What we found
A common worry sounds like this: my address, my phone number and the names of my relatives are sitting on websites I never signed up for, and I would like them gone. A subscription service promises to handle it. This document looks at what one of those subscriptions, a well-known automated removal service, had actually accomplished after two years of paid service, and compares it to a single guided run performed by hand on the same person on the same day.
We are not accusing anyone of lying. The service does real work, and some of it is genuinely useful. What the record shows is a structural blind spot: the board it monitors is built out of consumer-facing websites, while the companies that supply those websites with data are absent from it entirely.
“no exposures found”
after 26 months
exposures removed
on the board
Counted directly from the account dashboard, 22 August 2026. 207 + 30 + 13 = the 250 brokers the service tracks.
- Four sites cleared, one uncleared parent. Four people-search sites the service reported clean file with the state from the same address as a wholesale supplier the service itself still lists as unresolved. A live listing was found by hand on three of them the same day.
- One company counted as five brokers. Five separate entries on the board, all reported clean, are registered domains of a single company. A live listing was found on that company the same day.
- The suppliers are missing. The large data wholesalers, and eighteen registered entities belonging to the three national credit bureaus, appear nowhere on the board. The guided run reached four wholesalers by hand in an afternoon.
How this was checked
Three independent sources, none of them opinion.
| Source | What it is | What it proves here |
|---|---|---|
| The service's dashboard | A live paid account, opened 26 June 2024, read on 22 August 2026. | What the service says it is monitoring, working on, and has finished. |
| California data broker registry | Filings that data brokers are required by California law to submit, naming the legal entity, its filing address, and every website it operates. Registration years 2025 and 2026. | Who actually owns which website. This is the part a marketing page cannot dispute. |
| Scopos run tracker | The guided removal run, 22 August 2026, with the status of every submission recorded as it happened. | What a person working by hand reached in one day, and what is still pending. |
This document describes results, never records. No addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, listing links or confirmation numbers appear anywhere in it. Statuses are described generically: a listing was found, a suppression was submitted, a removal was confirmed. Publishing the evidence would recreate the exposure the work removed.
One address, four filings
In the 2025 registration year, four companies filed with California from the same street address in Sacramento. One of them is Enformion, a wholesale supplier of people data. The other three operate the consumer websites FastPeopleSearch, FastBackgroundCheck, TruePeopleSearch and FamilyTreeNow.
On the dashboard, Enformion sits in the active queue, unresolved, labelled “Ensuring Broker Compliance.” All four of the consumer sites at that same address are reported as no exposures found. The guided run located a live listing on three of those four sites that same day.
A clean result on a website that shares an address with a supplier you have not resolved is a clean result about the shop window, not the warehouse.
Stated carefully, because the distinction is the whole point: co-location and shared corporate structure show that the clearance is cosmetic in scope. They do not prove that the supplier feeds those specific sites, and they do not prove the service made a false claim. What they establish is that clearing the front ends while the connected supplier remains unresolved cannot be described as finishing the job.
Five brokers, one company
The registry lists Spokeo, Inc. as the operator of spokeo.com, thatsthem.com, anywho.com, peoplewin.com, freepeopledirectory.com and one further domain. Five of those appear on the dashboard as five separate brokers. Every one of them is reported as no exposures found.
The guided run found a live listing on Spokeo itself that same day and confirmed its removal. The same legal entity was therefore reported clean five times over while one of its own front ends was carrying a live record.
| Entry on the board | Registered operator | Service status | Guided run, same day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spokeo | Spokeo, Inc. | No exposures found | Listing found, removal confirmed |
| ThatsThem | Spokeo, Inc. | No exposures found | Opt-out submitted, pending |
| AnyWho | Spokeo, Inc. | No exposures found | Covered by the Spokeo action |
| PeopleWin | Spokeo, Inc. | No exposures found | Covered by the Spokeo action |
| FreePeopleDirectory | Spokeo, Inc. | No exposures found | Covered by the Spokeo action |
Table scrolls sideways on a narrow screen.
