FamilyTreeNow is a genealogy-focused people-search website, based in the United States. The website allows U.S. users to search its database for information about other U.S. residents. FamilyTreeNow says its databases contain over 1.6 billion public records, and that’s just the data on living and recently deceased people.
The information found in the service’s search results includes age, location, relatives, household members, education level, and other types of data. In addition to records about living people, the service provides census records, birth records, marriage records, divorce records, and World War II personnel records.
FamilyTreeNow is 100% free to use, which is actually unfortunate, as charging a nominal fee for the service might help weed out some jerks that would use the site for less than honorable purposes. The service allows anyone to dig into your personal information. Heck, hackers don’t even need to pull off a data breach to gain access to a good amount of your personal information.
However, it is possible to opt out of having your information included on FamilyTreeNow. In this article, I’ll show you how to opt out of having your personal data shared on the FamilyTreeNow website, as well as other similar websites and services.
Why should I opt out of FamilyTreeNow?
People-search and data broker websites like FamilyTreeNow make your personal information available to anyone. While services like these are perfectly legal, Many folks have no idea that their personal data is being made available on these websites.
Why would anyone need access to your personal data? The FamilyTreeNow website says its customers are people looking to dig up information about their family origins, with information spanning hundreds of years of data.
Unfortunately, the information the website stores includes your personal information, which can also be used by the bad actors of the world to stalk unwitting victims, research robbery targets, phishing victims for more personal information, and other illegal activities.
ProPrivacy urges U.S. readers to immediately opt out of having their information stored, sold, and shared by FamilyTreeNow, in addition to the hundreds upon hundreds of other people-search sites and data brokers.
How to opt out of FamilyTreeNow
It is reasonably easy to opt out of having your personal information shared by FamilyTreeNow and websites like it. However, keep in mind that there are hundreds of sites like FamilyTreeNow that may have your information.
Plus, your information could be stored under multiple email addresses, variations of your name ("Joe” instead of "Joseph”), addresses, and phone numbers. This means it could be time-consuming to track down and delete all of your records, as you’ll have to repeat the search process on each and every one of these sites. But hey, you don’t have anything else going on, right?
To manually remove your personal information from FamilyTreeNow, do the following:
1. Start by visiting the FamilyTreeNow "opt out of records” page.
2. On this page, enter your email address in the provided field, click the "I am Human” button, deal with the CAPTCHA, and then click the "Begin Opt Out Procedure” button.
3. You will be taken to the search page, where you’ll run a search for yourself.
4. After you have found yourself in the results, click on the record detail. This will allow you to verify that this is you and not just someone else who has the same name.
5. After you have confirmed that this is your record, click the big red 'Opt Out' button on the page.
6. You soon receive an email with a link. Click on the link to confirm your opt out request.
7. Please allow up to 72 hours for your request to be processed, when your record will be removed from all places on the site. Note: If you have multiple records that need to be removed, repeat steps one through five.
FamilyTreeNow says that if you found your personal information via a search engine, you should go back to the exact record, copy the URL from your browser address bar, and submit it to them on their contact us page.
How to remove yourself from other people-search sites
Now that you’ve had your personal information deleted from FamilyTreeNow, you’re good to go, right?
Not so fast.
You see, FamilyTreeNow is not the only people-finder site or data broker that has your personal data on its servers. There are several other websites that have your personal information. These websites include, but are not limited to:
- BeenVerified
- Instant Checkmate
- Intelius
- PeopleFinders
- PeopleLooker
- Pipl
- Spokeo
- USSearch
- ZabaSearch
While the process of manually opting out of people-finder and data broker sites is relatively simple in most cases, keep in mind that there are hundreds of these services, meaning it will be tedious and time-consuming to opt out on each individual website. Plus, even though your data is removed, it’s quite possible that your information will make an encore appearance on the site later on.
You’ll be glad to know that there is an easy way to simultaneously remove your personal information from multiple websites, with just a few clicks of your mouse and taps of your fingers. A data removal service will contact these data brokers and people-finder sites, instructing them to remove your data, all for a reasonable monthly or annual fee.
The best data removal service to opt out of people-search sites
In this section, we’ll take a close look at our top recommended data removal service.
Incogni is our number one choice because it takes care of the tedious work of contacting individual data brokers with data removal requests and then chasing them. Incogni offers its considerable data removal services for a reasonable fee. You’ll pay just $6.49 per month for an annual subscription, or $12.99 per month if you opt to pay monthly. Once you’ve subscribed, you’ll need to give Incogni permission to contact FamilyTreeNow and other people-finder and data broker websites, provide the information required to accomplish the task, and the data removal process will begin. Incogni’s easy-to-use online dashboard offers at a glance the number of data removal requests that have been sent, how many requests have been completed, and how many are currently in progress. The dashboard also shows how many sites have agreed to no longer collect, sell, or trade your personal data. The dashboard also includes an activity log that lists all of the companies that have so far removed your information from their databases. It will take a while to see results, as these companies are given a bit of time to remove your data from their servers. The amount of time varies on a country-by-country or state-by-state basis. For example, the European Union allows companies to take up to 30 days to remove your information, while in California they are given 45 days. Incogni also makes available a “Detailed View” page, listing the websites contacted by Incogni, the types of data those sites collect and sell, and the possible risks in having your personal data available on that particular website. Incogni uses a proprietary algorithm that predicts whether or not a people-finder or data broker website is likely to have your personal information stored on its servers. The service then sends opt out requests to those selected sites. Incogni also contacts health information brokers and similar websites. While many data removal services serve only citizens of the United States, Incogni’s services are also available to residents of other countries. The services are also available to people living in the United Kingdom, the European Union, Switzerland, and Canada. 1. Incogni
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How to opt out of FamilyTreeNow FAQs