Broker profile

Pipl

Founded in 2005 as a free people-search, Pipl, Inc. of Post Falls, Idaho is now an enterprise identity-resolution and fraud-intelligence vendor. There's no search box on its homepage any more - but its identity graph still holds your name, aliases, usernames, addresses, phones, and social handles, and on its own California filing the company reports that it shared or sold consumer data to the federal government, to state governments, and to law enforcement in the past year. The individual opt-out is still live and still works.

Manual removal guide Visit pipl.com

Pipl overview

At a glance

Quick facts

Privacy Risk

LimitedModerateSubstantialExtensive

Data published: Extensive
Re-listing frequency: Recurring
Complaint record: Mixed
Opt-out friction: Moderate
Operator opacity: Fully disclosed
Prior data incidents: None documented

Each broker is scored 1 to 4 across the six dimensions above; higher means more exposure, and the overall gauge is their average.

What each dimension means

Data published: how much and how sensitive the personal data they put out.
Re-listing frequency: how quickly you reappear after opting out.
Complaint record: the volume and pattern of complaints across BBB, Trustpilot, and Sitejabber. No listing, or a listing with no reviews, counts against the broker.
Opt-out friction: how hard the removal process is to complete.
Operator opacity: how hidden the operating company and its principals are.
Prior data incidents: history of breaches or leaks of the data they hold.

Category: Identity resolution · fraud intelligence · formerly people search
Operating entity: Pipl, Inc.
Headquarters: Post Falls, ID · second office in Israel
Founded: 2005, as a free consumer people-search
Products: Pipl Trust · Pipl Search · Pipl Elements
CA registration: Pipl, Inc. · pipl.com
Sold data to government?: Yes · federal, state, and law enforcement (its own CPPA filing)
2025 deletion requests: 19,227 received · all granted · median about half a day
Free public search?: No · discontinued
Opt-out: Live web form · still working

Background

From people-search to fraud tooling

Pipl is the rare broker that stopped being a consumer product. The free search that made its name is gone, the homepage is enterprise sales copy, and the tracker entries listing it as "site inactive" are wrong - it's very much alive, just pointed somewhere else. What hasn't changed is that it holds a detailed identity record on a great many people, and that you can ask it to delete yours.

Operating entity: Pipl, Inc.
Address: 510 S Clearwater Loop, Suite 100 Post Falls, ID 83854
Registered contact: privacy@pipl.com · 415-373-0180
Headcount: ~120 as of 2019, split with an Israel office
Funding: ~$18M Series B, January 2018 · no later round found
Underlying model: "Elephant" · the model, not a company rebrand

Pipl started in 2005 in Post Falls, Idaho as a free people-search - the kind of site you typed a name into. Today it sells three enterprise products on one identity model it calls Elephant. Pipl Trust scores risk at payment authorisation, Pipl Search resolves identities for fraud investigators, and Pipl Elements returns risk signals on a phone number or email address. Pipl Trust launched on June 3, 2022. The marketing targets social platforms, consumer electronics, travel, and retail - and law enforcement, explicitly.

No primary source confirms the exact date when the free consumer search shut down, so this profile does not state a year.

What the California data-broker registry adds is the most consequential fact on this page. On its own filing, Pipl answers Yes to having shared or sold consumers' data to the federal government, to other state governments, and to law enforcement in the past year - and No to a foreign actor and No to a generative-AI developer. Very few brokers in this directory answer Yes to any of those three. It's the company's own answer to a regulator, and it corroborates what the marketing says out loud.

Pipl's own California privacy notice, updated May 26, 2026, reports 19,227 deletion requests and 507 sale opt-outs in 2025, all complied with in full, with a median response of about half a day.

Pipl stands alone on the broker mapExplore the full map

Several claims about Pipl in wide circulation are unsupported. No source supports the claim that a "John Smith" founded Pipl. No source supports a 2010 acquisition or a 2015 management buyout. TransUnion's newsroom and SEC filings do not mention an acquisition of Pipl. "Elephant" is the name of Pipl's model, not a new name for the company.

pipl.ai is not Pipl. It's an unrelated product with a confusingly similar name. Removal instructions written for one will not work on the other.

There is no brand family here, and that changes the shape of the exposure. Pipl runs one brand on one domain - no sister storefronts, no white-label front-ends, no satellites funnelling searches into it, so the removal is genuinely a single job. What it does instead is license identity data into other companies' fraud and risk systems, which means your record can shape decisions made by businesses that never mention Pipl to you.

Data Published

Data types

The identity graph

Sensitive: elevated identity-theft, doxxing, or safety riskStandard public-record field

What Pipl says its index holds, assembled by what its own documentation calls a "deep search robot" running over web documents, profiles, public records, directories, blogs, news, and publications, plus data licensed from other aggregators.

