How to Remove Yourself From TruthFinder

TruthFinder is not a site so much as a storefront. The same company, PeopleConnect, runs Instant Checkmate, Intelius and US Search, and one free tool controls whether your report shows up on all four. That is the good news. The rest of this guide is the small print, in the company's own words, because the tool is precise about what it does not do.

Opt-out contact

• Opt-out page: suppression.peopleconnect.us
• Email: privacy@peopleconnect.us: published email route for legally protected-person suppression requests. Use the suppression tool for standard public-profile suppression.
• Cost: Free.

One company, four storefronts

PeopleConnect describes itself on its own site as operating "Classmates' one-of-a-kind social network, Intelius' reverse phone profiles, TruthFinder's broad reach, US Search's legacy, and Instant Checkmate's trusted insight" (peopleconnect.us). In California's 2026 data broker register, TruthFinder, LLC, Instant Checkmate LLC and Intelius, LLC are filed separately, all at the same San Diego address, and the Intelius filing also lists US Search along with around twenty other domains, including ZabaSearch, PeopleFinder and ReversePhoneLookup.

Two of the four have a regulator's finding attached. On 11 September 2023 the FTC announced that TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate would pay $5.8 million to settle charges that they "deceived consumers about whether consumers had criminal records" and violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act while marketing reports for employee and tenant screening. The proposed order required an FCRA monitoring program. If a report from either site ever said something wrong about you, that history is worth knowing.

Where the opt-out lives

The tool is the PeopleConnect Suppression Center. It is free, and it does not block ordinary visitors or automated checks, which is why this guide could read it directly.

Its own description: "a free way to manage the display of your Background Report when searched by name on all people search sites in the PeopleConnect family including TruthFinder.com, InstantCheckmate.com, Intelius.com and USSearch.com, without needing to engage with our team. If you choose to suppress your Background Report, a report with your information will not be provided if a user attempts to search you by name."

So one request covers the four named sites. The page says "including", not "only", and the Intelius filing lists many more domains. After you suppress, search your own name on any of those you care about rather than assuming.

What the first screen asks

The page opens with "Step 1 Enter your email address. Upon submission of your email address you will receive a verification email with a link to proceed." Beneath it is one checkbox: "I agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, and consent to receive transactional emails regarding my use of the Suppression Tool." The page adds that "your email address is used only to facilitate and process your suppression request."

The rest of the process sits behind that emailed link. We did not use it, so we cannot quote the later screens; walkthroughs describe confirming your identity and choosing which record to suppress. Read what each screen asks before you give it, and use an email address you are comfortable having on file with a data broker, because that is what the first step creates.

If you hold a protected role, the page has a separate route: active or retired judges, law enforcement officers, public officials and similar, in states with a law allowing it, can email privacy@peopleconnect.us with name, date of birth, city and state, contact details, the law relied on, and the protected status. The page says the company "reserve[s] the right to decline the request" if it cannot tie it to an applicable law, and that a denial can be appealed at the same address.

What suppression does not do, in their words

This is the section to read twice. Every line below is quoted from the Suppression Center page as rendered on 8 September 2026.

It is a name-search block, not a removal. "The Suppression Tool only applies to the Public Data generated in response to a name search on the people search sites in the PeopleConnect family." And: "even if you suppress your Background Report, your name and other information may continue to appear in connection with certain features, for example, in phone, address or email reports that are accessible when someone searched by those criteria, or on registered sex offender lists." Someone who searches your phone number instead of your name may still find you.

It does not touch your account data or Classmates. "It does not apply to the User Data collected by those sites, nor does it apply to other sites in the PeopleConnect family, including Classmates.com. To exercise your available rights with respect to your User Data on those sites, please visit those sites." Deleting personal information is a different request, and it is site by site. PeopleConnect's privacy policy offers a deletion request, but it says it is "only applicable to the Site," meaning peopleconnect.us and its subdomains such as the Suppression Center, and that its "sister sites... manage their own privacy policies." TruthFinder, Instant Checkmate, Intelius and US Search each keep their own policy and their own request route.

It is discretionary. "The Suppression Tool is an optional feature made available at our discretion... We reserve the right to modify the Suppression Tool and its terms, including by restricting its use or ceasing to make it available at our discretion if we detect abuse."

It does not reach the sources. "Suppressing your Background Report also does not affect whether the information will be available from other sources, including the third-party sources of the information."

It can miss you. "Due to the nature of public records information and how it is collected, subtle discrepancies and inaccuracies in data may also make it difficult to remove everything associated with you. If you see Public Data about you on our websites after you have used the Suppression Tool, please contact us so we can assist you."

What the company's own filings say about the odds

Unlike some brokers, all three PeopleConnect companies report honouring every opt-out-of-sale request they received in 2024: TruthFinder 487,758, Intelius 226,356, Instant Checkmate 152,823, with zero denials in each filing. Deletion requests are a different story: TruthFinder reports 61,672 received and 3,348 denied, Intelius 32,339 and 1,380, Instant Checkmate 24,499 and 1,255, roughly one in twenty. The register gives no reasons.

If you live in California, all three companies are on the register, so the state's DROP platform applies: one deletion request that every registered broker must process, submittable since 1 January 2026, processed since 1 August 2026, with a status in up to 90 days and re-checks at least every 45 days.

What this does and does not cover

Not TruePeopleSearch or FastPeopleSearch. Those look like relatives and are not. TruePeopleSearch is registered to Free Data Services, LLC and FastPeopleSearch to Mississippi Tornado Alley, LLC; each has its own process, written up for TruePeopleSearch and FastPeopleSearch.

Not the rest of the internet. Suppression is intended to prevent the Background Report from being provided in name searches. It does not reach the public records behind it, and not Google's copy. If a removed page still shows in search results, Google has retired its public cache, so the tool to use is Refresh Outdated Content.

Next

For the full map of which sites to hit and in what order, see the people-search removal guide. The walkthroughs for Spokeo, Whitepages and BeenVerified were each checked against their live pages.

If you would rather see where your name actually appears before doing the rounds, the Personal Exposure Snapshot checks people-search sites among 20+ surfaces for $49, and prints a coverage map of what it could not reach.

General information, not legal advice. Checked 8 September 2026 against the sources linked above. Quoted wording is from the pages as read that day and may have changed since.