A big number, counted twice
“250 brokers monitored” sounds like 250 companies. In several families on this board it is not. Brand names are counted as separate brokers when the registry shows them filing as one company, and in the largest family the board covers only a fraction of the brands that company actually runs.
| Family | What the registry shows | How the board treats it |
|---|---|---|
| Enformion | Enformion, LLC files Tracers.com as one of its own trading names. | Enformion and Tracers appear as two separate entries in the active queue, both unresolved. |
| Mississippi Tornado Alley | One company, ten registered websites, including several of the best known free people-search sites. | Three of the ten appear on the board. The other seven are not tracked at all. The guided run submitted opt-outs by hand on two of the untracked seven. |
| AccuData and Deep Sync | Compact Information Systems, LLC filed AccuData Integrated Marketing as its trading name in 2025 and Deep Sync in 2026, from one office suite. | Counted as two separate cleared brokers, three records each. |
| BeenVerified | One filing covers BeenVerified together with its sister sites. | BeenVerified, PeopleLooker, NeighborWho and Ownerly sit as four separate entries, all unresolved. One opt-out in the guided run covered all four, confirmed the same day. |
None of this is hidden. It is on the public record, filed by the brokers themselves. But it means the headline number describes brands watched, not companies handled, and in these families the difference runs to roughly ten to one.
The layer nobody touched
People-search websites are the retail counter of this industry. Behind them sit the wholesalers: companies that assemble records at scale and license them onward. They are registered California data brokers, they have public opt-out channels, and they are the reason a record that disappears from one website can reappear on another.
Not one of them appears anywhere on the 250-broker board. Neither do the eighteen separately registered entities filed by the three national credit bureaus in the 2026 registration year. The guided run reached four wholesalers by hand in a single afternoon.
| Company | Registered CA data broker | On the 250-broker board | Guided run, same day |
|---|---|---|---|
| LexisNexis | Yes, both years | Absent | Suppression submitted, pending |
| Acxiom | Yes, both years | Absent | Suppression submitted, pending |
| Epsilon | Yes, both years | Absent | Deletion request submitted, pending |
| LiveRamp | Yes, both years | Absent | Not reached in this run |
| Cotality (formerly CoreLogic) | Not in the filings reviewed | Absent | Deletion request emailed, pending |
| Equifax entities | 4 registrants, 2026 | Absent | Covered by the prescreen opt-out |
| Experian entities | 3 registrants, 2026 | Absent | Covered by the prescreen opt-out |
| TransUnion entities | 11 registrants, 2026 | Absent | Covered by the prescreen opt-out |
Postie appears on the board as a completed removal. Postie publishes the names of the data providers it draws from, and that published list includes Epsilon and Acxiom. Both were still live for this person on the day the removal was marked complete, because neither is on the board to begin with. Clearing the customer while leaving its named suppliers untouched is the pattern in miniature.
A subscription that permanently severed the wholesale layer would end its own recurring problem, and with it the reason to keep subscribing.
This is an observation about incentives, not an accusation of intent. What is documented is the outcome: after 26 months, the layer that supplies the industry is not on the board, and a person working by hand reached four of its members in one afternoon.
Counting a portal as a broker
OptOutPreScreen is listed on the board as a broker with exposures removed. It is not a data broker. It is the opt-out portal that the credit bureaus run themselves, under federal law, so that consumers can stop pre-screened credit and insurance offers. Using it is a good idea, and the guided run registered there too, for five years.
It does not belong in a broker count. A consumer opt-out portal appears on the board as a defeated adversary, while the bureaus that operate it do not appear at all.
Same person, same day
The comparison below is deliberately unflattering to nobody. Where the service acted, it says so. Where the guided run is still waiting on a legal response window, it says that too.
