Keep Your Home Address Private With A Google Alert

Removing your home address from “people search” sites is a long, tedious and sometimes costly process. So once you do it, you want it to stick. Unfortunately, says BoingBoing, this is not a one-and-done process. Even after you get delisted, your name will pop up in new databases.

Their solution: Set a google alert for your name and address. Then you’ll get an email whenever a new site posts your name and address. You can catch each new instance and request a takedown.

Go to your Google Alerts page, and search your name and address. The site will show you a preview of results. (If you’re getting too many irrelevant results, put your street address or your name in quotes.) Click Show options and change How many from Only the best results to All results. Click Create Alert.

As Boing Boing points out, this method only catches public records, not paid-access databases. To expunge your record from those, use the services listed in our previous post.

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