Data brokers collect your data from your online presence. Things like targeted advertising, social media, online agreements, public records like property, tracking cookies, and other various methods are all ways sites can collect your information without you necessarily being aware. These methods that data brokers use are often done without you, the consumer, being fully aware. Nowadays, it’s almost inevitable that your data becomes public one way or another.
It can be extremely important to remove your information from the internet because otherwise, data such as your address, phone number, email, online banking, identity, and more are available for sale. Giving people access to the sale of this information puts you at risk of identity theft, fraud, scam calls/texts, online theft, and even stalking. In a world where billions of dollars are lost to cybercrime, it's important to keep yourself and your data safe.
The FCRA, or Fair Credit Reporting Act, is a federal act that regulates how your information is reported by consumer reporting agencies. It ensures that you have access to know what information is reported about you and allows you to request that it be changed if you find it isn't accurate. It also allows you to request that your information be deleted by services like Higbee & Associates if it is found to be incorrect.
The difference between FCRA-compliant and non-FCRA-compliant sites is simple. FCRA-compliant sites have a long list of government regulations that stipulate what information they are allowed to collect and that they need client consent before conducting a background check. In addition, these sites are only used for things like reporting credit scores and background checks on tenants and employees. Non-compliant websites, or “people searchers”, don't have any of these regulations to follow and cannot be used for legitimate legal reasons like the ones listed above.
FCRA-compliant websites will only remove or edit your information if it is found to be incorrect in any way. This is because these sites are used for legitimate legal purposes and often require clients to consent to conduct background searches. If something like a criminal record is listed, you can try to have it expunged through Higbee & Associates if you qualify. If the information has already been expunged and is still listed, use our Expedited Record Clearance update service to have it removed. Our expedited record clearance update will clear your background faster than traditional methods.
Once we receive your request to remove the data, we send our request to the websites right away; however, these sites aren't beholden to any quick time frame. Oftentimes, these sites will take up to a month to respond to the request but can also apply for an extension, potentially increasing the time by two months. It’s important to contact these sites yourself or through our service so that your data can be made safe as quickly as possible.
While we do remove your personal information from data brokers who sell your personal information, we don’t remove it from Google. This is simply because Google is not the company collecting and posting your data; they are simply the service posting search results. Once your data is fully removed, your data will no longer exist on the sites selling personal information, so any links displaying such information on Google will then lead to nothing.