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Here’s a true story about why it’s so important to regularly Google yourself.

The other day I Googled myself, which I do monthly to manage my personal brand, and to my surprise, I saw my age, my current address, all of my past addresses, the names of my family members and my emails and phone number listed publicly on TruePeopleSearch.

True People Search aggregates personal information – name, age, past addresses, relatives and more – from public records and puts it all in one place, making it easily searchable. Too easily searchable and viewable for me.

I can’t think of one good reason why my home address and my relatives’ names need to be online.

I recommend that anyone looking to protect their personal information online is to go through the True People Search removal process.

There are a number of reasons for this.

  1. They share a vast amount of personal info that can be used for harmful purposes
  2. It’s totally free (this is a big one)

It can be disconcerting to see so much personal information on one page, but fortunately the site gives you the option to have your information removed. To do so, navigate to the removal page here.

After checking off a disclaimer and verifying that you’re not a robot, you’ll be able to pull up your record and flag it for removal.

TruePeopleSearch says records should be removed from the site “within a few hours” after the request is submitted.

  1. To remove your record, follow these instructions.
  2. Agree to the terms and check the “I’m not a robot button”
  3. Click the ‘begin’ button
  4. Search for your record, click on the details button to bring up your record detail
  5. At the bottom of the record detail page click the ‘remove this record’ button. If you don’t see that button you are either on the wrong page or your session expired (in which case start over)
  6. You will receive an email with a link, click on the link to confirm your removal request
  7. Your record will be removed on the site within 72 hours.

Make sure you Google yourself today and remove yourself if you find that you are listed on these nuisance websites that invade our personal privacy.

Here’s a video with more about it what happened to me.