How to remove your info from Public Information Services

The form lives at publicinfoservices.com/help-center/privacy-requests, inside the help center rather than behind a footer link. Some older write-ups point at a "Remove Me From Website" page. This form is the route.

At the top, Request Type is already set to Do Not Sell My Info, and that's the setting you want, because it's the one that suppresses a public listing. Delete My Info, the other item in that list, covers a paying member's account data and leaves a public listing where it is.

Fill in First Name, Last Name, City and ZIP, choose your State and Age from the dropdowns, and tick the Cloudflare box. All six fields are required. Use the version of you that the listing shows, since a current address the site doesn't have will simply return nothing. Press Continue.

The Email Address Verification page asks where to send a verification code, and that's all it asks. Type the address, pass the Cloudflare check, press Continue. The code is on its way, and the site hasn't done anything to your record.

Find the email, read the code out of it and type it into the Unique Code field of the Verification page. One more Cloudflare check, then Continue.

Note what kind of email this was. It carried a code, and you typed it. The later email carries a link, and you click it. People who remember only one of the two tend to stop after this screen and assume they've finished.

Now the site shows what it matched, on the Select Data for Removal page. The Search Results box on the left holds one record showing a name, an age, locations and possible relatives, which is the same set of facts the site sells to anyone who pays.

Look at it properly before pressing anything. If it's a different person with your name, leave it alone and use the Narrow Results panel to the right, which takes a name, a city and a state, plus an optional age range, and reruns the search when you press Update Results. The New Search link above the results starts from scratch. Once the record in the box is you, press Remove.

Pressing Remove brings up the Request Submitted page, and the wording on it deserves a close read. The site thanks you, tells you a verification message has gone to your email, asks you to click its link so the request is finalized, and says the link is active for 60 minutes. It suggests looking in filtered and spam folders if the email doesn't show within several minutes.

That sentence is the whole point of this guide. Until the link is clicked, nothing has been filed, and if the hour runs out there's no reminder, no error and no request. The page also gives the site's support number, 1-800-617-3169, if you need a person.