How To Get out of MyLife Directory Site
MyLife compiles personal data from several Internet sites with a stated mission of “helping people find and connect with others by managing the information they choose to share with the world.” The founder’s stated goal is to “create and protect a public image that helps Americans get ahead and enrich their lives.” I have a personal issue with the ethics of gathering information and then charging to remove it and taking it a step further, charging to remove this information from other sites. While I take issue with the harm MyLife (inadvertently) causes some people, I thank them for their willingness and cooperation when it comes to removing information from their site upon request.
When I first wrote this tutorial, you needed to search for your public Mylife profile by going to the MyLife website first. That no longer works because a search on the site leads you to setting up an account in order to hide your own information or to remove your information from other sites. You do not need to pay MyLife to have your information removed and you do not need to take this step!
My removal strategy for MyLife is ridiculously simple, but often takes tenacity and repeated attempts. Here goes:
- Locate your MyLife profile by entering your name into Google in this format including the quotes before and afterwards. “Your First and Last name MyLife” and pressing enter.
- Once you locate the result that appears to be you, click on it to bring up the related public profile.
- Move your curser to the URL bar, and copy the address of your public profile.
Locate the URL in the address bar
- Open up an email to MyLife by clicking, contact MyLife via email and request that they remove your public profile from their site. Be sure to paste the URL (web address) from Step 3. Keep your email brief and simple. (SAMPLE WORDING: Please remove my information from MyLife. The link to my public profile is https://www.mylife.com/Your First Name-Your Last Name/Your profile number that begins with the letter “e”. Thank you. Your first name and your last name.)
- You will receive a generic email from MyLife to acknowledge receipt of your removal request.
- In a matter of hours or days after you receive the first email from MyLife you will receive a version of the email below telling you that you have been removed from the site. But that doesn’t mean it’s been removed. Keep going to step 7.
- Once you get confirmation of your removal, you must go back to Step 1 to see if you were removed completely or not.
- If you get a result like the one below when you enter your name, you are done! Congratulations. (If you have a common name, you may see other people listed with the same name, but you will recognize yourself if you remain.)
Sign of a successfully removed profile!
- Alternatively, if you find your information remains on the site, go back to Step 1 and repeat until you have success.
- If you get a result like the one below when you enter your name, you are done! Congratulations. (If you have a common name, you may see other people listed with the same name, but you will recognize yourself if you remain.)
Since complete and prompt removal from MyLife is inconsistent, you may need to reach out to them multiple times. You can follow up by contacting them via 2 separate email addresses: Support or Privacy or you can phone them and ask for assistance at (888) 704-1900 Mon-Fri: 6am – 7pm PST and Sat-Sun: 6am – 5pm. Be optimistic that you will succeed promptly. But if not, multiple attempts and persistence will ultimately result in success! The key is follow up.
IMPORTANT NOTES:
- Some people have multiple profiles on the site. Repeat the directions for each profile however, you can list multiple profile URLS in a single email to MyLife.
- You may get an email with a refusal to remove you because the information is gathered from public sources. If this is the case, go back to step 1 because sometimes MyLife removes your profile in spite of telling you no. If they refuse to remove you and you are still on the site, ignore that letter and start over by going back to the start of the tutorial and sending a fresh removal request to MyLife. Chances are that the next person who receives your email will remove your profile. If not, repeat again, and again until you have success.
- You do not need to take control of your public profile or to edit it, in fact, I recommend against doing that. Simply ask to be removed.
Please let me and other readers know if you run into any issues when you email for assistance (by leaving a comment on this article) and also please share your experience if you become a satisfied paid member of MyLife. That information will be useful for other readers and interesting for me. To be clear, I’ll repeat what I said in the introduction: I have a personal issue with the ethics of gathering information and then charging to remove it and taking it a step further, charging to remove this information from other sites.
Along those lines, if you consider the use of any paid information removal service (including mine), “Buyer Beware!” Make sure you understand exactly what you are getting for your money, what is and what is not covered by the service and how long it will take for meaningful results. Successful and complete removal takes time, regardless of how much you pay for it.
In the meantime, here’s a list to my free opt out tutorials for those of you willing to do your own removals and most importantly, the required follow up! I offer a paid removal service from more than 100 different sites (this number constantly increases) and I add to my tutorials when time allows. You can subscribe to be notified of new articles/tutorials or you can look at all articles anytime.
Until next time,… Stay Cyber Safe!
Note: This article was revised on May 30th, 2019
Note: This article was updated again on October 16, 2019 due to changes on the MyLife site.
I have removed profiles from mylife before, and once they are removed (and I revisit the page to check) I always see the message “Uh Oh! 410: Page is Gone”. But this has stopped happening. Now when I remove a profile, I see a message that says “This MyLife Reputation Profile has been Removed by _________” with the profile persons name in the blank. Behind this message is a blurred our version of the original profile. The cache can still be accessed via google. When I submit the URL to googles removal tool, it won’t remove it because the page is still active. Has anyone else encountered this recenlty? I called back and the Mylife operator said it was part of their new removal policy, and that the page should convert to the 410 error message eventually. But these people are so untrustworthy, I feel skeptical.
I am also skeptical about that. I haven’t encountered that yet, but once I do, I’ll update the tutorial.
I am dealing with the same issue. It’s been 9 days since you posted this, has the page converted to the 410 error message yet?
Hello!
I feel like giving up. Literally sent 5 emails and every time they reply with the faq 18 email. I even changed the subject line like you stated. I don’t know what else to do. Any suggestions? Thank you!
Never mind! I finally received the removal email that it was removed! Thank you for setting up this page for everyone to learn how to remove! 🙂
Awesome! Thanks for the follow up. 🙂
More of the same. Eventually it will get done!
For all those who are getting multiple responses referring them to the dreaded FAQ #14 – I finally emailed them and asked if they were a bot. This morning, I received an email stating it had been removed. I checked it and it has. THANK YOU HAYLEY. I have a stalker and she views it at least once a week. I know many people have gotten false reports but I know she has been looking. It does no good to move if she can easily find my new address. Can she request they put it back up again?
Excellent and you’re welcome. I don’t think your stalker can have the profile put back up. But head’s up if you are concerned about your address being out there… it’s on many other sites too. I have free tutorials to help with other sites and I can be hired to do removals for a fee for those who don’t want to do it or are unable to do this themselves. Here’s a link to all of my free tutorials in one place and a link to an article about maintaining privacy too.
https://what-is-privacy.com/category/opt-out-2/
https://what-is-privacy.com/2016/10/how-to-achieve-online-privacy/
🙂 Hayley
Hayley, how much is your fee to remove someone from internet like mylife.com and/or others.
Good Morning, Wanda. Everyone has a unique online situation and so I only quote fees after getting answers to a few questions. (ie. How many names or aliases you have online, how many states you’ve lived in and a few more.). I offer a wide range of removal services depending upon each client’s needs and those prices vary extensively. I’ll email you privately and we can set up a phone call to go over your situation and I should be able to give you a solid idea of pricing during that call. (I finalize pricing for extensive removal services only after looking each person up.) 🙂 Hayley
Thank you so much for posting this process and providing a forum for people to talk about their experiences.
After requesting 3x over the course of 24 hours that they remove my profile, I received the following message:
“As per your request the URL you have provided had been removed from MyLife.com upon your last request. Once we remove a profile, the information should no longer be available on MyLife.com’s website. However, it is possible that the link to the profile could still be shown on major search sites such as Google. These search results should be removed the next time the search engine updates their records (the amount of time to complete this does vary).”
Is the bit about Google having to update their records true? My profile still shows up after 48 hours. I don’t use Google as my search engine, but I do use gmail.
Thank you again!
Awesome! Thanks for sharing.
They still haven’t taken it down. After 5 requests.
So I just keep sending them messages indefinitely until they do, yes?
Oh Shoot. Yes. I thought they’d actually removed it for you. But sometimes they say they will and they don’t. (Assuming you mean the profile on MyLife itself because they have nothing to do with the Google result).
I just got your email, thank you!
Thank you for providing information and services to help us with this difficult company.
I will contact you if I continue to be unsuccessful.
Sure thing!
Hi, Hayley,
This is a new question but I can’t find a way to post it without using a reply.
My Life recently “removed” my information. I assumed removal would mean nothing came up on a search of their site or google.
However, my name still comes up in google and my MyLife page says “This MyLife reputation profile has been removed by (my name).”
That almost looks as bad as having a profile! It implies I removed my profile because I have something to hide.
Is there language you suggest using to specifically get this message removed in addition to my profile?
Thanks!
Kate
Hello Kate,
Your info on MyLife in Google is known as “temporary cache” Without removal from Google, your information will be gone from MyLife but some details will show up in a Google search of your name and by clicking on the down arrow in the Google result, the MyLife information will still be available. MyLife has done the removal from their side and the Google end is not something they usually help with so I have no wording to suggest.
Assuming MyLife removed all versions and hidden files relating to your profile, it will (supposedly) eventually fall out of search results on its own. It can take anywhere from hours, to days, to weeks, to months for this to happen.
In most cases, with a rare exception, I can fast track the removal of your remaining MyLife info in Google for a fee. Reach out privately if you want to pursue that option. If not, perhaps watch it and let us all know if it falls off and how long it takes to do so. I haven’t keep track of this.
🙂 Hayley
Thanks, Hayley.
In your example above, the page has the message “We didn’t find FirstName LastName”
Will I get to that point eventually without taking other steps?
Thanks
I am unclear about what you are asking, Kate. Once you get the message that your page has been removed and you click on it from Google, then you know MyLife did what they were supposed to do. When you are unable to find that same result in Google then it has been purged from Google too. If it’s still found in Google even though it leads to a result without your info, then in theory, it should disappear on its own eventually. Until that happens, the original content is still available to those who know how to access it. (By clicking on the little triangle, then the word “cached”.)
My apologies. I didn’t explain it correctly.
Right now if you search for my name on Mylife.com, it reaches a page that says “This MyLife Reputation Profile has been removed by Kate MyLastName”
Technically my profile is not visible, but I didn’t expect it to say that I asked to remove it.
I was expecting that by removing my profile, it would say “We didn’t find Kate MyLastName Please check the spelling…”
Would greatly appreciate your insight. Thanks!
When a profile is removed it does not usually mention who it was removed by. Kate, if you email me your full name, city and state privately I’ll look you up and give you an answer. A screenshot of the page including the URL will be helpful for me too. Hayley
Sophie,
Did you have to create an account with mylife ? I’m trying to do the same without having to create an account. I emailed them and they replied with a generic email directing me to their FAQ #18 which lists “forms of payment.” FAQ #14 list how to remove but it won’t unless you create an account.
No need to create an account for this process. Keep emailing them with a different subject line until they remove it for you without creating an account and without paying for additional services from them. Good luck. 🙂 Hayley
Haley,
thank you… it took three tries and a reminder of The Privacy Act, but my profile page was FINALLY removed!
Thanks again for your post and immediate reply to my question!
Glad it worked out and you’re welcome. 🙂
Hi, Ive sent out numerous emails to them and still receiving the same old response; call them, sign in, faq 14, and faq 18… ugh
That is so frustrating – sorry you’re having this but it seems to be what’s happening lately. Don’t despair. Keep trying because it worked for me and for others with the same problem. Alternatively I can be hired to do it for you. My removal will include removal from Google. Keep me posted and good luck!
I have sent multiple requests to be removed. I keep getting the same response:
‘Thank you for contacting MyLife™ Customer Care. This note is to inform you that we have received your inquiry and below is the steps to remove your MyLife profile.
Please go to mylife(dot)com/help, and select FAQ #18. This FAQ, will give you step by step instructions on how to remove your profile from MyLife.com.’
Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.
I tested this out with a client a couple of days ago and had the same thing happen. I replied to the email and I changed my subject line and then I got a response saying the profile had been removed and to allow 24 hours for it to be fully removed. After 24 hours it was still there so I emailed again with yet a new subject line and then it was removed. A painstaking process but it seems that’s what it’s come down to.
Ideas for a subject line: Supervisor requested; please read before sending boilerplate back; Following up on my last email; Tech support requested. Request for customer service please.
Please let me know when you have success. Alternatively, I can be hired to go through the headache for you if you prefer. 🙂
They finally removed the information from their website. I emailed them again since the link to their website still shows a lot of personal information. They said the link should be removed when the search engine updates their records. I will keep checking.
Hayley, thank you so much for your help!
It is so unfortunate that this is happening. They claim the information they post can be easily found online which is not true. The information they display is not only personal but in most cases it is inaccurate and defamatory. There has to be some legal consequence for these people.
Excellent. Thanks for the update. 🙂
Hi Haley, I just tried opting out via email and I received a message from mylife with a link. It said, to opt out I must complete FAQ # 18. #18 about sending them payment and telling me what payment methods they accept. They’re the mafia now. What should I do?
Don’t do anything yet, Chrissy. The law in California says you do not need to pay or to register in order to opt out. Even if you’re not in CA, you should not have to do it either. I need to do a removal for a client today. Let me try it and report back. (Give me a few days in case I run into any issues.) Then I’ll respond to you and will update the tutorial as well.
Thank you!
Great news. I got an email from Mylife about an hour ago saying they removed my profile! Yay! Thanks so much for your help, Hayley! It’s so nice of you to make this information available to the public.
Excellent. Now I had the same experience with my client today. First and second email got the same response you mentioned. Then I got an email saying it was removed, but I checked, and it wasn’t. I was going to give them until tomorrow to see if it comes off and if it doesn’t, I was going to follow the same method in my tutorial which is essentially, keep contacting them until it is done. Do not register. Do not pay. Persistence and Follow up are key. 🙂
I just checked and I can’t find me. Again, thank you! xo
Fantastic! You’re welcome!
Hi, thank you for this website!
I requested removal of mylife profile.
The link to my profile on mylife is still on google, and the link goes to a blurred page that says;
“This MyLife Reputation Profile has been
Removed by (me)
So the google link alone still has a lot of information about me, and doing a google link removal request fails because the mylife website profile is still on line. Does this come off or do I need to request removal again or does mylife never actually remove anything?
Is the MyLife Reputation Profile removal the same as a full deletion?
Also, I was an idiot for sending a copy of my full DL as they insisted for removal and I feel tricked, maybe they will use it for nefarious reasons?
Hmmm. Let me reach out to your privately. Usually the link goes to a page that shows it’s been removed and it’s not blurred. I’d like you to send me your name and city and state (privately) and I can look you up and then respond after that.
I think they may have an automated bot at this point. I have sent 6 requests to have my information removed and receive the following message every time:
Dear Xxxxxx Xxxxxx,
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ Customer Care. This note is to inform you that we have received your inquiry and below is the steps to remove your MyLife profile.
Please go to mylife.com/help, and select FAQ #18. This FAQ, will give you step by step instructions on how to remove your profile from MyLife.com.
