Intelius Opt-Out: How to Suppress Your Listing (and Its 3 Sister Sites)

Intelius is one of the older, larger people-search sites — it has operated since 2003, by its own homepage account. Search a name, a phone number, or an address and Intelius builds a report from publicly available records it gathers from other sources. You did not build that report, and nobody asked you before putting it up.

This one is worth doing early for a simple reason: Intelius does not stand alone. It is part of the PeopleConnect family, and PeopleConnect's own Suppression Center says one suppression covers the name-search results on Intelius and its sister sites TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate, and US Search at the same time. One process, four sites.

The process is free, by PeopleConnect's own statement on the suppression page. Here is how it works — and, just as important, what it does not cover.

What an Intelius report can show

Based on the categories Intelius itself lists on its homepage, a report can include:

• Contact information and location history — phone numbers, addresses, and places you have lived
• Possible relatives and other connections
• Photos where Intelius links them to a person
• Birth and death records, education history, and voter registration
• Arrest records and court records
• Property records
• Finances and assets information

Not every report shows all of that. Intelius' Privacy Policy says its reports are built from publicly available information sourced from databases, government entities, commercial data providers, and websites — which is also why details can be old or wrong. Old or wrong is still personal, and it is still being handed to anyone who searches your name.

Before you start

• The official tool is the PeopleConnect Suppression Center, not a form on intelius.com itself. Intelius' own Privacy Center page links out to it for suppression requests. Third-party "removal" pages that ask you to pay for this are not the official route — PeopleConnect states its Suppression Tool is free.
• You will have to identify yourself to the tool. PeopleConnect's Terms of Use for the tool say completing a suppression request requires providing certain personal identifying information and verifying at least one email address or phone number. That feels backwards — handing details to a data broker to get removed — but it is how the official tool matches you to a record.
• This covers name searches. PeopleConnect states the tool manages the display of your background report when you are searched by name on its people-search sites. Its own limits are spelled out under "What suppression does not do," below.
• Deleting an Intelius account is a different thing. See that section below before you assume an account deletion cleaned you up. It does not.

The steps

1. Check whether you are listed (optional, but useful). Go to intelius.com and search your name. Intelius' homepage offers searches by name, phone number, and address. Note any listings that look like you — you will want to re-check the same searches after your suppression.
2. Open the official suppression route. Either go to intelius.com/privacy-center/ (it opens Intelius' app privacy center), find the Public Data Tools, and follow the suppression-request link there — it goes to suppression.peopleconnect.us/?brand=Intelius — or go directly to suppression.peopleconnect.us/login. Both routes land on the same PeopleConnect Suppression Center.
3. Start the free suppression. The Suppression Center page is headed as a free tool — "Free - Start Here" — and PeopleConnect states it does not charge for it. The first step shown on that page is entering your email address; you then receive a verification email with a link to proceed, and you agree to the tool's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy to continue.
4. Confirm your identity, and verify your email or phone. Intelius' Privacy Center states that suppressing requires confirming your identity with your full name, your date of birth, and a phone number or email address you can verify, and that this information is used only for that request; PeopleConnect's Terms for the tool likewise require personal identifying information and verification of at least one email address or phone number. From there, the tool uses the details you provide so a background report can be confirmed as yours and your identity validated, and then lets you set suppression rules for it.
5. Pick the record that is actually you, and set it to suppressed. Check the details before choosing — suppressing the wrong person's record does not help you.
6. Save / submit, then check back by name. Search your name again on Intelius — and, for completeness, on TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate, and US Search, since PeopleConnect says one suppression covers all four for name searches. If you still see public data about you on those sites after using the tool, PeopleConnect's suppression page tells readers to contact it for help. Intelius' Privacy Center lists [email protected], and the suppression page lists [email protected] in its protected-person section.

How long does it take? PeopleConnect does not publish a processing timeframe for suppression — none is stated on its Suppression Center page, Intelius' Privacy Center, or Intelius' Privacy Policy. So don't plan around a number: submit, then re-search by name and follow up if the listing is still showing.

More than one record, or a name variation?

Data built from many public sources often splits one person into more than one record — an old address, a maiden name, a middle-initial variant. PeopleConnect's Terms describe the tool as managing your background report on its sites, and its suppression page warns that small discrepancies and inaccuracies in the underlying data can make it hard to remove everything associated with you.

Practical approach: after your first suppression, re-search every name variation and old city you can think of on all four sister sites. Anything still showing by name is a record to raise with PeopleConnect using the contact route in Step 6.

What suppression does not do

PeopleConnect is unusually plain about the limits on its own suppression page, and a good guide should be just as plain:

• It does not delete the underlying public record. Suppressing your report does not affect whether the information is available from other sources, including the third-party sources Intelius pulled it from.
• It does not cover every kind of search. Even after suppression, your name and other information may still appear in connection with certain features — PeopleConnect gives phone, address, or email reports (searches by those criteria, rather than by name) as examples, and mentions registered sex offender lists. Its Terms add another one: you may still appear as a relative or associate in someone else's report.
• It does not apply to every PeopleConnect property. The tool applies to public data on the people-search sites in the family; PeopleConnect specifically says it does not apply to Classmates.com, and does not apply to the "User Data" those sites collect from their own visitors and customers.
• It may not catch everything in one pass. Because of how public records are collected, discrepancies in the data can leave something behind — which is why PeopleConnect tells people who still see their data after suppressing to get in touch.

Deleting your data / canceling is not the same thing

Intelius' Privacy Center keeps these separate, and mixing them up is the most common way people think they have opted out when they have not:

• Right to Delete (User Data): deleting your User Data closes your account if you are a customer and cancels any subscriptions on it — and Intelius states plainly that it will not stop other people searching for your public data through its services.
• Suppression (Public Data): the Suppression Center process above is the one that stops your background report being shown on a name search.

If you have both problems — a subscription you want gone and a listing you want gone — you need both actions, in whichever order you prefer.

Will it come back?

Suppression controls the display, not the source. Intelius keeps building reports from publicly available information drawn from databases, government sources, commercial providers, and websites, and PeopleConnect warns that inaccuracies and discrepancies can leave associated data behind even after a suppression.

So treat this the way you treat the other big brokers: check back by name a few times a year on Intelius and the three sister sites, and re-file or follow up on anything that is showing again. Removal here is maintenance, not a one-time event.

One process down — and it covered 4 of the 54

Intelius, TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate, and US Search are 4 of the 54 people-search sites we check at GoodFence. That makes this the best-value opt-out on the whole list — and it still leaves 50 other sites, each with its own form, its own verification step, and its own habit of quietly listing you again.

If you'd rather hand that off, that's exactly what GoodFence does every month.

Start by seeing the full picture: run your free exposure scan at getgoodfence.com. It shows you which sites are listing you, with no obligation — and if you want us to handle the removals, we'll take it from there.