Spokeo
- ID:
spokeo
- Category: people search
- Jurisdictions: public listing opt-out appears generally available; statutory removal choices vary by residence
- Review status: reviewed guidance
- Last reviewed: 2026-08-25
Official sources
Supported goals
opt-out — request suppression of a specific public Spokeo listing.delete — use only a deletion option actually offered by the live privacy-control flow for the user’s jurisdiction; do not treat listing suppression as database deletion.
Channels and required capabilities
Minimum known fields
- Spokeo profile URL — identifies the listing to suppress. A user may share a privacy-controls URL with the agent in the current conversation so the agent can derive the canonical form; do not retain either URL or its token in the progress file.
- Email address — receives the confirmation step
Procedure
- Ask the user to confirm that the listing is theirs; do not infer identity from a name match.
- Give the user both official links and explain their order without waiting for a follow-up question:
- The user may paste their share-style Privacy Controls URL into the current conversation. Treat it as private session data; use it only to prepare this action, and never copy it, its token, or the derived profile URL into the progress file or repository.
- When the shared address has a
share_token query parameter and a final path segment beginning with t followed by a long numeric record suffix, derive the canonical profile URL by removing the query string and that final t... segment, while preserving the preceding name, state, and city path. For example: https://www.spokeo.com/First-Last/State/City/t123456789?share_token=example becomes https://www.spokeo.com/First-Last/State/City.
- Give the derived URL to the user to paste into the official opt-out page. If the form rejects it, do not guess at other URL edits; have the user find or copy the canonical public profile URL through Spokeo’s own public search instead.
- Stop before submission and show the exact destination, disclosed fields, request text, limitations, and proposed progress update.
- The user completes any CAPTCHA and confirms the email message.
- Record the acknowledgment separately from any later public-listing recheck. Record only a minimal status, not the profile or confirmation link.
Manual checkpoints
- CAPTCHA: likely; always manual
- MFA or OTP: email confirmation is manual
- Login: not known to be required for public listing opt-out
- Identity documents: not expected for the public listing flow; stop if requested
- Browser safety controls: some agent browsers may block Spokeo’s official pages. In that case, give the user the official opt-out URL for a fully manual completion, do not claim the page was opened or a request was submitted, and ask only for a non-sensitive outcome to update the progress record.
- Other: repeat only for additional listings the user individually confirms
Evidence and status interpretation
An email confirmation or on-screen acknowledgment is evidence of a submitted suppression request, not proof of deletion from all Spokeo systems. A later missing public listing is evidence only that the checked URL is no longer public.
Limitations
- The official opt-out page was not readable by the documentation tool during this review; the live form is authoritative.
- Privacy Controls can produce a share-style record URL that the opt-out form does not accept. The narrowly described canonical-URL conversion above is an observed manual workaround, not a promise that it will apply to every listing or future site design.
- Spokeo’s statutory privacy controls and eligibility vary. Never guess which right applies.
- Public records or a new listing can cause information to reappear.