You can also contact us via phone by calling toll-free at (888) 704-1900. Our hours of phone support are: Monday – Friday 6:00 AM – 7:00 PM (PST) Saturday-Sunday 6:00 AM – 5:00 PM (PST)
Thank you again for your e-mail and we look forward to assisting you!
Sincerely,
MyLife.com™ Customer Care Team
Thanks for pointing this out. I’ll try to test it out myself again soon to see if I have the same problem.
I followed the steps given and my public profile seems to have been removed. I get the nothing found message which is great. What puzzles me is that I am still getting emails saying that 3 (always 3 never any other number) people have viewed my reputation profile. I have deleted the messages without opening them, so I have no clue what it says inside the email. Is there something more that I should be doing?
It sounds like you’re getting “marketing/scare you into signing up” emails and you’re fine deleting them without opening them. But you can contact MyLife and confirm that with them because they obviously didn’t remove you properly if anyone can review your profile. You can also unsubscribe from those emails if they are coming to you directly from MyLife. But be careful because sometimes emails aren’t what they seem. See this article before moving forward with an unsubscribe. https://what-is-privacy.com/2018/02/danger-unsubscribing-unwanted-emails/
Thank you so much for this info! I emailed both, and got the bounce back stating to look at their FAQ’s #18. Wrote a second email to both and at the same time, made the mistake of calling. When I called the lady ignored what I was saying and was clearly reading a script trying to sell me a membership. I got stern with her over and over and over (blood pressure was rising) and she finally agreed. But then started asking me more questions when at the same time, I noticed I received a simple e-mail from a different person at mylife saying they’d take it down in response to my emails.
Long story short- calling is a headache and multiple emails should work (I was just impatient and wanted it taken down asap, lol)!
All’s well that ends well. Congrats on a job well done and thanks for sharing, Michelle. 🙂
I just emailed them to remove me, and they pointed me back to the FAQ. Upon clicking on the FAQ, they request that I upload a photo of my driver’s license!
I don’t recommend doing that because I’ve never done that and I’ve not heard anyone receiving that request before either. If you do take that route you should opaquely redact the license number, your photo(s) and your signature.
Try start over on the tutorial. Send a new request without referencing the one you just made and see if the person that gets that request handles it appropriately. Keep me posted.
Hayley
I’m experiencing the same BS. I sent a new request.
🙁 Sorry. Hopefully the next request will do the trick.
So after repeated back-and-forth – “Please remove my information.” “OK, sign up and give us your I.D.” “No. Remove my information immediately” – it’s finally off the site. Persistence seems to work. At least for now. I hope Congress can wrangle some control over these people.
All’s well that ends well. Good job on persevering. It’s sad that’s what it takes and it will be interesting to see if the upcoming laws help or not. See my latest article: https://what-is-privacy.com/2019/12/current-laws-supporting-privacy-of-online-personal-information/
When I went to FAQ 18, it told me that I must be a registered MyLife member, and I must be logged in to submit the request to be removed. I haven’t done it. I’ll start over as others have suggested.
Agreed. Start over and do not create a login to do this. 🙂 Hayley
Hello– I followed your directions and sent removalrequest@mylife.com an email. Like others, I received a response indicating to follow FAQ#18 and claim my identity. I decided to call the customer service number and spoke to a rep who asked me a series of information and then said that my information would be removed in 24hrs. It has been more than 24hrs. When I google search for my name, I see that my entire birth date is listed which had not been listed before!
Hi Patri,
You are seeing temporary cache. If you click on the down arrow in the result, the word “cached” will appear. When you click on the word “cached” you will see what was on the site before it was removed. That is supposed to clear on its own over time. If it doesn’t or if you want it removed faster, please reach out to me privately via my contact form. I can remove it for you for a small fee.
Hayley
I received a msg. saying that I have to go through a process of providing identify verification. And sends me to a link to do that.
I won’t provide any additional information. Will try more emails, praying it works.
That’s a first for me, Marty, and not something I’m familiar with so far. If I encounter anything like that I will update my tutorial but in the meantime I’m going to recommend you go back to step 1 of my tutorial and start over. Please keep me updated about your progress. Thanks.
Hayley
I tried again and received another msg. this time saying that it has been removed. Initially it was still showing up but when I checked today it brings up an error msg. saying the page is gone. Thank you so much for your directions.
Now I wish I could get rid of my name coming up via the search when I enter my name because it shows my age and that I have court or arrest…. ( but when you click on that is when you get the page is gone msg.)
Marty,
You are seeing the results in temporary cache. In some cases that disappears after a period of time. Once in a while it does not. If your results are still showing up now, please reach out to me privately via my contact form. I can take care of it for a small fee.
Hayley
I followed the instructions but the email response from Customer Care directed me to mylife.com/help FAQ #18. You must be a registered member to remove your profile. Do I really need to register or is there another to remove profile?
Hi Rabi,
Do not register and do not go through the process of claiming your profile. You do not need to pay for additional services and you do not need to pay to opt out. Please go back to step one of my tutorial and start over. Alternatively you can reach out privately to me if you want to hire me to do it for you.
Hayley
Omgosh. I just chanced on your blog and followed your instructions. I first sent them an email and then I called them and it was removed whiles I was still on the phone with them.
This is the best thing ever that has happened to me. How I wish people will have their names removed.
Thank you Hayley. Thanks so mucn
Beautiful. Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Hayley, thank you for putting this information out! I’ve started the uphill battle of trying to have this MyLife profile taken down. I’m currently on my 8th round of emails requesting that my profile be removed from their site. After each time I send a new email, I get a response that they will begin the process of taking my profile down and then a few hours later I’ll get another response saying ”
Unfortunately the information on your Public Background page cannot be removed as it is gathered from public records, government, and other public sources, etc.” My method so far has to been to send a fresh email stating that I would like my profile removed, wait for their “unfortunately…” response, then start a new email thread with my original email request. I’m emailing all 3 of the listed contact emails. Am I going about this correctly? Should I be firing off emails without waiting for their response instead?
Goodness. That’s more contacts than are usually necessary. Have you checked that the information hasn’t been taken down? Usually one of those emails will result in success even if you get the negative follow up email.
Ugh, yes, unfortunately my profile is still up on their site. I’ll continue emailing them for now.
Sorry it’s so challenging. 🙁
Thank you for your help. I followed your instructions and succeeded. I must say that I had to send a ridiculously large number of emails to get it done. At first I sent one and they sent a polite refusal. After a few more reasonably spaced requests with MyLife refusing and trying to make me feel guilty like they are providing a valuable public service to persons dealing with strangers, I started hammering them emails. Way more than three. Like ten times that. Finally!!! I got a message that they had removed my listing so I checked and it was indeed gone. They really stone-walled me though. I think they were hoping I would give up and go away. But I persisted and it paid off eventually. Expect MyLife to test your resolve!
Welcome to my life, Mike. (No pun intended.) On so many of the sites it comes down to persistence and follow up. I suppose MyLife takes this stance to try to get people to sign up for their paid service. I’m happy persistence paid off for you and thanks for the feedback! 🙂
Hi Hayley,
Do I have to create an account w/MyLife to get to Step 2 (copying the address of my public profile) to send to MyLife when I request my removal? I ran the “report” and now it’s asking me to sign in to see my complete reputation file.
Thanks for your help!
Do not create a report, Sarah. I think I need to look over the tutorial and possibly make changes because MyLife may have changed things up a bit. The key is to find your URL and you can always Google your name with the word “MyLife” next to it to find the result in Google first. Then click on that result and grab the URL from the address bar. Let me know if that works for you. Hayley
I just made a significant update to the tutorial because MyLife changed how things work. Thanks for alerting me that there was confusion in the tutorial, Sarah.
Hayley,
You’re instructions via email worked! Thank you VERY much for your help and for your blog/website with this helpful information.
Sincerely,
-sarah
Awesome. Thanks for telling me and you’re welcome.
I found that the best way to locate my name in mylife was to Google my name (including any variations) any other way I was asked to purchase a report (NEVER purchase a report – opens a can of worms). Also, if you click on an addresses/phone numbers that are highlighted blue it will bring up anyone in their database with that same info. This helps find any name variations that need to be removed as well.
Emailed them a bunch of times, all 3 email addresses. First few times they said no they would not remove it but then they did! Thanks
It’s a shame it has to be this hard but good job persevering and congrats on getting it done! 🙂
Thank you for this information. All of the information on my “mylife” page except for my birthday was WRONG. Marital status, income, religion, political affiliation…ALL wrong! Amazing. At first Customer Service sent me a reply refusing to take down my page, but then i contacted support@mylife.com and privacy@mylife.com, and they deleted my page.
Excellent, Andrew. Thanks for sharing. Hayley
Thank you for your post. I’ve been trying since Aug 21 and have yet to receive any sort of reply. I’m going to try sending an email every other day until I get some kind of response.
Check your junk/spam folder. An automated response always goes out so if you’re not getting that, something is off.
Thank you! Looks like they replied to my request from earlier today and it went to my spam folder. They said they’ll begin processing my request. Hopefully it works. Thanks for your help!
Excellent! You’re welcome!
It’s gone! I feel SO MUCH BETTER! Thanks so much for posting this. i really appreciate you.
You have to clear the cache before you can actually see if it’s gone. Thank you! Thank you!
Yay! You’re welcome, you’re welcome, Anna. 🙂
My first try was not successful. I got the response that they can’t remove it. Then I got another email saying it was removed, but it’s still there! I’ll keep trying. Thanks for sharing your help with us.
You’re welcome, Anna. If you don’t mind, please let us know how long it takes to be removed from the time they said it will be removed. 🙂
To everyone dealing with this – don’t give up! I sent the recommended email to the member support address at least 3 times and always got the same boilerplate response – can’t be done, it’s all public info, blah, blah, blah. I then reread the article and noticed the mention of privacy and support email addresses and sent the same message to the address for privacy. That seemed to have done the trick – they have removed my profile, most of which was inaccurate info in any case. So glad I stumbled upon your article and have bookmarked your site – thank you!
Excellent, Lynn. Thanks for sharing and you are welcome. 🙂
Thank you for your work and the position you take on MyLife. I think the irony of that name is lost on these folks who would aggregate information on me and want to charge me to have it removed (that’s a form of blackmail): It is, indeed, MY LIFE and this company has no right to it, and certainly does not have the privilege of assigning a numeric value to MY LIFE. The company is full of contradictions. When I called to remove my name, the operator wouldn’t give me his last name. I thought we were all in this complete information about each other together. I asked him how I could do business over the phone with him if I didn’t know his reputational value.
Brilliant, Norman. You gave me a good laugh with that. You make a great point.
Found my profile about 2 weeks ago and at that time was able to view a page with a brief summary. After reading this I went back but couldn’t access that page that may have had my name in the URL. The layout appears different and after scanning and scanning to compile a report, I was unable to view as I’m not a member. The URL I Did get is:. mylife(dot)com/site/ob/init/ps-bgc.pubview?adl=99999999999. (except all the 9’s were other numbers.) Should I expect a removal request with that URL to work? How long before an e-mail response back from them? Thanks so much!
That URL does not look like it will work, but I’m not 100% sure about it because I’ve not encountered a URL like that myself. It sounds like you may have been signed into the site or you clicked on a link within your result to get there. Make sure you are not signed into the site when you get your URL. Don’t click on any reports once you are on your public profile.
I emailed you a URL privately for someone with your name. If that is your profile, use that URL in your email to MyLife. If it is not, type your name in quotes followed by the word “MyLife” and you should be able to find your public profile via Google. You should hear back from MyLife with a boilerplate email immediately. (Check junk folder if you don’t). Then you will hear from them again within a couple of days with a refusal to do the removal or with confirmation that your removal is being processed.
Hayley
People,
Paying to be a member of the site, and flagging your info as private does not work, I tried. You must follow the instructions that Hayley presented on this page.
I sent my removal request after seeing paying to take the profile private does not work. I got this response:
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ Customer Care. This note is to inform you that we have received your inquiry and will begin processing your request.
Please note that we respond to e-mail messages in the order received. Your Removal Request should be processed and completed within 7-10 business days. Please do not send multiple e-mails regarding the same subject as this will only delay our response.
We value your request for privacy and would like some feedback on how we can improve your experience controlling your Online footprint. If you have a moment, please take a few seconds to complete this survey. Your response would be greatly appreciated.
You can also contact us via phone by calling toll-free at (888) 704-1900. Our hours of phone support are: Monday – Friday 6:00 AM – 7:00 PM (PST) Saturday-Sunday 6:00 AM – 5:00 PM (PST)
Thank you again for your e-mail and we look forward to assisting you!
Sincerely,
MyLife.com™ Customer Care Team
They say they wanted me to take a survey, but there was no survey or link to one.
Thanks for your comment which I agree with. I have been contacted by a significant number of people who paid MyLife but remained on the site.
around 5am I got a second email regarding the removal process:
Reference number: -removed- Please use this ticket number in any correspondence with us.
Subject: removal request
Hi,
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ to request removal of your Public Background Report & Reputation Score.
We appreciate your Inquiry about the information on MyLife. The information on each profile page is gathered from public sources, which can be easily found online using a simple Google search.
The referenced profile has been removed as requested. Please allow the required 24 hours for the profile to be completely removed.
If you are still seeing the page, clear the History/Cache on your internet browser. Sometimes a page you have viewed previously can be seen from your history even though the page no longer exists. If you are seeing search results from major search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing, allow 5-7 business days for the results to be removed by the search engine provider.
If you feel that your specific profile was not removed, respond with the website URL of the profile page. Or send the following information exactly as shown on the profile: Name, Age, City, State.
Contact a MyLife Customer Care Representative to learn more about MyLife Premium and how to control and monitor your personal information online.
If you need additional assistance or have further questions, please feel free to contact our MyLife™ Customer Care representatives toll-free at (888) 704-1900.
We are open Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-5pm PST to provide unlimited free member support.
Sincerely,
-name removed-
So now we wait… As I go down the list of other sites.
The other sites that did similar things had one thing going for them, that is they didn’t lie to extort people. MyLife raised the stakes by assigning “criminal history” status to a ticket I got for an expired inspection sticker. The other sites would imply there were public records, but never claim I was a criminal.
I started going after MyLife after someone on NextDoor threatened to tell my neighbors about my DWI’s and criminal history (I have no DWI’s and no criminal history). When you do a search on someone mylife plays a movie pretending to be searching millions of sites, and during that movie I saw it “find” my DWI’s and criminal history, but after paying my $1 to see the report, the criminal history was displayed as simply the word criminal, and all of the detail fields “pending”. No mention of DWI, or any explanation what they mean by criminal. I have had background checks for work multiple times, and there is no criminal history period.
