The prevalence of personal information being made available online is a growing issue affecting countless citizens. A lot of information is meant to stay in the hands of the people the information covers. Some data, such as location and financial data, is too important to be freely accessible to anyone with a Wi-Fi connection.
Unfortunately, many online commerce tools ambiently collect this information whenever you use these services. These collection tools are usually isolated to the commerce center’s private network, but other websites exist solely to gather this information for public access. While it might seem like a violation of privacy for a website to host this information without asking permission, it is legal for such websites to exist.
A handful of websites offer information on citizens that you might prefer to keep private. Among them is a website known as Check People, which can provide data on citizens for easy access. Like other websites of a similar style, Check People allows average citizens to learn about their neighbors and coworkers by accessing information pertinent to the other person’s life. While the concept of these websites might have started as a way of protecting people from potentially dangerous individuals, sometimes the information only puts people at risk. Because the information posted on Check People can potentially put you at risk, knowing how to remove that information might prove prudent.
What is CheckPeople.com?
Check People is remarkably similar to Whitepages and other information-based websites. While the latter was designed to make accessing contact information for friends and family simpler, the former is meant to protect you. Like Whitepages, Check People provides information on current contact information and the most recent address on file. Similarly, it provides data surrounding the criminal history of the person you are researching so you can rest assured your neighbors are not dangerous. To that end, Check People is predominantly a tool to conduct a background check on those around you.
Through Check People’s algorithm, it is possible to conduct a deep web search to locate social media profiles, active websites, and images related to the subject of your search. Police records, bankruptcy filings, and mugshots are also evaluated to positively identify the person you are researching. People use Check People to assess their neighbors because of the risk of living near a registered sex offender. The risk of living near a sex offender is usually a valid cause to want to investigate your neighbors and ensure they do not fall under that category.
While this goal of Check People is noble in theory, it becomes a more nefarious website in practice. We live in a world where people are willing to take tools meant for good and use them to accomplish their own goals. Unfortunately, Check People is no exception to this rule since some unsavory characters will happily take advantage of Check People’s algorithm to acquire sensitive information about you. Once that information is made available to them, they could use it in ways that compromise your safety. This is why knowing how to pull this information off Check People’s servers is important.
How to Pull Your Information From CheckPeople.com
Like most information broker websites, Check People is obligated to offer an option to remove your information if you do not consent to its distribution. Unfortunately, even though the website is obligated to honor your decision, this does not mean they have to make it easy on you. Most websites try to make finding the page that allows you to opt-out fairly difficult, so you are more likely to give up. Even if you do locate the page, the process of having your information removed is usually a time-consuming and irritating effort. Fortunately, a little prior information can help streamline the process, so you are less likely to struggle with the endeavor.
To access the Check People opt-out page, you can scroll down to the bottom of the homepage until you see a dark blue border with 4 sub-categories. The 3rd of these sub-categories, “Get Help,” has an option that says, “Do Not Sell My Information.” Click on this, and the website will take you to the webpage allowing you to opt-out of Check People’s algorithm. Alternatively, you can follow this link to reach the same webpage.
Once on this page, you will be greeted with a form where you will be prompted to enter your:
- First Name
- Last Name
- City
- State
You will be required to fill all these fields before advancing to the next step. So, be sure to enter your information properly if you want to be successful in removing your information. You will also need to complete a CAPTCHA verification to prove you are not an automated system trying to remove the information. Once you have completed the CAPTCHA, you need only click the ‘Search’ button to pull up all profiles that fit the above criteria.
Once the search is complete, a list of names that meet the criteria you filled out will be presented on the results page. It will fall to you to select the profile that applies to you and ensure that you are not trying to delete someone else’s profile. Once you click on the proper profile, you will be greeted with another form you need to fill out to finalize the opt-out procedure. You will be required to enter your first and last names again, but this time you will also need to enter your e-mail address. After this form is filled out, you will again be forced to pass a CAPTCHA test like before.
Once the CAPTCHA is complete, all you need to do is click the ‘Submit Request’ button at the bottom of the page. Once the request has been submitted, you will receive a confirmation e-mail from Check Persons to confirm the request. You will need to go to your e-mail inbox and find this confirmation and open it to find the button that says, ‘Confirm Request.’
