What Spokeo Has on You
Spokeo describes itself as a "people intelligence service." What that actually means: it aggregates data from public records, social media profiles, and commercial data brokers, then sells access to anyone willing to pay $0.95 to $4.95 per search.
A typical Spokeo profile includes:
Spokeo pulls this data from county property records, voter registration databases, court filings, and commercial data aggregators like Acxiom. You never opted in — the data was public, and Spokeo collected it legally.
Spokeo is frequently cited in stalking, harassment, and doxxing cases. Anyone — including people who mean you harm — can pull your address, phone, and family members' names for under $5. The listing doesn't distinguish between a legitimate background check and a threat actor.
Spokeo also runs Ancestry.com data partnerships and pulls from genealogy databases, which means maiden names, deceased relatives, and decades-old addresses can appear. Removing your current profile doesn't always clean up every historical variant.
Step-by-Step: How to Remove Your Spokeo Listing
Spokeo's removal process is more straightforward than most brokers — but there are a few traps that cause people to fail. Follow these steps exactly.
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1
Find your listing on Spokeo
Go to spokeo.com and search your full name plus your city and state. If you've lived in multiple cities, search each one separately. Multiple listings may exist — you'll need to remove each one individually.
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2
Copy your profile URL
Click on your listing to open the full profile page. Copy the entire URL from your browser's address bar — it will look something like
spokeo.com/John-Smith/12345678. This specific URL is required for removal — you cannot just submit your name. -
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Go to spokeo.com/optout
Navigate to spokeo.com/optout. This is Spokeo's official opt-out page. Paste your profile URL into the input field. Do not enter your name or address here — only the URL.
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4
Enter your email address
Spokeo requires an email for verification. They will send a confirmation link to this address. Consider using a secondary or throwaway email — you don't want your removal request to expose an email address you care about. Spokeo won't use this email to contact you after confirmation.
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Complete the CAPTCHA and submit
Solve the reCAPTCHA verification and click Send Verification Email. If the CAPTCHA fails repeatedly, try a different browser or disable browser extensions that might interfere.
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Click the confirmation link in your email
Check your inbox for an email from noreply@spokeo.com with subject "Spokeo Opt-Out Request." Click the confirmation link inside. This step is critical — without clicking the link, Spokeo does not process the removal. Check your spam folder if it doesn't arrive within 5 minutes.
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Wait 24–72 hours and verify
Spokeo processes confirmed removal requests within 24–72 hours. Return to the original profile URL to verify the listing is gone. If the page now shows "No results found" or a 404, the removal was successful.
Many people submit the opt-out form but never click the confirmation email. Spokeo's system silently drops unconfirmed requests. The email confirmation click is required — your listing will not be removed without it.
What if you have multiple listings?
Spokeo often creates separate profiles for the same person across different addresses. If you've moved even once in the past 5 years, you likely have multiple listings — each with its own URL. You need to repeat this process for every individual listing. There's no bulk removal option.
After removing all visible listings, data still exists on 200+ other broker sites. Spokeo is a high-priority target, but it's one of many.
Why Your Spokeo Data Comes Back After 60–90 Days
Here's the part most people don't realize until after they've already done the removal: Spokeo re-adds your data automatically.
Spokeo doesn't store your data independently — it continuously re-scrapes public records databases, county property rolls, voter registration files, and commercial aggregators. When those upstream sources refresh, your information gets re-imported into Spokeo's system and a new listing is created.
In Vanish's internal testing, approximately 65% of successfully removed Spokeo listings re-appeared within 90 days. The average re-appearance time was 68 days. Some profiles came back in as few as 30 days following a county records update.
The cycle works like this:
- Day 1: You submit the opt-out. Spokeo removes your listing.
- Day 30–90: Spokeo re-scrapes county property records, voter registration, or a commercial data partner.
- Your data re-appears as a fresh listing — often with updated information pulled from the new scrape.
- You receive no notification. The listing is just live again.
The public records Spokeo pulls from — property ownership, voter registration, court filings — are updated continuously by government agencies. Spokeo has no legal obligation to keep you out of its index once it re-acquires your data from a public source. Each new acquisition is treated as a new record.
This is why one-time removal doesn't work. You're not erasing the data — you're just removing today's listing from Spokeo's index. The source data that feeds Spokeo still exists and gets re-imported on a regular scraping cycle.
How Vanish Handles Spokeo Automatically
Manual removal is a treadmill. You remove yourself, the data comes back, you remove yourself again. For a single broker this is manageable — but you're actually on 200+ broker sites simultaneously, all on different re-scraping cycles.
Vanish solves this by running automated monitoring and re-removal across the full broker landscape, including Spokeo:
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Free scan across 200+ brokers
Enter your name and location. Vanish scans Spokeo plus 200+ other data broker sites and returns your exposure score within seconds — no email required to see results.
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Automated removal requests
For each broker where you appear — including Spokeo — Vanish submits and processes the removal request automatically. No manual form filling, no tracking spreadsheets.
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Monthly re-monitoring
Vanish checks Spokeo and every other covered broker every month. When Spokeo re-adds your listing after its scraping cycle, Vanish catches it and automatically re-submits the removal — without you having to do anything.
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Freeze action where supported
Beyond deletion, Vanish's Freeze action flags your record against re-population at brokers that support it — reducing re-appearance rates further. This is Vanish's differentiator versus one-time removal services.
The alternative to automated monitoring is building your own tracking system: a spreadsheet with every broker, opt-out URL, submission date, confirmation status, and next re-check date. Then repeating it every 60–90 days. Most people who start this stop within two weeks. The remaining listings stay live indefinitely.
For context on the full scope of data broker exposure — and a detailed comparison of removal options including DIY, Vanish, DeleteMe, and Incogni — see the complete data broker removal guide.
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