In my state, a traffic ticket is a civil case, not a criminal case, so by casually lumping all public records behind the word criminal, I believe they elevate their crime to include libel. This is the very dictionary definition of libel, and I actually had someone use that in a threat and an attempted intimidation against me so there are additional damages… However minor. I called the guy out in public that threatened me, and shut the troll down, but the fact is Mylife set those wheels in motion. I’m tempted to sue them, but the number of people that saw that data was small enough. Mylife showed me a list of everyone that looked me up, where they were from when it happened, and enough info that I was actually able to identify all four people even though they were anonymous. So while I did suffer some damages, I at least got to see how bad the exposure was, and know that it was limited to 3 people and myself.
What is criminal is them telling people they can buy “background checks” on people, then provide false info. I don’t need to sue them myself, not worth the hassle, but if it helped other people who were damaged by this, I might consider it.
Good info to share and to see how others weigh in. Please let us know when your profile is actually removed too. 🙂 Hayley
I just emailed them to get my info removed following instructions on this site and they replied saying they can’t do that, “Unfortunately the information on your Public Background page cannot be removed as it is gathered from public records, government, and other public sources for the purpose of helping people learn more about others for business, dating and other reasons.”
I’ve had other similar websites remove my info upon request so they’re basically lying. And the email goes on to say, “As MyLife is also here to help you monitor what’s public about you, and help you improve your Reputation, we offer several services that we recommend you use to:
– Editing your public information
– See and delete your information on other sites you can’t control
– Verify and correct your Background Report
Next Steps:
Please contact a Customer Care Representative to upgrade to Premium Membership by calling 888-704-1900 or sign up online at http://www.MyLife.com”
So basically, they’re refusing to remove my info and telling me to upgrade (pay) for membership to control my info and it can’t be removed. Yeah, I’m going to be submitting complaints about this website. It’s bad enough they have info on me and throw in inaccurate stuff on purpose (and their emails I’m pretty sure were lying every time there were “updates on neighbors” or “someone pulled your background report”, they’re just trying to get me to pay to find out stuff. This is complete bogus.
Start the tutorial over.
Thanks for posting this information. These sites should be illegal. They purposely post inaccurate information and force people to pay to “correct” the information. It’s even worse when you share the same name as a relative who’s had court issues. I followed your advise and it took 2 email attempts to get my profile removed. In both cases they replied with an email stating I should sign-up to correct my information – Yeah right. However, now I see a 410 page when I search my name.
I’m happy to hear you had relatively quick success and that my tutorial was helpful!Thanks for sharing.
As a victim of domestic violence, I found this website to be VERY deadly! I came across a very public profile of myself with a very public private image made accessible to billions worldwide. I understand that the website claims to gather their information from legal public sources but, that image that was labeled with me, could only have came from the person who did this to me, as I have zero social media accounts and a rather slim online activity. So, of course, I freaked! I first emailed them asking just how exactly they get their images when one doesn’t have any active nor inactive social media accounts and if they relied on user photo submissions. After that, I frantically searched for help online when I came across this website and emailed them exactly how you said to email them. I too got the “public information” speech followed by how they did remove the profile. So far, it is gone but I will be occasionally re checking. So, thank you so much! Be safe everyone!
Excellent. Thanks for sharing and stay safe too!
I don’t know where they get the idea that I “chose” to have my entire life’s information on their website. They must pay billions to compile all the information and I consider that ILLEGAL. I’ve managed to alter all my information but I am incensed beyond belief that it was on there at all !!!! If people want their lives out there for the whole world to see, then these people should get their permission. As for me, these are greedy crooks who hang out information on private citizens for bait. This is abominable !!!
I know it’s terribly upsetting and frustrating, but it is sadly not illegal. At least not yet! I’m going to recommend you have the profile completely removed rather than editing it. If someone buys a report on you, I strongly suspect that all your actual information will be present in addition to whatever you created. It’s not a big deal. Simply email them to remove your full public profile so you do not come up in a search on that site, period!
I just emailed them following your steps and was given the response that they can’t remove because it’s public information etc. I started over and resent email. Is anyone going after this company with a lawsuit? It seems like this must be illegal. It’s one thing to have someone’s address and phone number like the phone book used to do but it should be illegal to compile all of this – especially for victim’s of abuse who are needing to stay away from their abuser…and in general it should just be illegal as it’s creating a nation of peeping toms who have too much information that was not explicitly granted by the person whose info is out there. Privacy laws in EU have hopefully started a trend.
It’s perfectly (albeit unethically) legal at this time. There are new laws going into effect for some states soon and new laws brewing for other states so this will help. But it’s still the burden of those having their info exploited to make the request for removal. Information won’t stop being shared after laws going into effects as we are all opted in by default. Right now I find almost all sites will honor opt outs as a courtesy. But after laws go into effect, they’ll be obligated to honor removal requests.
Victims of abuse have rights that differ from state to state. In severe cases, the information must be blocked at the source which is official public records. That is far easier said than done but it is possible and usually involves getting permission from a judge.
Agreed! I resent the request on a new email. Do you recommend using the reference number they sent with their first reply when they denied my request to remove my name or do you think it should be a completely new email with no mention that I had already emailed and had received a reference number?
Yes. Start from scratch and don’t mention the reference number. But, save any emails you get from them until you’ve been removed in case you end up needing to reference them. Usually success is achieved before you reach 3 tries. If it doesn’t work after that, you can try calling them to request removal and to reference the emails because they’ll tell you it needs to be done by email and you can use the reference numbers to prove you already tried that. 🙂 Hayley
Ditto
Looks like they may have decided not to be so difficult to deal with OR I just got lucky. Hopefully it goes well. Here’s the reply I got within minutes of email, autoresponder i’m sure.
No message included. But please let us know if they follow through because I’m guessing you got a boilerplate response letting you know they will be removing your info. Sometimes it is promptly removed, sometimes it takes a few days and sometimes that’s followed by an email saying they aren’t going to do the removal because the info originates in public records. Which will it be for you? Hopefully a nice, prompt removal!
Ha, no such luck on the easy 1 request success. Boiler plate it was with follow up today of ‘to bad, public info, buy our junk, blah blah’. You nailed it, and I just did it all over again. I will bug them to death as you said to do.
Thanks for everything you do!
They’re amazing, aren’t they? Anyway, often they do the removal even after they say no. Good luck and keep us posted. 🙂
What do you do if you paid for premium like I did for $1.00?
I recommend not doing that but since you did it, please tell me, did you get anything valuable from it? What type of personal data did you have to share about yourself to get that membership? (Don’t share your actual personal data in a comment. Please only specify the category such as “address”.)
If you are asking me how to opt out after paying for your premium membership, make sure you are signed out of your account when you gather the URL of your public profile and then follow the tutorial like anyone else.
Dear Hayley: My son had the unpleasant surprise of noticing that he was listed on MyLife web site. Of course, he panicked and called me (his Dad). After a quick search on the web, I found your online instructions. After one email based on your draft, my son’s was removed from MtLife web site. It worked like a charm. Many thanks!
Matt
Love that! Thanks for reaching out and telling me.
🙂 Hayley
Hayley:
Thank you for putting this blog together!
I was searching the internet for a photo of a coworker that was killed on July 4th when I came upon his less than flattering Mylife profile. After checking my own profile, I quickly concluded Mylife must be confusing me with the one of the 1000+ individuals that share my name. Cancelling the profile seems like a much better option than paying them money and agreeing to their terms of service including the arbitration clause. Just sorry my coworker never had the chance to clear his name before he died.
Thanks for the feedback, Tim. If you send me your co-worker’s information privately, I will have his information removed from MyLife. Seems like the right thing to do here!
As of June 2019 this tutorial no longer works, I have emailed all 3 customer support email addresses multiple times, same response no action.
I follow my own directions all the time, and it does work. You need to be persistent and repeat the steps when you don’t get the response you are hoping for. Start a brand new thread and don’t even make reference to all the previous requests you’ve made. On some sites it’s not uncommon for me to contact them as many as 30 times until I get the result I want. That is not appropriate, but it’s the way it is!
Alternatively, reach out to me privately with the link to your profile on my contact form and I can be hired to do it for you.
Same reply. “Pay, upgrade and edit your horrible rep:)”
My response,
“I rather like my reputation. I don’t, however, appreciate you selling it.”
I have taken on a site at a time whenever I have a few minutes. Some are the biggies who funnel the information to others.
I’m seeing weird “imaginary” relatives pop up less and less, alongside real ones. I check both my maiden name/former state address- and it comes up as much as my 20 yr old married last name and current state of residence. I suppose my actual town might be in there as a third opt out but same state, same number, same young adult daughter now, ikr?
– all to close for comfort at this point.
Be sure to opt out any/all combo of names, if you really want out.
I found the white pages+,
& yellow pages seemed to take me out of a few other places.
There’s a familytree (?) one that was as written, pretty creepy. Get out fast.
Thank you for the tips. Very helpful. I’ll never give up. The curt emails give me motivation
Thanks, Hayley.
You are welcome, Brenda. Good job recognizing that you need to search for your info in all the states you’ve lived in and also with all the different versions of your name, including misspellings. Keep up the good work!
Hi everyone! This is SUCH a disgrace!! I have followed what you said to the letter. this is the response I received:
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ to request removal of your Public Background Report & Reputation Score.
Unfortunately the information on your Public Background page cannot be removed as it is gathered from public records, government, and other public sources for the purpose of helping people learn more about others for business, dating and other reasons.
As MyLife is also here to help you monitor what’s public about you, and help you improve your Reputation, we offer several services that we recommend you use to:
– Editing your public information
– See and delete your information on other sites you can’t control
– Verify and correct your Background Report
Next Steps:
Please contact a Customer Care Representative to upgrade to Premium Membership by calling 888-704-1900 or sign up online at http://www.MyLife.com
We are open Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-5pm PST to provide unlimited free member support.
Sincerely,
Ray B.
****************** HOW RUDE! This MUST be illegal! They are claiming that my “info” is gathered from public records. This is a straight out LIE! I have contacted my particular gov. and have verified my information is correct, therefore THEY / (mylife) is wrong!! They claim I need to “subscribe” in order for my information to be “updated” correctly. Why are they “allowed” to do this?! What then is my next step ?! I need to contact someone! This can NOT be legal! 🙁
It’s not illegal and it’s true that the info is gathered from public records. But you do not need to subscribe to move forward. Your next step is to go back to my tutorial and follow my directions. Hint: Send the email again. Odds are you’ll get a different rep who will remove your information for you. No need to even reference the first email.
Alternatively, I can be hired to do it for you for a fee. In fact I offer a comprehensive removal service that covers over 100 sites – should that be of interest.
– Hayley
Oh – thats awesome! Are you a lawyer? How did you learn about removing? 🙂
Nope. I’m not a lawyer although some people tell me I should be because I put up a good argument when I have to. 😉 I’m simply a tenacious geek who has been interested in technology since my college years. (Nope scratch that. Since I learned the computer language called, “Basic” in high school.) I enjoy the challenges of doing things like this, especially when people in need can benefit.
I agree! Same thing happened to me and when I told them I didnt want to pay- a month later my “score” dropped to 0.1. Yep- you saw that right… I got an email from them saying my reputation was 97% below the rest of the world. I have an amazing credit score and have never had any law trouble. This is ridiculous. They say they are here to help but they are the issue! This score must be to make me upset and to pay them to “fix” it. There is a black mirror episode about rating people. I feel like I’m in black mirror.
Don’t sweat it, Kim. Simply follow the steps in my tutorial and opt out. Don’t spend any energy worrying about what they say on the site because once your public profile is removed, all that goes away. If you have any issues with your removal, I can remove it for you for a fee. Reach out privately for that via the contact form on this site.
I can’t seem to get to my public profile. Just the page that asks me to pay for a subscription to access the full report?
I am guessing you may have created an account and that is why this is happening. I searched for your name and found your public profile. I’ll email it to you privately for privacy purposes and I’ve also removed your full name from being published in this thread. No need to pay for a subscription and no need to access the full report. Just opt out.
This feels like a lesser evil, but has anyone had experience sites like ‘brandyourself’?
For a one-time fee they will get you removed from online listings and for another monthly fee, keep your profile from resurfacing. I don’t know if they have a guarantee that your profile can be removed from all sites after that initial payment or whether they can continuously play that game of whack-a-mole with these “legalized scammers” so any experiences/thoughts may be helpful.
I’m not affiliated with any of these sites and feel the same pains as several commenters but also don’t have much time to continuously work the process to make my info private.
Buyer Beware! I have not heard of this site before and as such, cannot comment about them directly. Please exercise caution when you hire any company because you have to give up personal information in order to remove it and you must have trust and confidence in any business before you do it. Look up any company you hire because while people don’t go out of their way to give praise, they will often go out of their way to share the issues with their experience when they are unhappy. If you end up trying this service and have success, please report back. But do lots of homework before going further.
Dear Hayley, * But why hasn’t the authorities closed them down? Why are they getting away from falsifying the public’s personal info/data? ALL these LIES just for paid membership!? OMG!! They NEED to be taken to the authorities! ** What can I /we do? (Ruthy)
MyLife is one of many sites with misinformation. There are new laws in the works that will help. At the end of the day, they will eventually remove you from their site without you paying them. That’s my recommendation. Don’t sweat what is on the site, just get your information off of it. Here are links you may find useful:
To get a glimpse of some of your own online info:
https://what-is-privacy.com/2019/04/how-to-look-yourself-up-online/
To remove your own information using my free tutorials:
https://what-is-privacy.com/category/opt-out-2/
To see how to keep your info offline after removing it:
https://what-is-privacy.com/2016/10/how-to-achieve-online-privacy/
🙂 Hayley
I went with legal recourse:
To whom it concerns,
“The information that you have online (without my consent) on MyLife.com directly puts my general well-being and safety at risk. I have been advised by a lawyer to request that all information on me that has been gathered, public or not, be removed from your site, as a lot of it is inaccurate and some of it is dangerous to public safety and I did not give my consent for any of it to be on your site. Most of my public records are private, and as such you are violating my privacy. If my information is not removed, further legal action will be taken. Please assist me in this matter in the removal of the following profile”
We’ll see if they respond or give me any pushback. I’ll let you all know for sure when I hear back. Thanks for the info. 🙂
Kate, I suspect they’ll remove it however, they’d be doing it as a courtesy, not a legal obligation since they are not doing anything illegal. (Unethical, yes. Illegal, no.) Many sites are doing the same thing without your permission. They do not need permission simply because the data they are sharing is from public records. Here are links to my other tutorials which include an article about how to find your info online. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news once you start on this ugly path. https://what-is-privacy.com/category/opt-out-2/ 🙂
It is illegal to post false information online – at least in all the jurisdictions I practice law.
Usually it’s not illegal for these sites to publish info, even if it’s inaccurate, because the info they publish is coming from public sources and they usually don’t create the content. The good news is that they will remove the info eventually when asked and that’s helpful because legal action is time consuming and expensive.