Names and aliases
Usernames and social handlesSensitive
Email addresses
Physical addresses and address historySensitive
Phone numbers and phone recordsSensitive
IP address resolved to city and stateSensitive
Age
Criminal recordsSensitive
Resumes and employment history
Professional licences
Patents

The usernames are the part that's different from everyone else. Most brokers in this directory link a name to an address. Pipl's stated purpose is resolving an online identity to a real one - tying handles, usernames, and email addresses back to a person. If you keep pseudonymous accounts deliberately separate from your legal name, this is the category of company whose product is undoing that.

Contact

Contacts & links

Published and filed

Operating entity: Pipl, Inc.
Mailing address: 510 S Clearwater Loop, Suite 100 Post Falls, ID 83854
Privacy email: privacy@pipl.com
Registered phone: 415-373-0180
Published phone: (877) 616-1115
Removal form: pipl.com/personal-information-removal-request
CCPA disclosure form: pipl.com/ccpa-disclosure-form
Website: https://pipl.com/

Two phone numbers, both real. 415-373-0180 is the number on Pipl's California data-broker filing, which makes it the one to cite in a regulatory complaint. (877) 616-1115 is the number published on the site for privacy requests. Either reaches the company; the filed one carries more weight if you're escalating.

Reputation

Trust signals

Small footprint

Pipl attracts very little consumer commentary, which follows from having no consumer product. What exists is thin and mildly negative.

BBB (Post Falls, ID)Not accredited · one unanswered complaintA-As of 2026-08

SmartCustomer (formerly Sitejabber)15 reviews · 25% would recommend2.2 / 5As of 2026-08View reviews ↗

TrustpilotBlocked automated reading · not verifiedNot checkedAs of 2026-08

Difficulty getting a straight answer about what data is held
Confusion between Pipl and the unrelated pipl.ai product

A second BBB listing cannot be tied to the same company. The "Pipl.com" entry is filed in Lakewood, New Jersey, and no available source establishes that it describes the Post Falls business. Its numbers are therefore excluded from the Post Falls figures.

Litigation

Litigation history

One settled case

Pipl's only litigation of note is a trade-secrets dispute with a former licensing partner, which settled. No regulator has taken action against it.

FullContact, Inc. v. Pipl, Inc.

Settled

D. Colo. 1:19-cv-01363 · Filed May 10, 2019 · Dismissed with prejudice March 16, 2020

Court: District of Colorado
Judge: Kristen L. Mix
Cause: 18 U.S.C. § 1836(b) · Defend Trade Secrets Act
Context: Trade-secret and data-retention claims after a licensing wind-down
Outcome: Dismissed with prejudice per stipulation - a settlement

A business-to-business dispute rather than a privacy case. FullContact, an identity-data company that had been licensing to Pipl, brought trade-secret claims under the Defend Trade Secrets Act along with allegations about data retained after the licensing relationship ended. The parties stipulated to dismissal with prejudice in March 2020, which is how settlements are recorded.

It earns a place here because of what it was about - what happens to licensed personal data when a commercial relationship ends is a live question for anyone whose record sits in an identity graph.

CourtListener - D. Colo. docket ->

No FTC enforcement action, state attorney-general action, class action, or documented breach involving Pipl, Inc. was found.

FAQ

Q & A

Is Pipl still active?

Yes. Trackers marking pipl.com as inactive are wrong - the site answers, the company is trading, and it's a registered California data broker. What ended is the free consumer search. Pipl sells identity-resolution and fraud-risk products to businesses now, and there's no search box on the homepage to type a name into.

Can I still opt out if there's no public search?

Yes, and the route is live. pipl.com/personal-information-removal-request takes a name and email, lets you choose deletion, disclosure, or both, and has a CAPTCHA. Pipl's own page says it's "happy to accommodate your request to remove your personal information from our services." The removal guide walks through it.

Does Pipl sell my data to the government?

By its own account, yes. On its California data-broker filing Pipl answers Yes to having shared or sold consumers' data to the federal government, to other state governments, and to law enforcement within the past year. It answers No to a foreign actor and No to a generative-AI developer. That's the company's own disclosure to a regulator, not an inference from its marketing - though the marketing does name law enforcement as a customer too.

Was Pipl acquired by TransUnion?

No. TransUnion's newsroom and SEC filings do not mention an acquisition of Pipl. The related claims that a "John Smith" founded Pipl, that Pipl was acquired in 2010, or that it went through a 2015 management buyout are also unsupported.

Is pipl.ai the same company?

No. It's an unrelated product with a similar name. Removal instructions written for one won't do anything on the other, so check which domain you're actually dealing with before you follow any guide.

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Last updated:

September 10, 2026 · Rechecked live. Drafted from Pipl's own product, privacy, and removal pages fetched directly, the California data-broker registry CSV downloaded and read directly, the BBB profile, and the CourtListener docket. Several widely-repeated claims about Pipl's history are fabrications, which the Background section addresses.