppression covers four sites at once: TruthFinder.com, InstantCheckmate.com, Intelius.com and USSearch.com. PeopleConnect says so on the Suppression Center itself. Don't file four separate requests. If you already started one on Instant Checkmate or Intelius, you were standing in the same portal.
Know what the rule actually covers before you close the tab. Suppression applies to name searches only. PeopleConnect's wording: "even if you suppress your Background Report, your name and other information may continue to appear in connection with certain features, for example, in phone, address or email reports that are accessible when someone searches by those criteria, or on registered sex offender lists." A reverse phone or reverse address lookup can still return you after a request that worked exactly as designed.
The tool is also revocable, in writing. PeopleConnect calls it "an optional feature made available at our discretion" and reserves the right to restrict it or stop offering it. Treat a successful suppression as a setting somebody else controls, not as a deletion you now own.
Then file the relatives and associates form separately
Go back to the Data Privacy Center and scroll to Right to Opt Out. Underneath the cookie controls there's a second form, and it's the one people miss: it stops your name from appearing as a possible relative or associate in other people's reports. That's how you keep surfacing after your own report is suppressed, because the report you're showing up in belongs to your sister or your father.
The form asks for first name, middle initial, last name, full date of birth, city, state and an email address, then Submit. The Suppression Tool doesn't cover this and won't do it for you. TruthFinder says you'll get an email at that address once the request has been processed.
Check back by name, and never file a deletion request
No timeline appears in the privacy policy, terms of use, Privacy Center or Suppression Center. The sole figure sits in a help article that in the same paragraph sends readers to a nonexistent opt-out page at TruthFinder.com/people-search and describes a manual support-team queue that is not how the tool works. So the only way to know is to look: search your own name on all four sites, and keep searching it on whatever schedule you'll actually stick to.
Here's the trap that undoes all of it. The wrong button is Delete My User Data, and it sits inside the portal you just filed in, at the Suppression Center's privacy center. PeopleConnect states it flatly there: "If you choose to delete your user data, we must delete your any and all suppressions associated with your user," and "Deleting your user information will NOT prevent other users from searching for your information through the people search websites." You have to keep an account with the data broker to stay hidden. The two systems are separate on purpose, and TruthFinder's own FAQ answers the question directly: will a state privacy law deletion request suppress your public data? "No."
If you see yourself again, it can be a new record rather than a broken rule. They keep pulling from the same suppliers, and a version of you carrying a different middle initial, a maiden name or a new address is a fresh record your existing rule may never match. Their own hedge: "subtle discrepancies and inaccuracies in data may also make it difficult to remove everything associated with you." Their instruction when it happens is to email privacy@truthfinder.com, which is a person, not a portal, with no published response time.
If the self-service route won't take you
The report lists only contact points you've lost. Self-verification needs an email or phone that's already in the record and that you can still open, so a number you gave up years ago is a dead end. Email privacy@truthfinder.com or call (855) 921-3711 and say so. Separately, Washington residents with a Washington area code cell phone have a free phone-only route at that same number, Monday to Friday, 7:00am to 4:00pm Pacific: say you're a Washington resident seeking to check for and remove that number.
Judges, law enforcement officers, public officials and other protected persons should skip the self-service tool. Email privacy@truthfinder.com with four things: your complete name, date of birth, city and state of residence, phone and email; the specific law you're invoking; your protected status; and the same details for any covered family member you're filing for. They reserve the right to decline if they can't tie the request to a particular statute, and a denial can be appealed to the same address.
You can't do this for somebody else through the portal. PeopleConnect's terms bar using the Suppression Tool for commercial purposes or to provide services to third parties, so a spouse, an adult child or a hired firm filing on your behalf is a terms violation. The route that works is an authorized agent request by email, with signed written authorization or a valid power of attorney, and they'll email the consumer separately to confirm your authority. Hashed, randomized or system-generated email addresses can't be processed. Classmates.com is not covered by any of this, same parent company or not, and needs its own request at classmates.com/about/privacy.
Last, the ceiling. This hides a display. It doesn't delete anything at the source. PeopleConnect's line is that suppressing your background report "does not affect whether the information will be available from other sources, including the third-party sources of the information." The county clerk, the voter file and the commercial supplier all still hold your address and your relatives' names, PeopleConnect still holds them, and every other people search site is a separate request, with its own form, its own proof and its own way of failing.