That said, there are laws going into effect soon in several states that require these sites to remove the info when asked and that result in fines when these sites don’t follow the rules. (Next month in NV and Jan 2020 in CA, for example and other states are following too.)
In my first email to them I followed your directions. In about 15 minutes I get an email from Earl telling me that my public background page cannot be removed because it’s gathered information from public record, but with a premium membership I can control what people see and improve my reputation. Well, I did NOT like that answer since the website implies that I am a sex offender and was evicted from my home. It states Debra might have committed sexual offenses. Needless to say I was beyond pissed. I told Earl what I thought about his answer. I said he did not get any sexual offenders records nor eviction notices from my public background to imply that. That’s just a game crooks play to lure people to the site to pay for a membership to view the records. AND just FYI I couldn’t given a flying $#&^$# about my reputation and since he wanted to play it that way, it’s my move and he’d better duck. Well a minute later Emerson says he removed my profile and it will take 24 hours for it to happen. I will check back to see what happens. So thank you for the info.
You’re welcome. Thanks for the feedback. 🙂
Hi. Since so many shared their experiences and tips (which I found helpful – thank you) thought I would do the same. My experience was surprisingly very pleasant and one of the best consumer experiences I’ve had in a while. I promise I am not a MyLife employee or affiliated with the company in any way.
I don’t know why but I bumped into this site and was horrified by what I saw. I didn’t know people could be rated like this off of what I perceive as unverified and potentially erroneous info. Some relatives looked correct and there were other people I had NO idea who they were. My address looked 80% correct and there were email addresses I had forgotten all about from over a decade over. But without a doubt this company seemed to have a lot of information about me posted very publicly which made me feel uncomfortable. The record indicated that I had a criminal record and it’s true – I did get charged w/having an “unrestricted dog” – also known as having your dog off leash. I went to court, pled guilty and I think but am not sure the judge dismissed the case entirely and didn’t impose a fine. I didn’t know it was a CRIMINAL misdemeanor to have your dog off leash but well it is Fairfax Cty and I 100% own up to it. Anyway, after reading through the comments I thought MyLife might balk at my request or give me the runaround and say that my crime was part of a public record and my record couldn’t be removed but thought why not try. Within 30 minutes of my sending an email with the EXACT wording as above, I received a response from “Jake M.” stating my record had been removed. I checked and indeed it had been removed. Really stellar service so perhaps the company is owning up to what sounds like legitimate consumer complaints.
Really impressed with their customer service. It was prompt – when was the last time a company responded to your email within 30 minutes – professional and courteous.
Thank you for sharing your positive experience. 🙂 On the flip side, I want to warn you about other sites portraying your “dog off leash citation” as a criminal offense because MyLife is one of many sites that does that. This could prove to be a problem down the line for you. Here’s a link to my other removal tutorials and if you need help, I can be hired to do them for you for a fee. https://what-is-privacy.com/category/opt-out-2/ Hayley
I called mlife 2 weeks ago and got a confirmation number that the profile would be removed. It was back today. I called again, and they said as long as public information was out ther on me, if someone did a search it would come back. They removed it again, and gave me a confirmation number. We will see if it comes back again. Sigh.
Metria,
Sometimes, luck of the draw connects you with someone who does not know what they are talking about. Having someone do a search should not bring the information back – that would be very inappropriate and would render any removals a waste of time. From your comment, I can’t be sure that the profile was removed in the first place which is why you may assume it came back. Also, some people have more than one profile on the site and each one has a unique URL that needs to be removed.
Hayley,
this is what happened to me. I had my profile removed 1.5 years ago, I did it myself then, and now found it there again when I contacted you.
🙁 Yes. There are certain things that will cause information to reappear – a site update, a change in a person’s status such as moving to a new address and more. The moral of the story is that these removals cannot be assumed to be permanent. Privacy takes maintenance and once in a while, a repeat request for removal is needed.
Thank you so much for these instructions!!!
I had my profile removed already about 1.5 years ago and now it is on the site again! I just sent them an email based on your instructions.
I noticed a new feature though, they have taken a photo from my Facebook profile and put it on their site. I find this truly ruthless. Also, I am the copyright owner of this image – I believe that I have legal rights at least regarding this. DMCA?
You make a good point about DMCA but I’m not sure about the legalities here. Facebook photos are public and are being picked up by other sites beyond MyLife. (Look yourself up on Pipl(dot)com, socialcatfish(dot)com and radaris(dot)com, for example.) If you find out anything pertaining to this, please share as I would be interested to know about it.
That said, when images are on the site, it adds a layer of complexity to removal from the site. When you opt out of MyLife, sometimes your name and image remains on the profiles belonging to family members and neighbors. Although these references to not connect to full profiles, it’s a problem for some people when they have a low reputation score or if they don’t want the image to be available. If you fit into this category, reach out to me privately so I can guide you on full removal. It’s too challenging to explain as part of the tutorial.
Hi Hayley,
thank you so much for your response, appreciated!
I have not received the automated response to my email to the removalrequests-email address, which I sent on the 9th. Today is the 12th. I just now sent the same email to the support-email address and the privacy-email address. If I have not received an email by tomorrow afternoon I will call and see what kind of response I can get from there.
Thank you for your help again!
You are welcome. Please look for that automated response in your junk/spam folder. Odds of you not getting an automated response are not high.
You are right. I found this from the May 9th in my spam folder:
“The referenced profile has been removed as requested. Please allow the required 24 hours for the profile to be completely removed.
If you are still seeing the page, clear the History/Cache on your internet browser. Sometimes a page you have viewed previously can be seen from your history even though the page no longer exists. If you are seeing search results from major search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing, allow 5-7 business days for the results to be removed by the search engine provider.
If you feel that your specific profile was not removed, respond with the website URL of the profile page. Or send the following information exactly as shown on the profile: Name, Age, City, State.”
The profile is still there, however. I cleared cache and used even another browser to make sure. I sent them and email saying that it is still there, please remove – and I included the link. I received a response to it and now they are promising the profile to be removed within 7 – 10 business days. Quote: “Please note that we respond to e-mail messages in the order received. Your Removal Request should be processed and completed within 7-10 business days. Please do not send multiple e-mails regarding the same subject as this will only delay our response.”
Thanks again, Hayley. Your help is sincerely appreciated.
Excellent and you are welcome. 🙂
Hayley,
it has been removed. Thank you so much!
Beautiful! Congrats. 🙂
I got this as my first response. How would you suggest I proceed in response?
Hello there,
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ to request removal of your Public Background Report & Reputation Score.
Unfortunately the information on your Public Background page cannot be removed as it is gathered from public records, government, and other public sources for the purpose of helping people learn more about others for business, dating and other reasons.
As MyLife is also here to help you monitor what’s public about you, and help you improve your Reputation, we offer several services that we recommend you use to:
– Editing your public information
– See and delete your information on other sites you can’t control
– Verify and correct your Background Report
Next Steps:
Please contact a Customer Care Representative to upgrade to Premium Membership by calling 888-704-1900 or sign up online MyLife(dot)com
We are open Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-5pm PST to provide unlimited free member support.
Sincerely,
Emerson A.
Ignore it and start over.
Thanks to your information, my information was deleted from their website within 2 hours (on a Saturday morning too!) they had me at 1.75, I’ve never been arrested or anything…lol. I’m also in sales and my customers have 5 days to rescind their purchases. No telling how many may have cancelled after looking me up and finding this site made me sound like a criminal!!!
That is awesome! Thanks for sharing, Bill.
🙂 Hayley
now they are saying they will take it down. What I’m doing is copy-pasting my request. with each reply I paste the request and resend immediately. every email gets moved into the mylife folder. uncheck as “unread” in bulk and send again. with every reply I aggregate more emails from them which I immediately send back. they have to reply. gotta love bulk mail. if this doesn’t work I’ll find a script to send them 50,000 emails at a pop. boom!
That’s a unique way to do it. Let’s hope it’s removed today before you need to send them 50,000 emails at once.
Hayley
Can we sue companies like Mylife for making our personal information public?
You can do anything you want but I don’t think you’ll have success because they are only sharing information that is already public and that’s perfectly legal. That said, there are other reasons that can be used to sue these businesses but rather than take that route I believe it’s easier to simply opt out. Laws are coming that will change things in CA starting in 2020 and maybe other states will follow. Right now, EU citizens are protected by the GDPR.
If you notice shady business dealings, you can report a business to the Better Business Bureau. (BBB)
they are refusing to remove me from the site:
Hi,
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ to request removal of your Public Background Report & Reputation Score.
Unfortunately the information on your Public Background page cannot be removed as it is gathered from public records, government, and other public sources for the purpose of helping people learn more about others for business, dating and other reasons.
As MyLife is also here to help you monitor what’s public about you, and help you improve your Reputation, we offer several services that we recommend you use to:
– Editing your public information
– See and delete your information on other sites you can’t control
– Verify and correct your Background Report
Next Steps:
Please contact a Customer Care Representative to upgrade to Premium Membership by calling 888-704-1900 or sign up online at Mylife(dot)com
We are open Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-5pm PST to provide unlimited free member support.
Sincerely,
Irish A.
That’s normal. Read tutorial with what to do next.
They have me on their site with where I work, my address, phone numbers. As a survivor of a serial rapist ( rapist is in jail) this makes me nervous that the rapist can or, have his family, look me up. I have kids now (I was raped when I was 22, I am now in my 40’s) and this invasion of privacy is so devastating. I sent a email to MY LIFE and they replied my profile would be removed within 24 hours. This was 2 days ago. I sent them ANOTHER email just now explaining my situation. Also, they have my husband on there and I sent them an email requesting they remove his profile. They replied with the “we can’t remove it but you can pay….blah blah”. So I replied back that the information they have is either misleading-incorrect and can be considered defamation. Hopefully both profiles will be removed. I have gone thru tons of sites and have requested they remove my information and they did immediately. Also, there is another site FAMILY TREE NOW that shows EVERYTHING! They removed my information immediately. Hayley, I truly am happy I came across your site. You have given great advice/information.
I’m terribly sorry to read what you’ve gone through. Reach out to me privately with the profile URL(s) and I’ll take care of it for you.
Using your tactics and a short and ‘sweet’ letter, I have successfully got Mylife to remove my profile within three business days! They had utterly false information about me, but had my home address, the make and model of my car, the location of my school, the names of all my relatives, the places I worked when I had a security clearance (!!!) and other things. For those who may be interested, here is the body of the email I sent to them:
To whom it may concern,
I am writing this letter in utter disbelief that my personal information is made public for anyone to see. I am requesting that this profile be removed at once. The information listed is false, deceptive and misleading. The ‘reputation score’ based on this data that you are benefiting from DOES absolutely constitute a violation of my privacy, as well as constituting what amounts to defamation.
Sincerely,
Justin
Thanks for sharing, Justin. Congrats on the quick turnaround!
I found my profile on their site last week and sent a polite email asking to remove my information. I received the email stating the information is public record and they wouldn’t remove it, but I could “upgrade” to get help with the matter, blah, blah, blah. So, I replied stating that I wouldn’t be paying, but I still wanted my profile removed. They finally replied a couple of days later stating that my profile had been taken down. I waited a couple of days, but my profile was still up. I told them I was still seeing my information and they claimed it was due to it still showing up on Google. So I had other people search my information directly on the site, on different devices, on a different ISP… my profile is STILL showing up, but they are adamant it has been removed. No, it has NOT! I don’t know what else to do, but I replied telling them that my info was not just showing up on Google, but rather directly on their site and if it wasn’t removed after that email that I would be contacting the FTC. I will wait again and see, but I am furious over this “company”.
Urgggh. I’m sorry to read that, Jen. Start from scratch and send the email fresh as if you haven’t sent it before. If you can use a different email address, even better.
Also, sometimes people have more than one profile on MyLife. It may show up when entering a different state or with the same state. If this is the case, MyLife may well have removed the first profile and you may be seeing another one. You can know this by checking the numbers that follow the URL.
Please reply if you discover that was the case.
I followed your directions and used the wording in your email. Their reply” Unfortunately the information on your public background page cannot be removed as it is gathered from public records, …” , then go on to suggest an upgrade to premium membership.
Send the same email again. And again. Eventually they’ll remove it. You don’t need to change the wording. If you prefer, I can do this for you for a fee but I’m confident they’ll eventually remove it for you.
Thanks. Will do. I’ll keep you informed.
Great, and you’re welcome. 🙂
I am having the same issue as Cindy above. They sent me an e-mail on the 2nd attempt that it was removed, and when I checked it had not been.
I sent another e-mail (3rd attempt), and fingers crossed they will actually take it down this time.
So far, Mylife has been the hardest website to remove information from.
Thank you for your guide Hayley. Much appreciated! I think it is really wonderful how interactive you are with everyone that comments.
You are welcome, Kris, and thanks for the kind words. Let’s hope third time is a charm for you.
On another note, you may be surprised when I tell you that I don’t find MyLife to be the most challenging site to do removals from at all. I do removals for clients from more than 100 sites and I sometimes spend months working on some of those before I have success.
Please let us know if the third request works for you.
🙂 Hayley
Wow! I followed your instructions and sent them a letter about 5 minutes ago and my profile is already gone. Thank you so much!
Awesome. I think a record was just set with your removal!
I have tried to email them my removal request several times, I get this message every time: “Not sent, your email was rejected by the server”. It stays in the outbox!
This sounds like a problem with your email, not with the opt out process. Two things, firstly make sure you are using the correct email address to contact MyLife. Secondly, do you have a different email account to try again?
MyLife.com is a scam and a joke.
EVERYONE NEEDS TO FILE A COMPLAINT WITH THE BBB IF THEIR INFO IS NO REMOVED AFTER THE SECOND TRY!!!
What bothers me most right now is that when they do a removal, the information is still available on the profiles of other people. (Family members and neighbors.) The result will lead to a removed page message but I think that an opt out should be a complete opt out with a name and all related photos being completely removed from the site. I’m trying to convince MyLife to find a way to do this but if you are going to complain, please add this to your complaint list!
I just tried and they tried to email me saying they cannot since its public record. I sent them a second email saying they need to remove me and then i got an email that said they are working removing me
Thanks for sharing.
Me too, and I emailed them back to remove again.
Here’s what I did to get my profile completely removed.