After you have confirmed the request, all that is left is to wait for the request to be processed. The downside is that Check People is not the most expedient regarding these requests, and you will need to wait 5 to 7 days for the request to process. After this waiting period, your information should no longer be available on Check People’s website.
While knowing how to remove your information from Check People is important if you want to protect your privacy, there is more to consider. You need to know what you protect if you endeavor to remove this information. You must assess the risks associated with your private information being made public on websites like Check People before you take your first steps to opt-out.
What Are the Risks of Your Information Being Listed?
Private information is so named because it should remain confidential since it offers insight into your life that others could exploit. The more of your private information that is made public, the more likely it is for someone to use it against you for their personal gain. Check People was created with the intent to provide you and those around you with insight into the people in their lives. The last thing anyone wants is to live in ignorance of the threat living next door to their family. Unfortunately, those same people can hijack the same information designed to protect people from the less savory characters in society.
Check People provides information that violent or hostile demographics could use to access you. Direct access to information like your address, relatives, and criminal history allows certain online presences to easily release information to your opponents. Our world is powered by data transmission via social media and other online mediums. Our presence on these online mediums has exposed us to a great deal of scrutiny from those who view our posts. When our posts are considered disagreeable to those perusing our posts, they tend to become very vocal about their discontent and will go to great lengths to “hold us accountable.”
Unfortunately, some of these opponents take things a step too far and attempt to expose you to the rest of your opponents. They do so by releasing your private information so you can be directly confronted and have elements of your private life compromised. This act of releasing private information online is known as “doxxing.” Doxxing usually involves someone gathering as much information as possible about you as they can find.
Ordinarily, finding this information is extremely difficult and requires much research to find anything tangible. Websites like Check People make the work of doxxers much simpler since an account with the site enables them to take all the information there and present it to those who might take issue with you.
Additionally, doxxing or publicly available private data enables criminals to use this information to capitalize on your data easily. This includes accessing financial information using the names of your relatives to guess passwords and bypass security questions. They can also access your residential information to commit more violent crimes against you, depending on their level of grief or anger.
When the information is easily accessed via websites like Check People, it becomes much easier for more people to dox you and put it in the hands of dangerous individuals. The biggest threat is that all anyone needs to find you on Check People is your name and state, which are all the criteria they need to access the information posted on Check People. From there, it is simple to use that information against you.
This makes private information on public domains dangerous to your physical health and general reputation. To prevent damage to either, controlling this information is essential to ensure the wrong people do not access it. You should have no trouble successfully purging your data from Check People’s domain with the information outlined here. Unfortunately, purging your data from one website will not necessarily be enough to protect you from potential threats.
Take Your Reputation Back!
Our society is built on the images we cultivate in the public domain and the reputation that rises from that image. While our reputations are traditionally built on the actions we take, the actions of others can have an equally damaging effect. The way others can access private information about us puts our health and reputations at risk since it enables strangers to have a direct line on us.
While some less savory individuals can use certain resources to find our information through multiple sources, allowing websites like Check People to be a one-stop shop for that data puts you at greater risk. Unfortunately, several websites fall into the same category as Check People. Finding every domain that might provide key details about your private life can be challenging if you attempt to do it alone. Fortunately, doing it alone is not your only option.
We at Reputation have made it our mission to manage our clients’ public image and all associated data. We do this by scouring the internet for all traces of your name and activities, including any websites with your name on file, and providing supplementary information about you. Websites like Check People are among those that can give strangers more information than they should reasonably have about you.
Through our services, we can identify these websites and issue the opt-out request on your behalf, eliminating the risks associated with them. Allowing this information to remain easily accessible exposes you to potential reputational and health damage from the less savory citizens of the country. So, if you need a little help removing harmful data, visit our website and take your reputation back!
Do you have any questions about removing your information on Check People, or are you having any troubles in getting that information removed yourself? If so, please feel free to contact us for assistance at any time! We would be more than happy to assist you in going through the process so that you can secure your online information.
