The PeopleConnect opt-out does not cover Classmates
One request at PeopleConnect's Suppression Center clears Intelius, TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate and US Search. Classmates is excluded by name. It runs a separate process, and if a yearbook photograph is what brought you here, nothing you did at those four sites has touched it.
Broker profile
The fifth PeopleConnect brand, and the one holding something the others do not. Alongside decades of scanned yearbooks, Classmates publishes open alumni lists: your name, the school and the years you were there, readable by anyone without an account. Not only high schools either, elementary schools are listed the same way. It is also the one brand the family's shared Suppression Center does not cover, so opting out of Intelius, TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate and US Search leaves this untouched. Removing the listing takes about ten minutes. Removing a yearbook photograph is deliberately harder.
Classmates.com overview
Each broker is scored 1 to 4 across the six dimensions above; higher means more exposure, and the overall gauge is their average.
Complaint record is not established for this broker, so it is left out of the gauge rather than averaged in as a number nobody researched. The figure above is the average of the other five dimensions.
Yearbook archive · alumni directory
PeopleConnect, Inc., dba Classmates.com
1687 114th Ave SE, Suite 200 Bellevue, WA 98004
Intelius · TruthFinder · Instant Checkmate · US Search
No. Excluded by name from the Suppression Center
Support form · about ten minutes
Email privacy@classmates.com with the page number
Not registered
Unstated · "a reasonable time"
Background
Classmates publishes lists of children by name and school. Not as an accusation, as a description of what loads. Walking the site without an account reaches an Alumni List for any school it holds, giving each person's name and the years they attended, and the schools include elementary ones.
The yearbooks sit behind that. A yearbook was a printed book handed to pupils at the end of a school year, and nobody in it had any way to anticipate it being scanned, indexed and made searchable decades later. That gap between what was agreed to in 1994 and what exists now is the whole of the legal problem below.
The practical consequence is that Classmates holds a category of information none of its sibling brands does. Intelius, TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate and US Search publish records assembled from public sources about adults. Classmates publishes school rolls and photographs, and it does not restrict itself to people old enough to have consented to anything.
It is also the odd one out administratively. The other brands appear on California's data broker register under their own names, Intelius, LLC and Instant Checkmate, LLC among them. Classmates does not appear at all.
The family opt-out excludes it deliberately. PeopleConnect's Suppression Center names four sites and Classmates is not one of them. Anyone who has worked through that flow and assumed it covered everything with the PeopleConnect name on it has not touched their yearbook page.
Data Published
Sensitive: elevated identity-theft, doxxing, or safety riskStandard public-record field
Where it comes from. Scanned print yearbooks, contributed and acquired over more than two decades. The source is a physical book rather than a public records feed, which is why a listing here does not behave like the ones on the sibling sites.
Contact
PeopleConnect, Inc., dba Classmates.com
Privacy Compliance 1687 114th Ave SE, Suite 200 Bellevue, WA 98004
Effective March 3, 2026
Two routes, and the policy only describes the harder one. An alumni listing comes down through the support form, using the address of the listing itself, which takes about ten minutes. A yearbook photograph is the one the policy covers, and it asks for your name as printed, the school, the year, the page you appear on and screenshots. You are expected to locate and index your own photograph before they will act on it.
Network
Five consumer brands under one company. Four share a removal process and this one does not.
Reputation
We have not established a complaint record for Classmates. Trustpilot refuses an automated read and returns 403, and the BBB search page renders its results in the browser rather than in the response, so neither could be read on the last check. The score beside this section reflects that absence of research rather than a finding, and it should not be read as evidence either way.
Litigation
Four federal cases have run at PeopleConnect over the yearbook photographs, brought under state right of publicity laws. The argument in each is the same: that using someone's photograph and name to advertise a subscription is commercial use of their likeness, taken without permission.
N.D. Cal. 3:20-cv-09203 · Filed December 18, 2020
Northern District of California · Judge Edward M. Chen
9th Cir. No. 21-16040 · reversed the arbitration denial and remanded
Not terminated
The Classmates-side case, and the one where PeopleConnect won its arbitration point. The Ninth Circuit reversed the district court's refusal to compel arbitration and sent it back, so it remains live on remand.
W.D. Wash. 2:21-cv-01222 · Filed September 7, 2021 · 9th Cir. 76 F.4th 858
Western District of Washington · Judge Marsha J. Pechman
Indiana right of publicity
Not terminated
The furthest-developed of the yearbook cases. The Ninth Circuit decided the appeal in August 2023, leaving the arbitration denial in place and dismissing the Section 230 portion for want of jurisdiction rather than on the merits.
W.D. Wash. 2:21-cv-00262 · Filed March 2, 2021 · Reached SCOTUS as No. 21-725
Western District of Washington · Judge Marsha J. Pechman
District case terminated October 19, 2022
The case that got closest to a definitive answer and did not produce one. A cert petition reached the Supreme Court's docket and was dismissed by joint stipulation in December 2021 without any ruling on the merits.
Worth being precise about, because "went to the Supreme Court" is often written up as though something was decided. Nothing was.
N.D. Ill. 1:22-cv-00342 · Filed January 20, 2022 · 7th Cir. No. 23-1617
Northern District of Illinois · Judge Virginia M. Kendall
Denied March 2023
Terminated June 20, 2023 · on appeal
The Illinois entry in the same line. The motions to dismiss were denied in March 2023 and the district case terminated three months later with an appeal taken to the Seventh Circuit. The docket does not record the reason for termination, so we do not characterise it.
No FTC action and no state attorney general enforcement against Classmates was found. The FTC's 2023 order in this family named TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate over background report accuracy, and did not concern the yearbooks.
FAQ
No. PeopleConnect's Suppression Center names four sites and Classmates is not among them. It is the one brand in the family that needs its own request.
Because the source is a printed school yearbook rather than anything you gave them. A book handed out at the end of a school year was scanned, indexed and put online, and nobody printed in it was asked.
Their policy asks for your name as printed, the school, the year, the page you appear on and, where possible, screenshots. In practice that means finding your own photograph before they will remove it, which is the hardest part of the whole process.
Not in California. Intelius, LLC and Instant Checkmate, LLC both appear on the state's register and Classmates does not, despite publishing photographs of identifiable people.
Redact scans 120+ data broker sites from your device, finds where your details are listed, and submits the removal requests for you. If a broker relists you, it files again.
August 25, 2026 · Written from the Classmates privacy policy dated March 3, 2026, read directly, and from the four PeopleConnect yearbook cases on CourtListener. Not found on California's data broker register, checked against the registry CSV.