1. Followed directions specifically on this blog (thank you btw)
2. Put my own twist on it (See my email below)
3. Followed up after 7-10 business days with follow-up email when profile was still up
See below the emails and responses I sent in. I was very firm but friendly and included an email disclaimer to reinforce the idea that I mean business. I think if you come access as an angry, unprofessional person it only makes things worse. I got an auto reply as this blog said i would. I waited. And send follow up email. I think it is important to stay on top of it and as soon as 12 business days goes by send them a follow email. (see below initial email) They will give you a reference number. Be sure to include with correspondence. I sent the email February 1st 2019 and I just remembered to check it today March 6, 2019 and it’s all gone! 🙂
Dear MyLife Customer Service,
Please kindly remove all of my information from your site and any third party affiliates immediately. Regardless of whether this information was gathered publicly or not, I did not authorize the creation of this public profile which allows the public to comment and review me nor will I tolerate my identity being put at risk for anybody to falsely claim my profile and defame my character. See the link below to my profile on MyLife(dot)com
[Insert your link]
Thank you,
your-name
FOLLOW UP EMAIL:
It is past the 7-10 business days and my profile is still up. Please kindly remove all of my information from your site and any third party affiliates immediately. Regardless of whether this information was gathered publicly or not, I did not authorize the creation of this public profile which allows the public to comment and review me nor will I tolerate my identity being put at risk for anybody to falsely claim my profile and defame my character. See the link below to my profile on MyLife.com
They refused to remove my information the first time. I am trying your e-mail message to see how it goes. Thank you for sharing.
🙂 You’re welcome.
Did it work?
I just informed them if they didn’t remove my information, which is fraught with inaccuracies, that I would personally lead the class action suit against them. Let’s see if that works!
Did it work?
Hi, I had mylife.com remove my info almost a year ago, and had a suspicion they might have done something once again. I was right. They have resubmitted my info back onto their website. I’m going to contact them about removing my info again, but I’m not sure what to do in order for them to keep them from resubmitting it again.
It’s impossible to guarantee that personal data won’t show up again because there are different things that cause it to come back online even on sites that are more ethical than Mylife. The key is to check periodically and then take action if needed. 🙁
Hi all – just wanted to share my findings with this company, mylife.com. I agree, they are shady and not operating with the public’s best interest at heart. At first, my email requesting that just one listing be removed (I had several duplicates and decided to start with just one at first) was returned with the blanket “we don’t remove this information as it is public”.
I almost filed a complaint with the BBB and FTC as I had read online, but decided to email them again. This time with an entire list of profiles from my family I wanted removed, nine in total. Numerous duplicates and some deceased relatives, our family had quite a collection of profiles on their shady site.
I provided details in the email that we had a very serious stalker situation at hand per Craig’s recommendation on the 18th. I said he was possibly violent and my families safety depended on our information being removed. I included that we were placing a restraining order on the stalker but still needed their help, and I also took an email address of a local lawyer, added a few characters in the email and cc’d that so it would not go anywhere but gives the appearance of them being cc’d. I sent that this morning and within 6 hours I received a reply stating that all of the profiles I listed were removed and they are now showing 410 notices on the pages.
Hope this helps folks who are having issues with this outfit.
It’s a shame it has to be this hard. I’ve found that a simple sending of the same request gets results eventually. You don’t even have to reference you’ve reached out before. Nonetheless, I’m happy they took care of it all for you. 🙂 Hayley
I am currently on hold with MyLife and the hold number keeps going up and down as well as the number of callers in line. I am getting ready to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission as this business is a SCAM. I think if everyone did this the site would get shut down!
https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-consumer-protection
I call there regularly and often get disconnected around the 30 minute mark. Please post an update on your experience. Good luck. Hayley
That happened to me too. Disconnected with about 1-2 minutes left.
That is so frustrating! On the brighter side, I got through to them last week after waiting for only about 15 minutes.
I will definitely contact FTC because this is wrong on so many levels.
I agree with Sarai Z 100%. I too called the 1-888-704-1900 & was put on hold with MyLife for over an hour before they disconnected me. Over an hour. That disconnection was no accident. Initially on hold they said 2 minute wait, then as my number in queue went down the wait time was increased to 7 min, then 15 and finally at #1 in the queue they said 34 min–an obvious, built-in alogorithium mechanism to discourage you from holding. Then a moment later I was disconnected.
Their customer service department is in the Philippines and I find that 90% of the time I am disconnected just after the 30 minute mark. It’s infuriating.
SOLUTION FOR WAITING ON HOLD…For everyone who sits on hold and MyLife, press options 1 or 2 and NOT 3 (Options 1+2 are either to buy their service or to speak to a rep because you are a subscriber. Option 3 is to opt-out) I sat on hold with option 3, hung up and hit option 2 and got right through.
Thanks for sharing that valuable tip! 🙂
I sent them MULTIPLE requests to remove my information, letting them know that they were the only site I could find that published my birthday and home address, and I had recently become the victim of identity theft. They replied with the usual “since you have public records” we can’t/won’t remove the info (presumably unless you pay for our service)
So I took them to small claims court for the maximum ($4000) allowed in damages due to the credit cards that had been opened in my name. Since they aren’t a Washington company, and not licensed to do business here I served their very hard to find registered agent. They sent a letter to the court saying that they didn’t believe the court had jurisdiction in the matter. Naturally, the judge was not amused. I simply showed the judge the fact that the ID thief needed my birthday and address to steal my accounts, and the only place online I could find that was mylife. Since they declined to show up or deny it, I ended up winning.
They are refusing to pay the judgement, but they will eventually have to, or eventually I’ll find out where they bank and garnish their account.
I suggest anyone who has a problem with these scumbag leaches do the same thing. then report your winning to other sites that ‘helpfully’ report public information.
Goodness! That’s the first time I’ve heard of that strategy. Thanks for sharing. Has your information been removed from MyLife now? I sure hope so. Hayley
That’s a great story and something everybody should do, instead of letting the lawyers eventually create a class action and take all the money for themselves.
In my case, I do have some pending litigation on contract issues, but they make it seem that I am a risk to deal with because I have ANY court case… What about my divorce or that car accident I had to sue for? Not to mention some of the information they are presenting as facts, is plain out false or misleading.
I first emailed MyLife from my Gmail account with the removal request as formulated here and received the canned response from “Charm G.” that several of you here received: “Unfortunately the information on your Public Background page cannot be removed as it is gathered from public records, government, and other public sources for the purpose of helping people learn more about others for business, dating and other reasons.”
I then emailed them from my university account – and told them that since I live in Europe they are probably violating EU privacy laws. They took the site down within 12 hours.
Excellent. Thanks for sharing, Phyllis.
I’m very frustrated. I submitted a request to MyLife asking them to remove my profile, which includes court records. Below is an excerpt of their reply refusing to remove my information. Would you please kindly advise me on how to proceed?
“Thank you for contacting MyLife™ to request removal of your Public Background Report & Reputation Score.
Unfortunately the information on your Public Background page cannot be removed as it is gathered from public records, government, and other public sources for the purpose of helping people learn more about others for business, dating and other reasons.
As MyLife is also here to help you monitor what’s public about you, and help you improve your Reputation, we offer several services that we recommend you use to:
– Editing your public information
– See and delete your information on other sites you can’t control
– Verify and correct your Background Report
Next Steps:
Please contact a Customer Care Representative to upgrade to Premium Membership by calling 888-704-1900 or sign up online at MyLife(dot)com.”
Ignore that email and send another one as if it’s the first time you’re sending it. Don’t even reference that email. Use the wording in my tutorial. Alternatively, I can do it for you for a fee. Keep me posted on what happens please. Hayley
I tried to call numerous times and was hung up on after waiting 20 minutes. Sent multiple emails and they said they were allowed to keep my info online. Today I sent another email using the words safety and stalking victim. I received a response in 30 minutes and my profile was gone like that.
Awesome. It’s a shame it has to be this hard. Glad you had success, Craig.
Hi,
has there been any sucessful method to get Mylife to pass a 410 to google as well? when I use the googlebot, I can see that mylife is still passing a 200 to google so my profile will never be removed from cached content. I have called mylife 3 times and have emailed them around 10 times. would appreciate any advice thank you!
Allie, Thanks for shedding light for everyone on why cache is not clearing, in spite of MyLife saying to give it 7-10 days to disappear on its own. In answer to your question, yes, I have had success with this. I will reach out to you privately about it.
MyLife.com is horrible!!!!! I called customer service and was hung up on twice after holding for 25 mins each time. Something has to be able to be done about that company. I have had my information removed successfully from every other site. When I google my name it only shows up on their site. I sent several emails requesting for my info to be removed for safety reasons and to no avail. I really need to know what I can do because I am scared for my safety at this point.
A few days ago I was on hold 6 different times and I got disconnected as I was next in line at the 30 minute and a few second mark, every single time! All I can recommend is to keep trying. That’s what I do when I’m hired to do it for my clients. I have a 100% success rate on removals from the site. Removal from Google is another story. Keep trying but if you give up, reach out to me privately for help. Sorry about the inconvenience. If it was up to me, this would not be happening.
I submitted my request a week ago and they emailed me back saying they will not remove it because it is public information. I am writing the same message again but is there any way to get them to remove it if this does not work?
I don’t know why MyLife has gotten so problematic lately. I was on the phone on hold for 31 minutes before getting disconnected TWO times today. Same thing yesterday. I’m about to call for the third time. No matter how challenging it gets for me, I just keep trying and so far I have 100% success if you don’t include 2 I’ve been working on for 3 weeks which are still not resolved. But I will succeed eventually. So, you can do the same or you can have me take on the frustration by hiring me to do it for you, Shelly. Sorry it’s so challenging and frustrating for so many. (Including me, actually)
Hello, I submitted my request for removal today, I recieved a email that It would be removing my information in 7-10 business days, however 1 minute later I got another email from “Lawrence” that my information is “public records” and they would not be removing it. Has anyone had this happen? If so what did you do?
Ironically, almost every time I get that response they end up removing it anyway. Wait a couple of days. If it’s still there, start back from the beginning and send a fresh email.
I’ve considered contacting my State Attorney General as this can make identity theft much easier and my birthday is exposed without my permission. I’ve received escalated phishing attempts and I think I know the main source now.
I wish it was that simple, Karen. It’s true that this site exposes your info and makes you more vulnerable to identity theft but so do MANY, MANY others. Look yourself up on advancedbackgroundchecks, myrelatives, intelius, pipl, socialcatfish, instantcheckmate, whitepages, Peekyou, to name only a few. (My comprehensive paid removal service covers about 100 of these).
It’s not worth your time complaining to the State Attorney General because the info on MyLife is truly gathered from public sources and as annoying and as unethical as this site is, they aren’t doing anything illegal. I have free tutorials you can access to remove yourself from most of those.
Back in November I nicely requested by email to have my information removed. Today I noticed that it was still up. After being on hold for about 30 minutes I was hung up on. My rage intensified after another 30 minute wait to only talk to a lady who claimed that she could barely hear me due to static. It ended up in a hang up. Called a third time & 20 minutes later I got a different lady who ran the reduced offer. I was extremely stern when I told her I was only interested in the removal. Then she started the “This is public information that’s available to everyone and may not be able to be eliminated from the site.” After a heated exchange she then claimed she couldn’t find me in the system to remove. Despite me having a rare name that only has one other 31 year old in Seattle. And myself 42 in Indianapolis. How can I physically be looking at my profile on my tablet from their website while she allegedly can’t pull it up from their own database? Nonsense! I basically had to tell her a lie that I had a restraining order on someone to get her to take me seriously. Personally I hate that any of this information is available.. as it’s really not anyone’s business other than financial institutions or companies that you choose to do business with. And they always ask. These punks put a entirely different spin on no integrity.
On no! That’s a crazy series of events. So sorry you have to go through that. Did you ultimately succeed? Hayley
I tried the same thing, and I received a notice from “Lawrence” too that they would not remove it because it is public record. Any recommendations?
Repeat the process… until they finally do it. Do not waste time complaining to them. Just submit it again as if it’s the first time. I know it’s annoying. The alternative is to hire me to do it for you.
Thank you Hayley,
I have resubmitted the emailed request 3 times now, but I keep getting the same reply that they “can’t” remove it because it is public record. I will continue to send this email request, and I will keep the forum updated as to the outcome. I don’t really want to call their customer number, but I am wondering if that would help, or if emails will work on their own (eventually)?
I find emails work on their own but I’ve also had profiles removed when I call. But head’s up if you call … I’ve been trying to call a lot lately and 90% of the time, I get disconnected after holding for just over 30 mins. And by a lot, I mean being disconnected upto 6 times in a single day after waiting a full 30 minutes EACH time. I multitask while I’m on hold but it’s very annoying, nonetheless.
They claim it’ll take several days to notice it online. But apparently it’s done. I don’t see how these people are capable to exist. I’ll follow up with a update in a couple of weeks on the matter.
Be sure to check yourself that it is down vs. taking their word for it. I look forward to your update in a couple of weeks. Have a splendid weekend. 🙂 Hayley
I submitted my request to be removed too, and I received the generic reply, and then I also received a letter from “Lawrence” that they will not remove it because it is public records. Any recommendations as to what I should do?
Thank you.
I submitted a request for removal and received that same standard “no” from Lawrence” as well.
This is happening more and more. I wish it was under my control, but it’s not. Sorry about this inconvenience.
I submitted my removal request this morning (1/28), got a confirmation email within a minute that they would be processing my request within 7-10 business days. Then two hours later I got a confirmation that my profile had been deleted. I checked and it looks like it’s gone! I know not everyone has been so lucky, but I’m sharing in case anyone is on the fence about requesting a removal. They are still removing profiles, and at least in one case, doing so very quickly.
Love that! Thanks for sharing, Jose. I’m getting mixed results but let’s hope your success is the start of a new trend.
Are you still able to help with removal of MyLife profiles? I sent them an email last week requesting removal of mine, and within ten minutes got back the usual canned response that the information is all public and would therefore not be taken down. As per your advice, I sent two additional email requests as if the first one never happened, and have not heard back from them five days later beyond the automated “we will respond to your request in 7-10 business days”. I suppose I still might, but given how quickly the first response came through, I don’t have much hope. They now seem to be ignoring my requests. Other sites providing data removal services have apparently conceded defeat and are suggesting filing complaints with the BBB and State Attorney General. Do you recommend that course of action? Are you still able to successfully get these unwanted profiles removed?
As mentioned to Sio, yes, I can still do it and I am having success. But it’s taking longer than before. I will reach out to you privately.
i keep getting 550 block errors from multiple gmail addresses, did they block all of gmail?
Message blocked
Your message to membersupport(at)mylife.com has been blocked. See technical details below for more information.
The response from the remote server was:
550 permanent failure for one or more recipients (membersupport(at)mylife.com:blocked)
I REALLY don’t want to call them. I’d prefer to email, what should I do?
That is a new one for me, Natalie. I use gmail and have not had that problem so it’s something odd related to your situation. At any rate, the email address you are using to reach MyLife is not ideal either. Try going back to my article and use the addresses I provide links to. Let me know if that helps. 🙂 Hayley
Hello,
Thank you for this article, but unfortunately my attempt to get my personal information removed wasn’t successful. I received an email stating that due to my info being easily found by using Google, they aren’t going to delete my info from their site!
Any suggestions on how to proceed?
It is getting harder and harder but I’m still having success, albeit that it’s taking a bit longer than it used to. Try again. And again, and again. Or have me do it for a fee.
