How to Opt Out of Intelius (Remove Your Profile)

calendar Jun 4, 2026 / · 6 min read · data broker opt out people search  ·
Share on: linkedin copy

One Opt-Out Is Not Enough: Intelius and the PeopleConnect Network

Most people who discover their home address listed on Intelius go straight to the opt-out page, fill in the form, and check the box — then assume the problem is solved. That assumption is where the trouble starts.

Intelius is one property inside a larger corporate network called PeopleConnect. Its siblings — Truthfinder, Instant Checkmate, and US Search — draw from many of the same underlying data sources. Opting out of Intelius scrubs your record from Intelius. It does nothing to the listings on those sibling sites. Each maintains its own database, its own opt-out pipeline, and its own re-population schedule. If catalog companies, telemarketers, or anyone else queries the network, your data remains available through the brands you skipped.

The Federal Trade Commission has documented this pattern broadly: data brokers operate in a layered ecosystem where a single company may license data to or from dozens of related entities, and a removal request submitted to one does not automatically cascade to affiliated sites (FTC, Data Brokers: A Call for Transparency and Accountability, consumer.ftc.gov). The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse similarly notes that opt-out rights, where they exist at all, are typically brand-specific rather than network-wide (privacyrights.org).

Understanding the boundary of what an Intelius opt-out actually covers is the prerequisite to using it effectively. With that framing in place, here is exactly how to complete the removal.

How to Opt Out of Intelius: Step by Step

The Intelius opt-out is free, requires no account, and takes under ten minutes to initiate. Processing typically completes within a few business days.

  1. Go to the opt-out page. Navigate to https://www.intelius.com/opt-out/. This is the only official removal entry point. Do not submit requests through the general contact form — they are routed differently and may not trigger a record suppression.

  2. Search for your listing. Enter your first name, last name, and state. If you have lived in multiple states, run a separate search for each. Intelius often holds multiple records tied to different addresses or life stages, and each is treated as a distinct entry.

  3. Identify the correct record. The search returns one or more profile cards showing name, age, city, and sometimes partial address. Click "Select" on each record that belongs to you. When in doubt, remove all records that match your name and age range — there is no penalty for over-selecting.

  4. Submit the removal form. After selecting a record, you will be prompted to enter your email address. This is required for verification; Intelius sends a confirmation link before processing the request.

  5. Check your email and confirm. Open the verification email from Intelius and click the confirmation link. The removal will not proceed without this step. If the email does not arrive within a few minutes, check your spam folder — transactional mail from data brokers is frequently filtered.

  6. Repeat for every record found. If you found three listings, you will go through the submit-and-confirm cycle three times. Each record must be individually confirmed.

  7. Address the PeopleConnect siblings separately. After completing the Intelius process, add the following to your opt-out list:

    • Truthfinder — operates its own opt-out pipeline at its privacy page
    • Instant Checkmate — separate database, separate form
    • US Search — another PeopleConnect property requiring its own submission

    Handling all four brands in a single session prevents the false confidence of a "done" status when the network still holds your data.

If you prefer to delegate this across dozens of additional brokers simultaneously, paid services such as Incogni, Optery, and DeleteMe automate submissions across many databases. They do not replace the need to understand what each opt-out actually covers, but they reduce the manual workload for people managing removals at scale. For a full walkthrough of the broader removal process across the data broker ecosystem, see How to Remove Yourself from Data Broker Sites.

What to Expect After Submitting

Timeline. Intelius states that opt-out requests are typically processed within a few business days. In practice, profile pages often stop resolving to your record within 48 to 72 hours of email confirmation. The underlying data suppression — which prevents your record from reappearing in searches — may take slightly longer to propagate across Intelius's internal systems.

The re-addition problem. Intelius, like most people-search sites, acquires data from third-party aggregators on a continuous basis. Public records, voter registration files, property transfers, and address-change notifications feed back into the system on a rolling schedule. A suppressed record can resurface if a new data batch contains information that does not match the suppression flag exactly — for instance, a slightly different name spelling or a new address associated with a move.

The FTC's guidance on data broker practices recommends that consumers check their listings periodically rather than treating a single opt-out as permanent protection (consumer.ftc.gov). A quarterly check takes five minutes and catches re-additions before they propagate downstream to catalogs and mailing list vendors.

What "removed" actually means. Intelius's opt-out suppresses your profile from appearing in their consumer-facing search interface. It does not guarantee removal from every internal system, and it does not apply retroactively to data already sold or licensed to third parties before the suppression was processed. Data that left Intelius's network before your opt-out completed may already be in circulation.

How This Stops Catalog Mail

Catalog companies rarely compile their own mailing lists from scratch. Assembling a list of households likely to purchase home goods, outdoor equipment, or specialty food items takes data infrastructure that most retailers do not maintain in-house. Instead, they license lists from data brokers — people-search sites and consumer data aggregators — that have already assembled current address files organized by demographic and purchasing signals.

Intelius, Truthfinder, and their PeopleConnect siblings are part of that supply chain. When your address is suppressed at the source, it is no longer available to the list vendors who power catalog mailings. A catalog company that licenses a mailing list in the next data refresh cycle will not receive your address if it has been removed from the upstream databases they query.

This is why opting out at the broker level — rather than just submitting removal requests directly to individual catalog companies — produces broader, more durable results. Catalogs that have already mailed you may continue for a cycle or two while their current list ages out. But the inbound flow from new campaigns and new mailers stops once your address is no longer in the data stream those campaigns draw from.

The direct-to-catalog removal request has its role. The broker opt-out addresses the mechanism that keeps regenerating the problem.

For authoritative guidance on data broker practices and your rights, the Electronic Frontier Foundation maintains current resources at eff.org.

References

Posts in this series