Consumer sites where a live listing was located by hand
| Site | Service status, 26 months in | Guided run, one day |
|---|---|---|
| FastPeopleSearch | No exposures found | Search de-index approved, opt-out submitted |
| FastBackgroundCheck | No exposures found | Search de-index approved |
| TruePeopleSearch | No exposures found | Search de-index approved, opt-out submitted |
| Spokeo | No exposures found | Removal confirmed |
| Whitepages | Not on the board | Verified opt-out submitted, pending |
| CyberBackgroundChecks | Not on the board | Opt-out submitted, pending |
| USPhoneBook | Not on the board | Opt-out submitted, pending |
Approved search de-indexing removes the listing from search results. It does not remove the record from the broker. It is reported here as exactly that, and the direct opt-out was submitted separately wherever the site offered one. The relevant point is narrower and harder to argue with: the listing was live at the broker on the day the dashboard read clean.
Where both acted
| Registry | Service status | Guided run |
|---|---|---|
| Credit prescreen opt-out | Exposures removed, 2 of 2 | Five-year opt-out active |
| Direct mail suppression | No exposures found | Active through 2031 |
| National Do Not Call | Not on the board | Permanently registered |
The service's own removal profile, 26 June 2024 to 22 August 2026
removed, all time
records removed, all time
removed, all time
removed, all time
removed, all time
in progress
999 + 908 + 218 + 132 + 128 = 2,385, the all-time total the dashboard reports. The in-progress broker count is separate.
Work the ownership, not the list
A guided run is not faster because it is clever. It is faster because it starts from the corporate record instead of a list of website names, and because a person can read a filing and decide what it means.
- Start at the wholesale layer. The suppliers are worked first, because a record removed downstream while the supplier still holds it is a record that can come back.
- Group by legal entity, not by brand. One opt-out at the parent covered four consumer sites in this run. Ten domains behind one company are treated as one target, not ten, and not three.
- Verify by looking. Every site was searched by hand. “No exposures found” is a claim; a live listing on the screen is a fact.
- Use the free federal and industry registries first. Do Not Call, credit prescreen opt-out and direct mail suppression cost nothing, last for years, and were all active by the end of day one.
- Report status honestly. Pending means pending. Statutory response windows run up to thirty days, and nothing is described as removed until it is confirmed removed.
- Leave the client a record. Every submission, date and response is tracked, so the work can be re-run, escalated, or handed to someone else without starting over.
Nobody in this document is a public figure, and none of this requires being one. The people most affected by an accurate home address on a free search site are ordinary: someone who left a bad relationship, a nurse or a teacher who was doxxed by a stranger online, a parent who would rather their children's names not be published alongside their street. The industry treats those records as inventory. The work is getting them out of inventory, and knowing who actually holds them.
What this does not prove
Everything above is checkable. So are the limits, and they belong in the same document as the findings.
- “No exposures found” may be a matching miss, not a false claim. If the automation never matched a listing that a manual search caught, the status is wrong without anyone having lied. The finding is that automation reported clean where a person found a live record, which holds either way.
- The in-progress queue is a recent batch. The dashboard shows those brokers at day nine of processing. It is not accurate to say they have been stuck for two years, and this document does not say so.
- The wholesale submissions are pending, not confirmed. Statutory windows run from fourteen to thirty days. The claim being made about the wholesale layer is one of scope: the service does not attempt it, and the guided run did.
- Shared addresses show structure, not data flow. Co-location and shared ownership establish that clearing the front ends leaves connected entities unresolved. They do not establish that any particular supplier feeds any particular website.
- No claim of re-seeding is made. This document does not assert that an uncleared parent re-publishes a removed record. That would need evidence of the transfer itself, which is not in hand.
- One account, one person, one day. This is a documented case, not a controlled study. A second account might produce different matching results, and a longer window would test durability, which this snapshot cannot.
- The service does real work. Thirteen brokers show completed removals, and the credit prescreen opt-out was genuinely executed. The argument here is about which layer of the industry is being worked, not about whether anything happens at all.