Thank you for this!!! I emailed them ONCE and mentioned lawyer and it’s been removed. I appreciate you!
LOL! You’re welcome, Geri. It’s awesome being appreciated. Thank YOU!
I’m having the same problem described earlier with my information still being crawled and cached by Google and Bing. In short, I had the information removed successfully 3 weeks ago, but I just determined that Google and Bing have cached copies of my profile from 8 and 6 January, respectively.
Make no mistake, these are copies of my profile – as they appeared – on 8 January and 6 January available to anyone who knows how to open a cached web page from the search results. Although I can no longer find my profile from the Mylife.com website search tool, search engines are clearly able to still crawl, index, and cache my profile.
I called their customer service this evening to complain and got a runaround about how this was out of their control, google’s fault, cached from a long time ago, blah blah blah. After making him look at the cached page, I finally got him to agree that my profile is still alive on their website and cache-able by Google. He said he would send the problem to their tech team but I am not optimistic that he will even do this or that anything will be done.
Does anyone have a solution to this problem? Has anyone had any luck getting this caching issue resolved? Where can I complain? BBB, California AG, etc.? Many thanks in advance or any help.
Sam, I am as frustrated as you are with them right now. I have spoken to multiple supervisors to no avail after the past month or so. I called them 3 times since yesterday and was on hold for more than 30 minutes only to be disconnected when it was my turn. They do not seem to have the know how to remove information properly right now. Something has changed in recent weeks because this was not the case for me in the past. I just keep trying…. over and over and over again.
OMG, I had the same problem getting through to them. After 30 minutes or so I would get disconnected. I finally got through on my third try. Thank you for your reply, I sure hope we can get this resolved.
We will. It just take tenacity. Lots of it!
Got this response back from MyLife today:
“Thank you for contacting MyLife™ Customer Care.
I definitely understand your concern in this matter. At this time the profile found at the URL “https://www.mylife.com/xxx” has been removed and is not displaying any content on MyLife.com. If you click on this link the page will state “Uh Oh! 410: Page is Gone”.
If you are still seeing the link to this profile on Google.com that is because Google.com is hosting the link information. MyLife.com has no control over what Google.com displays.
Google.com removes dead links through periodic sweeps. If you would like to contact Google.com I have listed their contact information below.”
I wrote back in excruciating detail the nature of the problem — i.e. that Google is finding, crawling, indexing, and caching my profile AFTER it was supposedly removed from their web site — and that I’ll contact the BBB and CA AG if I do not receive details back on the problem and how it is being re-mediated. We’ll see….
The problem I’m having with MyLife right now is that they are not removing profiles appropriately, they have hidden profiles, duplicate profiles and encrypted files that Google can still detect when it crawls the site and the profile that appears to be deleted. As far as Google is concerned, the data is still on the site (which technically it is even though it’s not visible). As a result, the temporary cache cannot and will not be removed. I’ve been calling Mylife daily and am finding myself on hold for an extremely long time in a queue of callers only to be disconnected as my turn approaches. I suspect I will eventually meet with success but I’m currently as frustrated as all of those people who have expressed their frustration in this thread. 🙁
Hi Haley, thank you so much for your continued efforts to get in contact with them. You have hit the nail on the head with the problem. I switched my browser user agent to spoof Googlebot and can see my profile live on their website. When I switch back to the automatic user agent, I get the 410 error code.
I was on hold for 34 minutes this morning and then once again, got disconnected as it was my turn at the end of the queue. I’m pretty frustrated here.
Good news. Over the weekend, I noticed that Google and other search engines now receive a 410 error when visiting a profile page that has been removed. In addition, these pages are now being removed from Google search results altogether when submitted to Google.
Thank you for all your efforts to communicate with them – I am sure that played a part in these recent changes.
Glad you had success, Sam!
Hi Hayley,
I sent my request, just as you instructed, and 5 minutes later received a reply that my removal request was received and they will begin processing, which should be completed within 7-10 business days. I’ll be checking again in a week to see if it really happened. At least they didn’t say “We are not removing your info as it is already public information”. I would have been p*ssed.
God bless you for your article!
Did you have success Susie?
I got the same reply. A few minutes later I got another email saying they won’t remove my information.
I have reached out several times and this the only email I get. There is references to items that have nothing to do with me that concerns me greatly on their site, especially with the work that I do. This is the only response I get from various people
Dear ***
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ Customer Care.
We appreciate your Inquiry about the information on MyLife.com. The information on each profile page is gathered from public sources, which can be easily found online using a simple Google search. This information will not be removed as these types of information are considered “public records” under the law, which means that anyone has the right to access them.
MyLife helps you see your personal information that’s exposed across the Internet. You can view your background report information and make sure it’s accurate. With your MyLife.com Premium Membership you can request removal of your information from over 35 websites that publish and sell personal information. Who’s Searching For You™ notifies you when people search for your personal information online.
You can contact a MyLife.com Customer Care Representative to learn more about MyLife Premium and how to control and monitor your personal information online.
If you need additional assistance or have further questions, please feel free to contact our MyLife.com™ Customer Care representatives toll-free at (888) 704-1900.
We are open Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-5pm PST to provide unlimited free member support.
Sincerely,
Imelyn S.
Have you checked to see if your profile is still there? Often they say that and then remove it anyway.
still there
I don’t have the context of your situation, Len. If you tried once and it’s still there, start over. Alternatively, I do removals for those who prefer to hire someone to do them for them. Feel free to reach out if I can be of assistance.
Hi Hayley,
Can you please post or send me the e-mail address that the removal request note needs to be sent to?
Thank you!
Naftali
See Point #7. There are links to 2 different addresses within the article.
It took two tries to get mine removed. I told them on the 2nd try that I was going to contact a lawyer to start a class action suit against them and they removed it. Don’t give up!
You’ve hit on a key component of removal success – tenacity! I do removals from some sites that take as long as 4 months and many, many requests before they are completed to my satisfaction. It’s ridiculous but the sad reality. I am hopeful this will change in about a year when a new law goes into effect for California.
Thank you for posting this! I tried it today. I received an email about two hours after my request that lists a ticket number for future reference or correspondence. When I google my name and click on the My*Life result, I get a screen saying “410 That Page is Gone.” However, if I go to the My*Life site and search, my profile still comes up. It is early yet so I am hopeful. Thank you again for this information.
Excellent. First stage done! Thanks for letting us all know, Andre. 🙂 Hayley
Hello, as a follow-up to my original comment, it turns out that I had two profiles on the My*Life site (lucky me). The profile that I requested is gone and I am waiting a few weeks to request removal of the second profile. As a bonus, another site that was showing up in search engines that was on my list to tackle disappeared after my first profile was removed from My*Life. I thought both were hopeless, so I can’t thank you enough for this.
The problem of multiple profiles and hidden profiles on MyLife is increasing. It’s very frustrating to many people and as I see it, very unethical of MyLife. Thanks for the update. Please let me know how the remainder of the removal goes for you with MyLife.
So far they are refusing to remove my profile. These crooks need to be shut down.
Urggghh. So frustrating, I’m sorry to hear that. It seems it is getting more challenging to deal with them than before but I don’t know why that is. The worst part is they are not removing the results completely from their site which makes it impossible to remove the information from Google. I’ll be trying to find out what’s up after the new year. In the meantime, submit your request again. You should at least manage to have the visible profile removed quickly. Hayley
Same here. I just received a rude email stating my information is public through any search engine, ie (goggle). What should I do next?
Resend the same email. No need to say much more than please opt me out of the site. I bet you they’ll remove it the second (or third) time round.
Same here. Received an email stating they would not be removing my profile as it’s public information that can be found any where despite my stating safety concerns.
Send another request. They’ll likely remove it. 🙂 Hayley
It’s MUCH worse than you think.
Even if you go through the arduous process of getting them to remove your profile on MyLife, it’s not TRULY removed. They show it as removed if you’re a human using a web browser. But they deceive Google into thinking your page is still live, so Google indexes and caches the page. And anyone can still read your MyLife page by clicking on the little green triangle on the Google result to read the cached page. Pure Evil.
Proof? Here’s a Google expert explaining how they are doing it at the following link. So far he hasn’t succeeded in getting Google to take action.
(link removed)
Scroll down about 20 messages to the one from Rotary Steve starting with “Hi, Still here…”
The California AG needs to put them in handcuffs just like they did to the Mugshots.com people, for the same reason: extortion. The owner and executives of MyLife live in California.
Google Jeff Tinsley MyLife and read the page on the Mary Cummins blog to learn all about the CEO.
You are spot on with this. It used to be easy for me to remove temporary MyLife cache and suddenly since December only, I can’t do it. I have been in touch with supervisors at MyLife but I am still having the same problem after they step in. Apparently there are hidden and encrypted files on the site and the regular customer service people (in the Philippines) don’t know how to remove these. My goal is to reach the Los Angeles office and talk to them about it but so far I haven’t been able to reach anyone. I’ll tackle this again after the new year when people are back in the normal swing of work. In the meantime, I am as frustrated about this as you are. Thanks for sharing and please reach out with any updates you have, either in this forum or privately to me by email.
The problem is these are not decent people who are interested in satisfying your problem. They have a pattern of deceiving the public and Google even.
The link I provided was removed, where you can see Google experts explaining how nefarious MyLife is. To find the link, use this Google search:
Why does Google refuse to fix the “Remove outdated content” tool?
The real truth begins around message #20 where Rotary Steve says “Hi, still here…”
Also if you did the Google search on the CEO that I suggested you’ll see his entire career is a pattern of deceit. Yet he roams free and lives in a mansion in Bel Air.
The best way to get action is for all of us to fill out the complaint form with the California Attorney General.
I’m quite sure they’ll take the same action against them as they did with the Mugshots.com people, and it will be even easier because the owner and execs of MyLife are located in California.
Thank you!! I did as you instructed and I had to resend my request for removal three times until they finally removed my information from their site.
This needs to go viral!
Three time was a charm! Glad it worked out in the end.
SO they initially told me no, then i tried the process again (fresh new email) and they told me no again…..
On the 2nd “no”
I replied, and “Carbon Copied” a “make believe” email address, to appear as if i were sending it to my attorney, the law firm is simply made up, and they gave me a confirmation that they were deleting it…
From: k h
Sent: Thursday, December 20, 2018 7:50 AM
To: Removal Requests; jack@lawfirm.com
Subject: Re: remove my listing (LTK121420170328105X)
While, I appreciate your response, your website is “For Profit”, i do not wish to be part of your website findings
and I request my information to be removed from it,
I am public figure, and this information being shown about my personal life, can cause me financial harm.
As a result, I respectfully am asking you to remove this information.
Please remove and thank you in advance for your understanding
Kevin
Glad they removed it! It’s crazy how much effort they require in some cases.
There is definately a lot to know about this subject.
I really like all of the points you’ve made.
Thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to let me know.
This went down exactly like you said it would. 1st reponse was they could not remove it because it is public information and then I wrote a new request according to your instructions and it was immediately removed.
Thanks
You’re welcome. Thanks for letting me know. 🙂
Just emailed them. They said it’s public record and won’t be removed! I’m calling tomorrow. How can this be legal! Has anyone sued them yet?!
Follow the tutorial, Russ. Simply send the same email again today or call them. It will be removed.
Is it legal? Yes if they are simply sharing information that is already public. As far as the reputation scores and reviews go, that’s a different story. If they’re publishing false information that is harmful, there may be a legal course of action to take but in my opinion, the best course of action is to persevere and get them to remove it.
I just found your blog today and sent a removal request. They have me and my ex wife listed together. Creepy website!
FYI – it worked! I’ve been removed. Thank you! Sending your blog to my entire family.
Excellent. Thanks for letting me know and I’m so happy it worked smoothly for you. 🙂
They refused to remove my info when I sent the email- however, I called the number and the rep removed it for me right then and there. Hope this helps anyone who got the same email back I did “it’s public record and it won’t be removed”…
Thanks!
Awesome. Thanks for sharing this info, Beth!
Hello there, I just tried to send multiple emails to my life and my email will not go through…keeps bouncing back saying
mx25.ess.sfj.cudaops.com rejected your message to the following email addresses:
privacy@mylife.com (privacy@mylife.com)
Your message couldn’t be delivered because the recipient’s email server (outside Office 365) suspected that your message was spam. To fix this, try to modify your message, or change how you’re sending the message, using the guidance in this article: E-mailing Best Practices for Senders. Then resend your message. If you continue to experience the problem, contact the recipient by some other means (by phone, for example) and ask them to ask their email admin to add your email address or your domain name (the text after the “@” symbol in your email address) to their allowed senders list.
Any ideas? It says that their email address is rejecting mine.
Are you using a VPN? Some websites won’t allow access to traffic from a VPN because it is often read as if it’s robotic traffic. You can turn off your VPN to send the email if that is the case. It could also be related to the email address you’re using. Some email addresses get blacklisted. At any rate, try this address for your removal request: removalrequests@mylife.com. This is the address I have the link to in my tutorial. Let me know what happens please. Hayley
Send from a different email address. Problem is your email and the authentication used by your server… there is very little you can do unless you can update your server email records.
I tried the method you posted. First, I received the auto-email stating it would be removed in 7-10 days. Then, I received an email like other posters here that stated it was public info and would not be removed.
I then tried blended techniques: I forwarded the email string I had from them (which included both of their responses from the other email contact) to privacy@mylife.com and I stated this:
NAME Removal Request
My name is NAME (aka OTHER NAMES), DOB. Please remove my records from MyLife.com as well as all of the sites/sources you own. This is due to escalated personal privacy and safety concerns.
URL LINK TO PROFILE
A past address on my profile is:
A PREVIOUS ADDRESS OF MINE THEY HAD ON THE PROFILE
Thank you,
NAME
I will update you when I hear something.
I am interested in more information about what you charge & which websites you clean the info out of. I’m also curious if you can stop my info from being shared from a couple of apps, Pinterest for one. I really like the app but my info from there shows up on google even though I have set my privacy settings to what I think they should be, etc. Google, MySpace and a couple others are showing stuff they shouldn’t be. Please advise.
Hi Marie,
Yes. I can help with all of this. I will reach out to you privately.
Hayley
Dear Hayley,
I am interested in removal service also. Please contact me. I appreciate it.
I just sent you an email. Happy to help.
I am very interested in your removal service, too. When your schedule permits, would you please follow-up with me privately, as well? Thank you.
Will do.
Bam.. Like magic. got the form letter email, and then a half hour later I got the second one stating they took it down, refreshed the profile page and it was no longer available, did another name search and It’s gone.
There was a lot of inaccurate information. thanks for sharing this solution. I’m guessing that i can do the same with the other sites?
Love that, Mark. That’s excellent.
As far as other sites go, some are easier than others but if you follow my directions in my tutorials I’d like to believe you will have success with all of those.
