How To Opt Out of Nuwber and Protect Your Privacy

Nuwber is a people-search site that lists personal information about US citizens on its website. At the time of writing it claims to have records of 300 million people. Armed with just a name, the site’s visitors can find out where that person lives, their date of birth, their phone numbers, their email addresses and much more.

The good news is that it’s easy for anyone with access to an internet-enabled device to opt out of Nuwber.

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Why opt out of Nuwber?

Nuwber is relatively unusual among people-search sites in that it provides a large amount of information for free. Within seconds, anyone searching your name can view the following information:

• Full names and aliases
• Date of birth
• Gender
• Phone numbers
• Email addresses
• Marriage status
• Home address and previous addresses
• Property value and ownership status
• Names of neighbors
• Names of relatives

Nuwber collects this information from a variety of sources, including government and public records, self-reported information, social media sites, and other data brokers. Taken individually, the data might seem relatively harmless. Tack it together into a profile though, and you have a snapshot of a person’s life.

Nuwber touts these profiles as a way for people to check out potential neighbors before buying a property, carry out research on their childrens’ friends’ parents, or evaluate the background of an existing or prospective romantic partner. While this might seem a useful – if creepy – tool for those doing the searching, for the searched it cannot help but feel like an invasion of privacy. Or, at least, it would if they even knew it was happening.

If you value your privacy and live in the US, we strongly recommend opting out of Nuwber.

How to opt out of Nuwber?

Submitting a request to have your information removed from Nuwber is straightforward – just follow these steps:

1. Go to https://nuwber.com/ and enter your name. Click “Search”
2. Find your listing and click “View Details”
3. Copy the listing’s URL
4. Go to https://nuwber.com/removal/link
5. Paste the URL into the empty field and click “Opt Out”
6. Enter an email address – we recommend using a disposable email service – in the empty field and click “Remove”
7. Open the link that is sent to you via the email address provided above and click “Confirm Request”
8. Wait for a week or so and then paste your listing’s URL into the browser and press “Enter”. If the search result returns a 410 error code, your personal page has been removed. If it’s still there, contact support@nuwber.com

How to stop your data from being used online

While opting out of Nuwber is easy enough, the problem is that this particular company is just one of the hundreds of data brokers buying and selling your data on a daily basis. This industry is growing all the time, though few people are even aware of its existence.

A report on the industry produced by the US Federal Trade Commission listed the following characteristics of the industry:

• Data brokers collect consumer data from numerous sources, largely without consumers’ knowledge.

• The data broker industry is complex, with multiple layers of data brokers providing data to each other.

• Data brokers collect and store billions of data elements covering nearly every US consumer.

• Data brokers combine and analyze data about consumers to make inferences about them, including potentially sensitive inferences.

• Data brokers combine online and offline data to market to consumers online.

Ultimately, say the report’s authors, “many of the purposes for which data brokers collect and use data pose risks to consumers”.

So what can you do about it? One option is to manually remove yourself from the databases of hundreds of data brokers. However, this is incredibly time-consuming – particularly as you need to periodically go back and recheck that removed data hasn’t been readded. A better option, if you can afford it, is to sign up for a service that will do it for you.

There are several such services available, but we’d recommend the following:

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The best removal services to opt out of people-search sites

Now, let’s consider each of these data removal services in a little more detail.

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How to opt out of Nuwber – FAQs

[[post-object type=”accordion” question=”How quickly will Nuwber remove my data?” answer=”The company’s site says that personal information will be deleted within 48 hours of receiving an opt-out request. However, customer support staff have said elsewhere online that removal can take between two and four weeks.” /]]

[[post-object type=”accordion” question=”Do I have to have to pay or have a Nuwber subscription in order to opt out?” answer=”No, opting out is ‘free’. However, by opting out, you are <a href=’https://nuwber.com/policy’>consenting for Nuwber</a> to collect and process yet more data. This includes any personal information entered, the pages you visit, your IP address, operating system, internet service provider, device type and settings, browser type and settings, crash reports, the content you view on their website, and the date, time, and referrer URL of your request.

Note that trying to access the site using a VPN generates an error page where the company claims that VPNs ‘interfere with cashback tracking’ and ‘must be completely disabled’.” /]]

[[post-object type=”accordion” question=”Can I remove more than one listing from Nuwber?” answer=”If Nuwber has more than one record for you, then you’ll need to repeat the opt out process using the URL for each listing. Bear in mind that these records may well reappear, so make sure to check back to ensure that each listing has been removed.” /]]

[[post-object type=”accordion” question=”Can a prospective employer or landlord use Nuwber?” answer=”Legally they can’t. According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), people-search sites like Nuwber must not be used to make either credit-granting or denial decisions, or employment or housing decisions. However, given the ease with which personal information can be accessed, it’s not hard to imagine less scrupulous landlords or employers being tempted to make use of it.” /]]

Image credits: Soubhagya Das on Pexels, Miguel Á. Padriñánon on Pexels, Gordon Johnson from Pixabay, & Dayne Topkin on Unsplash

by Miguel Á. Padriñán: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-shot-of-keyboard-buttons-2882638/

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-shot-of-keyboard-buttons-2882638/