Two surfaces hold your personal data and work differently — public people-search platforms and invisible B2B brokers. The Eraser handles both, and the friction each is built with.
What the data broker industry holds
People-search platforms — Spokeo, Whitepages, BeenVerified, Intelius, and their EU and UK equivalents — are publicly accessible: anyone can search your name and retrieve your address, phone, email, employment history and family connections. You did not register with them; they assembled your record from public sources without your involvement.
B2B data brokers — Acxiom, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Experian Marketing Solutions, Oracle Data Cloud — are not visible to the public web. Their records feed marketing lists, identity scoring, and risk profiling sold to organisations. You will never see a search result from one of these companies. That does not mean they hold nothing about you.
Opt-out mechanisms exist for both surfaces, and both are designed to create friction: forms requiring extra personal data, verification steps that expire, portals that accept a request and re-list the record at the next refresh. The Eraser handles both surfaces and the friction that comes with each.
Two broker surfaces, two removal mechanics
People-search removal runs through each platform's own opt-out path — request form, confirmation, verification — and these re-list cleared records when they refresh from upstream sources, which is why the 90-day re-scrub matters — the bounce-back problem behind why opt-outs don't stick. B2B removal runs through Article 15 access requests and Article 17 / 21 erasure submissions under GDPR (or US state-law equivalents, including the California Delete Act). That path is slower, more procedural, and occasionally lands at a regulator — the ICO's 2024 Experian Upper Tribunal appeal is one well-known instance.
The Eraser handles both layers in one engagement. The mechanics differ. The objective — documented reduction and verification across both surfaces — does not.
Removal without a prior audit guesses at the scope. The Eraser begins with the Mirror and Lockdown foundation, then maps every broker that holds your records and which legal mechanism reaches each.
What we map before we remove
The Eraser begins with the Mirror and Lockdown investigation foundation. That audit documents the full exposure surface before any removal begins — people-search platforms, breach databases, social profiles, username registrations and public records, plus credential circulation across breach corpora, stealer-log indexes and dark-forum archives.
For data brokers specifically — both people-search and B2B — the investigation identifies which platforms hold your records, what each holds (name, address, phone, email, employment, relatives, property), and which legal mechanism applies to each removal: opt-out portals and CCPA/GDPR deletion for people-search; Article 15 access then Article 17/21 erasure for B2B brokers.
What you receive
| Mirror ReportFoundation | Public exposure surface mapped before any removal begins — what was found, where, risk classification — plus the Eraser scope conclusion. PDF. |
| Lockdown ReportFoundation | Credential surface — breach corpora, stealer-log indexes, dark-forum references — with confidence-tier and risk-state scoring. PDF. |
| Progress ReportPer phase | Confirmed removals, pending cases, any new exposures, next actions — so you always know where things stand. |
| Final Removal VerificationAt close | Site-by-site removal confirmation with evidence: what's gone, what's suppressed, what to watch. |
| Digital Hygiene PlanAt handover | Personalised protocols, settings and habits to reduce re-accumulation — yours to keep. |
| 90-Day Re-Scrub ReportDay 90 | Full second-pass verification — all sites re-checked, anything resurfaced removed again. Included in the price. |
The 6–8 week execution timeline
The Eraser is execution, not guidance. Analysts submit every request by hand, escalate where rights are enforceable, and return at 90 days. Where rights are contested or require judicial determination, we coordinate with specialist legal partners rather than provide legal advice.
Manual removal, every source
No automated tools, no bulk submissions — automated requests are the first thing most platforms are built to ignore. Each broker's opt-out path is worked by hand.
Extracted, not opted-out
An opt-out stops new display; erasure targets the record itself. Where erasure is available under GDPR Art. 17, UK GDPR or CCPA, that is what we pursue — otherwise we suppress and document it.
90-day re-scrub included
People-search platforms re-list cleared records on refresh. A full second pass at 90 days re-checks every site and removes anything resurfaced — included in the price.
After the engagement
New breaches and broker refreshes create new exposure over time. The Guardian retainer keeps the surface managed on an ongoing basis.
The Guardian retainer · €2,400/year
Ongoing protection after your Eraser engagement — offered to every completed client.
- Quarterly re-scrub of all monitored surfaces
- Quarterly dark-web credential re-scan
- Annual full Mirror re-audit, plus a quarterly advisory call
Data broker removal, in detail
Automated removal vs manual execution
Independent testing of automated data-removal services is sobering. A 2025 PoPETs study measured the major subscription tools clearing 48.2% of records at 41.1% accuracy; Consumer Reports' 2024 Data Defense study found manual opt-outs removed roughly 70% of people-search listings — ahead of the best-performing automated service (68%) and well ahead of the weakest (27%). The Eraser is built on the manual side of that gap: every opt-out and erasure request worked by hand, per platform, then re-verified at 90 days. What the studies actually measured →
Data broker removal for UK residents
The UK runs on UK GDPR plus the Data Protection Act 2018, amended by the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025. Your Art 21 right to object to direct marketing is absolute — a broker has one month to stop, with no legitimate-interest override. The Eraser issues UK GDPR-grounded objections and erasure requests under Art 21 and Art 17, escalates to the ICO where the statutory window lapses, and verifies removal at 30 and 90 days.
People-search vs B2B brokers
People-search platforms are publicly indexed and removed through opt-out portals; B2B brokers are invisible to the public web and removed through GDPR access-then-erasure requests or US state-law equivalents. The Eraser handles both in one engagement.
Opt-out vs erasure
An opt-out stops a platform displaying your record in new searches; erasure seeks its deletion from the database. Where erasure is the available remedy under GDPR Art. 17, UK GDPR or CCPA, that is what we pursue — otherwise we suppress and document the suppression.
Can you guarantee 100% removal?
No ethical service can — brokers resurface and new ones emerge. We guarantee best-effort removal across all known major brokers, with the 90-day re-scrub included for anything that reappears. Doing it yourself runs 80–120 hours, and most brokers re-list within 12 months.
Eraser FAQs
No ethical service can legally guarantee 100% removal — data brokers constantly resurface and new ones emerge. We guarantee best-effort removal from all known major brokers, with our 90-day re-scrub for any data that reappears.
Full execution takes 6–8 weeks: investigation foundation — Mirror and Lockdown — (2 weeks), active removal (3 weeks), and verification and escalation (2 weeks). The 90-day re-scrub runs 90 days after the active removal phase closes. A progress report is delivered at each phase.
No. The Eraser includes the investigation foundation — we run the full Mirror and Lockdown scope as the first phase, so we know what's publicly findable and what's circulating before removal begins.
The 90-day re-scrub is a full second pass included in the price — we re-check all sites and remove anything resurfaced. After that, your maintenance plan covers what to do going forward. A third removal round, if needed, is a separate engagement, and we'll tell you clearly what we found.