Here’s the link to all: https://what-is-privacy.com/category/opt-out-2/
Since things change online quite frequently, leave a comment on any tutorials that don’t work or that give you problems and I’ll step in to help.
🙂 Hayley
They refused to remove mine! Is there anything to be done?
___________________
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ Customer Care.
We appreciate your Inquiry about the information on MyLife.com. The information on each profile page is gathered from public sources, which can be easily found online using a simple Google search. This information will not be removed as these types of information are considered “public records”, which means that anyone has the right to access them.
MyLife helps you see your personal information that’s exposed across the Internet. You can view your background report information and make sure it’s accurate. Who’s Searching For You™ notifies you when people search for your personal information online.
Contact a MyLife.com Customer Care Representative to learn more about MyLife Premium and how to control and monitor your personal information online.
If you need additional assistance or have further questions, please feel free to contact our MyLife.com™ Customer Care representatives toll-free at (888) 704-1900.
We are open Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-5pm PST to provide unlimited free member support.
Sincerely,
Leo F.
Sometimes you get a rep that sends this boilerplate refusal. Send the same email again. You’ll likely get a different rep who will process your removal.
Good luck and keep us posted as to what happens please.
They refused to remove mine as well. I emailed again, but this is insane!
Believe it or not, MyLife is one of the easier sites to deal with removing information from. Even though they send occasional rejections, they usually comply in the end and the information is removed relatively quickly. The same cannot be said of some other sites. They’ll likely remove it from your second email, Bea. If not, I can be hired to do it for you.
This company needs to be shut down. I don’t even have a speeding ticket and they have me with arrests and the way they try to lure people in is terrible. I am a technical recruiter for FICO and they have extremely stringent back ground checks. I also sent them an email to remove my husbands information and got the same reply, so it isn’t looking too good. He has a security clearance, so the information they have on him is more than likely not correct. It is obvious that they are doing this for money and it amazes me the level people will go to for a buck. Just sad.
Unfortunately, MyLife is one of MANY, MANY, MANY businesses making money from personal data. But at this time, it’s perfectly legal even though I know it’s terribly frustrating. Sorry Bea. There is a lot of misinformation online. Also, sometimes information crosses over between people with the same or similar names. If you want to have a phone consult about my removal service that covers about 100 sites, reach out on my contact form and we can set up a time to talk.
Bea, I have the same issue with MyLife. I was horrified to see a big red box on their profile page they curated for me, with “criminal/arrest” records! In the fine print, it says “may include traffic tickets.” Any potential client, employer, etc., will see that red box and assume I have a record. I do not. I did end up paying for one month of their service to see the supposed warrant. They listed a traffic ticket from 28 years ago, when I’ve never had a traffic ticket, AND the “case” number is not in the County’s database. It’s a scam, pure and simple. I’ve created a complaint with the BBB, and plan to take it further to stop this practice. it feels like extortion. Classmates.com got sued for sending alerts that “someone is looking for you,” to entice membership sign-ups. I don’t see how this is different. Hope you are able to clear this up.
Hi, Hayley Kaplan,
I did not write this above, I would like to know what you charge to help me.
they had me being related to so many people, and said my value was worth 1.00. how can they just lie?
Thank you
Thank you for this information as I just noticed my profile and how inaccurate it was yesterday. I emailed mylife and I did get an immediate response that they are working to remove the information. I hope to share good news soon!
Awesome, Jen. Thanks for sharing! 🙂 Hayley
Hayley,
Mine was just removed as I received an email stating the removed it and checked..it is gone! Thank you for your assistance!
Beautiful. Thanks for letting us know, Jen. (And you’re welcome!)
I sent your recommended request and they refused to remove my profile. They have inaccurate information on their site that is causing problems for me and even stole a photo from my social media to put on my profile! I sent a second email telling them to remove it again and have not heard back. Help!
I am sorry that’s happening, Lisa. I’ll reach out to you privately.
I’ve tried the method in the blog above and the method suggested by Thomas in the comments, but still haven’t heard back that they’ll try to remove the profile. Instead, I’ve received lots of marketing emails promoting the paid plan. How long does it usually take? Is there another recommended method?
It takes anywhere from 5 minutes to several days. Luck of the draw perhaps? I do removals from many sites for a fee. The other way is to have me do it. Hayley
I used the privacy email that Thomas gave at 915 pm
by 923pm I received a 2nd email stating they removed my info.
I then did Haley’s step 6 and returned to mylife and searched my name.
It was gone!
As well as my deceased father.
I think you just set a record, Michael! Way to go!
Im still indexed in google but. I know googles crawl rate to de index. So not worried there and the page goes to a 410 error Page is gone 🙂
Thank you for this page and guidance
Kind Regards,
Mike
PS I alerted my friends/family base to check theirs and to follow your steps giving them this link for help
notes:: i tried these instructions and failed. I then emailed privacy@mylife.com with
————–
Subject: YOUR NAME Removal Request
My name is YOUR NAME , DOB (ENTER IN BIRTHDATE) . Please remove my records from MyLife.com as well as all of the sites / sources you own. This is due to escalated personal privacy concerns.
PASTE YOUR PROFILE URL
A past address on my profile is:
PUT IN A BLANKED OUT ADDRESS SHOWN ON YOUR PROFILE.
thank you for your assistance.
Sincerely
YOUR NAME
—————–
they removed my information.
Awesome. Thanks for sharing, Thomas!
🙂 Hayley
I used your method by contacting the privacy email.
in 5 minutes I received a response that they will begin processing the removal and it will take from 7-10 days.
Ill follow up once it complete or not
Awesome. That’s what I like to hear!! Thanks for sharing.
Good Morning:
I would like more information on how to remove my data from the internet. Or more information about your services.
Thank You
Good Morning, Siomara,
To remove your own online information, I provide free tutorials on my website. Here is a link to all of my free tutorials in one place.
https://what-is-privacy.com/category/opt-out-2/ (I answer questions on my tutorials when left as a comment, like this one you left.)
I offer a variety of paid online information removal services. My most common service removes personal data from more than 75 broker directories. I can also customize a removal service for you if you have specific sites you care about more than others. Other info removal services include removal of lawsuits and business information as well as photos and videos. Not all information is removable but there are ways to deal with problematic content besides removing it.
To set up a free consultation please reach out by using my contact form. (https://what-is-privacy.com/contact-us/) Be sure to provide your phone number.
I sent a request and this is the email response I received.
Dear ,
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ Customer Care.
We appreciate your Inquiry about the information on MyLife.com. The information on each profile page is gathered from public sources, which can be easily found online using a simple Google search. This information will not be removed as these types of information are considered “public records”, which means that anyone has the right to access them.
MyLife helps you see your personal information that’s exposed across the Internet. You can view your background report information and make sure it’s accurate. Who’s Searching For You™ notifies you when people search for your personal information online.
If you need additional assistance or have further questions, please feel free to contact our MyLife.com™ Customer Care representatives toll-free at (888) 704-1900.
We are open Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-5pm PST to provide unlimited free member support.
Sincerely,
Lawrence
Hi Chad,
Use the suggested wording in my tutorial and send another request as if it’s the first one. Odds are they’ll remove your profile.
🙂 Hayley
Thank you Hayley, I was stunned to see extremely detailed info about my friends boyfriend. I am scared to think what’s written on my profile as I am a very private person. Tilley (founder) is the scum of the earth. Disgusting and immoral.
You’re welcome. I too have a problem with the MyLife information but the good news is that they seem to be willing to remove public profiles when asked to do so.
Hi
I just wanted to thank you so much for making this information available. I sent them an email and less than 5 minutes later they removed my profile. Nothing bad was on mine, but somehow they linked a picture with my children’s faces in it as the profile picture which was extremely upsetting for me.
Again, thank you.
You are welcome! That’s what I like to hear. thanks for sharing. 🙂 Hayley
They have refused to remove my information. They say that all this information can easily be found in
Google searches. What do I do next?
Natalie
Check today. You may find it’s gone already. If not, email them again as if it’s the first time. Alternatively, I can be hired to do it for you.
Hi Hayley,
Thanks for the info. Is there some service or method of identifying the individuals posting anonymous ratings like an IP address or some such. It would be helpful for identifying and prosecuting a suspected stalker/harasser.
Many thanks!
Jim
Hello Jim,
I suspect there is way more to this question than meets the eye. The simple answer is that IP addresses can be identified however, some people sometimes use a Virtual Private Network to mask their location – me included. If you are concerned about anonymous ratings on MyLife, I’d recommend simply opting out and then you don’t have to worry about anything that’s posted as your profile will be completely removed. On the other hand, if you are talking about reviews on other sites, let’s talk on the telephone about how to handle that. There certainly are things that can be done without investing in legal help. Last scenario is that if you or someone you know is being stalked and harassed, there are other steps to take for that. Reach out via my contact form if you want to have a phone conversation.
🙂 Hayley
Jim,
I looked at the anonymous review and second what I already said. Simply opt out. I tried to email you but the email you provided is not working. If you need help with removal, please reach out via my contact form. I can do this for you for a fee that will also include removal from Google.
🙂 Hayley
Hello Hayley, how much do you charge to remove from mylife and google?
See the email I just sent you, Khanedavanh.
Thank you so much for your advice. I can’t express my gratitude fully enough for the clarity with which you presented your instructions, and how easy they are to follow. Again – thank you.
Having said that, I had the very same dual email experience as several others recently (one email stating the profile would be removed within 7-10 days, a follow-up claiming the information cannot be removed as it is public record and “easily found online using a simple Google search”. I don’t know if the second email is just extraordinarily poorly worded and referring to the removal of the source records not on MyLife, but I wanted to take no chances.
I responded with the following:
“There is a very big difference between ‘accessing’ and ‘aggregating with deliberate misrepresentation to extort money from users’.
Remove my profile.”
(Their page claimed I have a criminal record. I’ve never even had so much as a parking ticket, and no records exist indicating I do, hence my claim of misrepresentation). I received a response within 4 hours stating that my profile would be removed within 24 hours. Two hours later, it was gone.
I hope this helps anyone else fighting with these people.
It’s insane how hard some sites make it but at the end of the day, their removals are done as a courtesy and not a legal obligation. I’m excited that this will change starting in January of 2020, at least for people with residence in CA. But by then, maybe other states will catch on and pass similar legislation. In the meantime, the data selling business is exploding.
Thanks for sharing your experience.
My name is being slandered on mylife. Com and if it doesn’t stop now I will conduct a lawsuit which will and in charges being pressed and convictions on your website
Nathaniel,
I am not affiliated with MyLife or with any other site that publishes personal data. I am dedicated to teaching and helping people to achieve online privacy and online safety.
To remove your own online information, I provide free tutorials on my website.
https://what-is-privacy.com/category/opt-out-2/
Alternatively, I can be hired to remove you from as many or as few sites as you’d like. If this is of interest, please reach out privately via my contact form.
Good luck.
🙂 Hayley
I got them to remove the information when clicking on the site. HOwever, on the google search, the information remains. Here is what they told me when I asked them to remove it from google:
Dear Emanuel,
I definitely understand your concern in this matter, If you are still seeing your profile on Google.com that is because Google.com is hosting the link information. MyLife.com has no control over what Google.com displays.
Any suggestions?
Yup. Either wait it out or I can remove it for a fee. I’ll email you privately.
Hi Hayley!
Thank you for all of this information. I was able to remove my profile, but like this consumer, my name and birthdate are still shown on google.com. Can you assist me with this?
I can, Ryan.
I’ll email you privately.
could you help me remove all information on my life.com
Are you having a problem following the tutorial? My free tutorial should walk you through the steps but if you need something more, let me know. 🙂 Hayley
Hi Hayley,
Thanks for the instructions. I’ve just submitted my request. We’ll see how it goes.
What floors me about this site is that they take personal information — publicly available or not — and collect it into one handy, dandy reference for would-be identity thieves. While they don’t list my mother’s maiden name, a diligent identity thief could figure it out by following some of the links to my acquaintances. My mother’s maiden name is included among the “nicknames” shown on her page. And I know in the past that I’ve been asked to identify cities I’ve lived in and people I know to verify my identity. All of that is right there for the picking. Disgusting. The only saving grace is that half of what they list on my site is either outdated or just plain wrong. And their suggestions that I have legal and financial issues are simply infuriating. I’m a very nice, law-abiding person; but according to MyLife, I have a “bad” reputation score. Jerks.
I’ll wait to see if they remove my info. If that works, I will also try to remove the profiles of my late husband and parents. Wish me luck.
You’re welcome, Susan. I have a good feeling about it for you! Success is imminent. 🙂 Hayley
Thank you again for your easy to follow instructions. My profile was removed quickly, after only one request. Amazing. I also managed to get the profiles of my late parents and husband removed with only one request for each one. I just checked and all are gone.
That’s what I like to hear! Way to go Susan. Thanks for sharing your good experience.
Hayley, I tried calling their phone number as another site suggested to have my information removed. You cannot do this over the phone. I didn’t even get to speak to a live person. I followed your steps and received an automated reply. I am guessing this is going to take several weeks before there is a resolution. I just want to say *thanks* for the information.
Hi Cindy,
I find it takes me only 1 to 2 days but from all of the comments, I see it can take much longer for some people. I can’t explain that.
Thanks for reaching out. It’s good to feel appreciated. 🙂 Hayley
I sent several emails today for my spouse and I using Hayley’s system and was able to get both mine and my spouse’s profile page deleted. It shows a 410 page is gone notice for both although for the moment the names are still showing up in a search. One email was rejected and I politely responded back repeating my request for deletion, asking that we find a way to avoid filing a complaint with BBB or FTC. Their second response told me it was deleted. The other one that was accepted at first try mentioned privacy concerns.
I’m assuming it takes a bit of time to vanish from the search results even though the pages themselves are gone?
Hayley rocks!
Woo hoo. Glad it worked out. I haven’t kept track of precisely how long it takes to fall out of google search results – it depends on various factors and probably isn’t a consistent amount of time anyway. But if you keep track, please update the comment with how long it takes for your results to drop off. 🙂 Hayley
Hi Hayley,
I am in the same boat as the other two Jul 2018 posters. I received the exact same emails. I am disheartened in it all.
I am so sorry, Corinna. If it’s any consolation, I’ve had 100% success with them. Check again tomorrow and you may be surprised to see your information gone anyway. If not, I can do it for you for a small fee. I’ll reach out by email.
I have had zero luck having my profile removed. At first, I was told it would be, in the first email I sent out to them. But, I also received another email at the very same time saying it would not be removed. Same automated responses people contributed above. I’ve tried contacting them over and over, as requested above. I’ve tried telling them that I am a victim of stalking and if my profile is not removed immediately, I will report them to the FCC. I’ve read over every site and response as to how they successfully managed to remove their profile for free or paid to have it done. I’ve done everything I’ve read. Nothing has worked and I am clearly being ignored.
