Find every listing that's you and copy its URL
The form doesn't accept a name. It accepts a profile URL and nothing else, so start at spokeo.com and search yourself by name, phone number, email, address or username. Open every result that's actually you and copy the full address out of the browser bar. A Spokeo profile address ends in a slash, the letter p, and a run of digits, and that p number is the listing ID you're removing.
One person routinely has several listings. Spokeo's page says it plainly: you may have multiple listings, each one is identified by a unique URL, and each must be opted out individually. A middle initial versus none, a maiden name, a prior address, all get their own page. There is no control anywhere that removes every record for a person, so collect the URLs into a list first and work the list.
Some listings only surface behind a paid result. Spokeo accepts the payment-flow address instead, and shows that format as an example on the form itself: the purchase URL carrying your name and the listing number. If you can get the profile to appear at any address, that address is what you paste.
Fill in the two fields at spokeo.com/optout
Open spokeo.com/optout and scroll. The form is not near the top of the page. Above it sits a wall of brand copy about controlling your data and using data for good, and the block you want is roughly halfway down, headed Opt Out Your Listing from Spokeo.
There are exactly two fields. Paste the profile URL into the URL box, put an email address you can open into the Email Address box, clear the reCAPTCHA, and click OPT OUT. No name, no street address, no date of birth, no account to create. That part is actually two minutes.
Click the link in the email or nothing happened
Spokeo's wording on the form is the instruction: to complete this process, we will send you a confirmation email, please click the link in the email. That click is the submission. Everything before it is a draft sitting in a browser. Open the email, click through, and if it hasn't arrived within a few minutes look in spam and promotions before you resubmit.
The clock starts at the click, not at the button. Spokeo states on the same page that your opt-out request should be processed in 24 to 48 hours depending on the nature of the request and the amount of data. Spokeo publishes no expiry on that confirmation link, so don't leave it sitting for a week and assume it still works. Then repeat the whole loop for the next URL on your list.
Thatsthem.com is carved out and needs its own request
Spokeo's privacy policy excludes one site by name. The opt-out covers Spokeo.com and other Spokeo-operated websites excluding Thatsthem.com, in Spokeo's own wording. Thatsthem is a Spokeo-owned people-search site, so anyone who files at spokeo.com/optout and stops there is still fully listed, and nothing on the Spokeo form mentions it.
Its form is at thatsthem.com/optout and it's the inverse of Spokeo's: full name, street address, city, state, ZIP, email and phone, all required. You're handing a data broker your current address to get removed from it. The page states requests are typically processed within 72 hours and that you'll receive a confirmation email once complete.
Four more Spokeo properties, and only one of them costs you anything. freepeopledirectory.com/optout serves its own separate one-field form, so paste your URL there too rather than trusting that the Spokeo form reached it. Anywho.com and Peoplewin.com both redirect straight into the Spokeo form, so they're already handled. Family.me has no working opt-out page at all, and that's the case for calling: Spokeo's California registration says its Customer Care agents will complete an opt-out request across all of Spokeo's public websites, on 1 (888) 558-9004, listed on spokeo.com/contact as open 7AM to 5PM PT, seven days a week.
A court record will not come off this form
Spokeo excludes court records from the opt-out entirely. Its policy is that Spokeo does not allow individuals to opt out, meaning suppress display, of court records which pertain to them, unless an Order of Expunction or Sealing is provided. If the thing frightening you is an arrest or a case rather than your address, the form on the opt-out page will not touch it and no amount of resubmitting changes that.
The route is a court order emailed to expungement@spokeo.com. Spokeo says it will suppress or delete only those records specifically noted in the order, and it makes a point that an expunged conviction leaves the associated arrest record live unless the order covers the arrest too. Read the order you were given before you send it, because that document is the whole request.
California residents: file once at DROP
DROP is the only route here that repeats itself. California's Delete Request and Opt-out Platform takes one request and carries it to every data broker registered with the state, Spokeo included, so it isn't a per-URL chase and it isn't limited to the sites you managed to find.
You verify California residency through the state's identity gateway, build a profile with the names and details you want matched, and receive an 8-digit DROP ID to track it. Data brokers were legally required to begin processing these requests on August 1, 2026. They have up to 90 days to report how they processed yours, and after that they must re-check and delete new matching data at least every 45 days.
That 45-day sweep is the part worth having, because it's the only mechanism that answers Spokeo's own warning that you'll reappear, and it's a legal duty rather than the courtesy Spokeo calls its opt-out. Outside California there's no equivalent platform yet, so everywhere else you're back to the form and your own calendar.
Put a date in your calendar, because you'll come back
Spokeo says it on the opt-out page: since it continually receives new and updated records from public sources, your information may reappear in the future without notice, and you should regularly check Spokeo for additional listings that may appear. They publish no interval and they send no alert. The monitoring is yours.
Re-search your name quarterly and opt out any URL you didn't see last time. A new listing arrives at a new address, and the request you filed months ago never covered it. Treat Spokeo as a standing chore, not a task you finish, and the same goes for Thatsthem.
None of this reaches anything upstream. Spokeo's policy states it cannot remove the information from third-party public sources such as phone books, social networks or government records, so the counties and marketing files that fed the listing keep feeding it. The policy also puts Spokeo's business products outside this process, and the other people-search sites carrying the same record are separate companies with separate forms.