This is very unusual, Alice. Let’s talk offline so I can help you. Alternatively, I can handle the process for you for a small fee if you want.
Hi there,
I’m having the exact same issue. They sent me an initial confirmation e-mail stating they received my request, and then a second e-mail stating “The information on each profile page is gathered from public sources, which can be easily found online using a simple Google search. This information will not be removed as these types of information are considered “public records” under the law, which means that anyone has the right to access them.”
How can I contact you to help me remove my profile?
Hello Hema,
Check again today to see if your profile has been removed or not. Sometimes people get that follow up email even though their profile is indeed removed. If it isn’t and you want me to remove it for a fee, I am happy to do it. You can contact me via the contact form on the site or via this link.Contact Hayley
Thanks for this great article. I was able to follow these steps, and MyLife removed my data. But I still have a problem.
While my data was removed from MyLife 3 weeks ago, the Google Search results for my name are still showing the data that was previously presented on MyLife (in the search results, summary info). Is there some way that I can get Google to stop posting this privacy info, which MyLife removed 3 weeks ago?
Your info on MyLife in Google will eventually fall out of search results on its own. It can take anywhere from hours, to days, to weeks, to months for this to happen. There is no way to know in advance how long it will take but I can fast track the removal of your remaining MyLife info in Google for a small fee. It should drop off in less than a week when I do it. Until it’s gone, anyone can access the details if they click on the little triangle next to the results.
How, exactly, did you have it removed? You name it, including everything I’ve read here has not removed mine!
I followed your advice and at first it appeared that I was one of the lucky ones. The emails I received were agreeable and it was taken care of in 2 hours. I checked and my profile was gone…………..or so it seemed.
Later in the day through Google I found my profile on their site again at a slightly different URL. It appears they simply added a dash to the original URL. So my profile was no longer available at the old URL, but it is still there at a new one.
It’s possible that the second profile always existed, but I doubt it because just yesterday Google pointed to the original URL, and now it points to the new one. Plus if it was always there, there should have been 2 results when I searched for my name on mylife.com, but there has always been just one.
I just wanted to let everyone know about this new wrinkle so that you will keep double checking to make sure your information is really gone and not just be tricked into thinking they did it when they really didn’t.
I’m currently contacting them again to get this taken care of. My name also still shows up in the search results on their website (although it doesn’t point to an actual profile), so I am trying to take care of that also.
Also Hayley, I would appreciate it if you could also email me the information you mentioned to someone else about speeding up the temporary cache issue with the search engines.
But thank you for all of the information you provided, it was very helpful!
In all the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve only noticed the double profile situation with one client. It also came down the way it came down for you so it certainly is suspect although I’m not ready to draw final conclusions yet. Thanks for the heads up … I’ll be on the lookout for this now. 🙂 Hayley
UPDATE: I just came across a double MyLife profile situation for someone else. But he has 2 profiles from the start before either has been removed. My conclusion is that some people have more than one profile from the start and this is a common situation on most sites, by the way. Since each profile has a unique URL, MyLife simply needs to be asked to remove both at once. Note: I found both URLS by searching in Google, not in MyLife directly. But then I verified it by searching directly and sure enough, he has 2 separate profiles that differ slightly from each other in that they include different address histories.
Haley & All Commentors:
I wanted to advise you that after 3 emails following your directions, it appears I was successful in having my profile removed from this vile site. The third email was rather strong, and apparently did the trick when I explained that they have left me no choice but to elevate the issue with the State Attorney General’s office as I felt it ludicrous that I should have to pay them for an “opt out”, and teetering on the edge of extortion. I can’t thank you enough for the information, and comments from others that provided enough information, that made this project take a positive turn in my favor. It’s been quite an education. Btw, I did contact the Attorney General, and notified representatives in my area. Due to the Zuckerberg testimony, and the additional recent details that he openly shared/sold our data for his gain to many outlets has the local and national representatives stirred up. There is yet another article in the news on the topic today. (Facebook Gave Device Makers Deep Access to Data on Users and Friends) I suggest everyone also bend their representative’s ear, and stay on them. Many are up for re-election, and their seats are in jeopardy. This event may assist us all to put a stop to the ruthless infringement upon our privacy. Now that I know removing the data is actually possible, I’ll be guiding others to do the same. Again, I thank you.
Great information all around. Thanks for sharing. Things certainly feel out of control in the private information sharing area and we need to band together to fight for our rights. It’s unfair that people in the EU have been given that right, but we’re secondary citizens with very few rights in the USA. Kudos to you for being proactive!
tldr; save time and file a complaint with the BBB
I submitted my removal request to MyLife 5/20 and immediately received the auto response that it was being processed. On 5/25 I received an email stating they would not remove my info as it’s publicly available, but that I could pay to make my profile private.
I immediately followed up by sending the same email again. This time I received the rejection letter just 15 mins later.
Not wanting to spend time on multiple phone calls or emailing over and over, I Googled how to delete my profile and found a YouTube video. She said to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau.
I filed my BBB complaint 5/30. 6/1 the BBB emailed saying MyLife had responded by removing my profile. I checked and it’s gone.
Thanks for this post. I wasn’t even aware MyLife existed. After them I also deleted my info from PeekYou and Spokeo, which was extremely easy. (All they require is email verification.)
Thanks for that information, Kay and for sharing another option with others in your same boat. I’m happy you succeeded in the end. For some strange reason, results are inconsistent with MyLife. Sometimes the profile is removed within a couple of hours and other times there is the song and dance you had to go through.
I have removal tutorials for a few more sites. Here’s the link to all of them in one place and I’m happy to answer any questions along the way if you leave them as a question on any tutorial. https://what-is-privacy.com/category/opt-out-2/
By the way, as long as you’re doing this, you should take steps to protect your privacy in other ways too. Here’s an article that may help with that. https://what-is-privacy.com/2016/10/how-to-achieve-online-privacy/
Wishing you best success.
Hayley
Mylife.com will no longer remove you just by sending the email you recommended. I tried this yesterday and was told to get the premium membership to remove my information. Just wanted to give you an update.
Thanks for the informative website to help protect our online identities! Sincerely appreciate the aggregation of this info in one place 🙂
Send the same email again and ignore the email that says they won’t do the removal. They will do it. I can tell you that from experience this week plus see comments from others who encountered the same situation. They’re not very ethical, are they?
– Hayley
Thanks Hayley for the fast reply and tips! I will send the email again and see if I can get them to remove the info. Stay tuned!
Hi Haley, thanks so much for all your comments. It’s not possible for me to read all the posts here, there are so many, although I know it would be helpful. I did read quite a few though. I didn’t see this question though, based on your blog, you said you registered for my life and then filed your request. Subsequently, after your info was removed, did you close your account with them. Thanks so much. Susan
P.s. Haley, do you share our info with anyone, like share our emails with other vendors?
Hi Susan,
There is no need to register or pay in order to remove your info from MyLife. In other words, do not create an account in order to opt out. Simply follow the steps in my tutorial and ask them to remove your public profile.
In response to your question about sharing your email, the answer is no. I do not and will not ever share your information, including emails, with anyone at all.
🙂 Hayley
I just followed your steps and they responded that they will not remove my information. What can I do now?
Send another email and ask again. Per my tutorial, “(7) Since complete and prompt removal from MyLife is inconsistent, you may need to reach out to them multiple times. You can follow up by contacting them via 2 separate email addresses: Support or Privacy or you can phone them and ask for assistance at (888) 704-1900 Mon-Fri: 6am – 7pm PST and Sat-Sun: 6am – 5pm. Be optimistic that you will succeed promptly. But if not, multiple attempts and persistence will ultimately result in success! The key is follow up.” (Note: On the tutorial, the email addresses are links for you.)
🙂 Hayley
They said the same thing to me, I told them they’d be hearing from my lawyer, next. hahahahaha! It worked.
🙂
Thanks so much for providing this information. Yesterday I decided to do a Google Search on my name and was shocked that this site displayed so much of my personal information including my current and previous car make and model. As a single female I found this quite disturbing and unsafe.
I was initially going to pay the $35 however I decided to do some more research and found your site. I sent an email and within a few minutes got a response that my profile would be removed. Then I received the second email stating that I must pay. So I followed the advice of others and sent this email.
Thank you for your email.
I find the two responses that I received inconsistent. The first email said that you would remove my profile in 7-10 days. However in this email you are asking me to buy a service to remove. This is an inconsistent bait and switch technique for which I will report you to the BBB.
Secondly, as an individual concerned with my privacy and security I find it criminal to report my vehicle make and model. This is not readily available on an internet search as this is personal information. In addition to reporting you to the BBB I will take legal action for displaying personal information if my profile is not immediately removed.
So again I am asking for the removal of my profile.
Thanks for your prompt attention to this matter.
With 5 minutes I received a response that my profile was removed. I verified and it’s gone. I noticed that this site is affiliated with classmates.com so I also went there and removed my profile. I’m just so bothered that nothing is private anymore. It’s truly troubling.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Nicole. I agree with you about how troubling our lack of privacy is. Unfortunately, in the USA, what sites like MyLife is doing is perfectly legal. Here is some general info to help you now that you’ve discovered your info is online.
To get a glimpse of some of your own online info:
https://what-is-privacy.com/2018/04/how-to-locate-your-private-and-personal-information-online/
https://what-is-privacy.com/2015/10/how-to-find-your-personal-information-on-the-internet/
To see how to keep your info offline after removing it:
https://what-is-privacy.com/2016/10/how-to-achieve-online-privacy/
To access my free online info removal tutorials:
https://what-is-privacy.com/category/opt-out-2/
To protect yourself from online compromise and ID Theft:
https://what-is-privacy.com/2017/09/protect-youre-victim-vast-equifax-breach/
Thanks to your suggestion of filing a complaint to BBB (thank you!), I used it in my 3rd email after being told in the 2nd it would NOT be removed. Amazingly and within minutes, mine was removed (by the way I didn’t refresh or clear history/cache as suggested) Here’s the quick response:
Thank you for contacting MyLife™
We appreciate your Inquiry about the information on MyLife.com. The information on each profile page is gathered from public sources, which can be easily found online using a simple Google search.
The referenced profile has been removed as requested. Please allow the required 24 hours for the profile to be completely removed.
If you are still seeing the page, clear the History/Cache on your internet browser. Sometimes a page you have viewed previously can be seen from your history even though the page no longer exists. If you are seeing search results from major search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing, allow 5 business days for the results to be removed by the search engine provider.
If you feel that your specific profile was not removed, respond with the website URL of the profile page. Or send the following information exactly as shown on the profile: Name, Age, City, State.
Contact a MyLife.com Customer Care Representative to learn more about MyLife Premium and how to control and monitor your personal information online.
If you need additional assistance or have further questions, please feel free to contact our MyLife.com™ Customer Care representatives toll-free at (888) 704-1900.
We are open Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-5pm PST to provide unlimited free member support.
Sincerely,
Leo F.
🙂
Hello!
I did remove my account, but my name still pops up in their search. When I click on the listing I receive an error that the page is gone. Any idea how to remove me from coming up in their search altogether?
That is called temporary cache and it will eventually fall away on its own after Google reconciles the fact that their search results don’t match the site. There is a way to speed it up. I will reach out by email to give you details.
hi can you send me that info as well? thanks
Sure. I’ll send you an email too.
Thank you for the reply! Perhaps I should clarify. I do not mean that my name shows up in a Google search connected to Mylife.com. I do know how to rectify that with Google. I mean if I go to Mylife.com, my name and some of my information still appears. When I click on this, it brings me to a page error. So the profile is gone. Any thoughts on this? Should I reach out to Mylife directly Thanks again for all of your help!
Ah ha. Yes. I’ve had that happen too. That requires follow up with MyLife until they remove it because it is a technical discrepancy and in my experience, rectifying that glitch relies on the luck of the draw of reaching a rep there who knows how to handle that problem. I would suggest a first step of emailing them the link and the screenshot of the information you located. If they don’t remove it within a couple of days, you can follow up with a phone call. I succeeded when I saw this scenario so I know you can too. 🙂
Hi Hayley,
Can you also email me? I followed your tutorial and within an hour I was erased from the MyLife site, however as was mentioned, when I type my name into Google I see my name popup with the MyLife logo, and when I click it says ‘Page is Gone’.
Sure. Will do.
Thank you very much for this help you have provided. The directions were easy to follow and within 1 hour of contacting them this morning my information was removed. I really really appreciate your help because I wanted my information removed badly. The link still pops up when I type my name in Google but when I click the link it says the page is gone and also when I search for my profile on their website it is no longer there. Thank you so much. This relieved a lot of stress.
I need to go buy a lottery ticket because I got lucky.
A half hour ago I submitted the removal request using your guidelines, received the canned response of:
“Thank you for contacting MyLife™ Customer Care. This note is to inform you that we have received your inquiry and will begin processing your request.
Please note that we respond to e-mail messages in the order received. Your Removal Request should be processed and completed within 7-10 business days. Please do not send multiple e-mails regarding the same subject as this will only delay our response”
And it is gone, history, sayonara (again, within a half an hour).
Thanks so much for your information!
Thank you very much for this article. It worked the first time with my email to them. I am removed now.
Hi, Thanks for instructions on MyLife! Any way we can do same on Nuwber?
Absolutely. Already done. See all tutorials, including Nuwber, in one place at the following link – https://what-is-privacy.com/category/opt-out-2/
I received the following canned response:
Reference number: LTK121920168159396X Please use this ticket number in any correspondence with us.
Subject: Removal Request
Dear Laura,
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ We appreciate your Inquiry about the information on MyLife.com. The information on each profile page is gathered from public sources, which can be easily found online using a simple Google search. This information will not be removed as these types of information are considered “public records” under the law, which means that anyone has the right to access them.
MyLife helps you see your personal information that’s exposed across the Internet. You can view your background report information and make sure it’s accurate. With your MyLife.com Premium Membership you can request removal of your information from over 35 websites that publish and sell personal information. Who’s Searching For You™ notifies you when people search for your personal information online.
You can contact a MyLife.com Customer Care Representative to learn more about MyLife Premium and how to control and monitor your personal information online.
If you need additional assistance or have further questions, please feel free to contact our MyLife.com™ Customer Care representatives toll-free at (888) 704-1900.
We are open Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-5pm PST to provide unlimited free member support.
Sincerely,
Leo F.
I received the same response. I replied back to MyLife that I was going to file a complaint with the BBB and also inquire about my legal rights with the FTC….they answered in 10 min and agreed to remove my information after that.
Excellent. Thanks for the update, Daniel. 🙂
I didnt get any response at all
Check your spam or junk folder, Adriana. They always respond. 🙂 Hayley
I did check spam, I dont understand ,why I didnt get a response
Go back to step 1 of the tutorial and repeat each step carefully. Perhaps your email went to an incorrect address?
heres the letter i got from mylife,,,
Hi,
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ Customer Care.
We appreciate your Inquiry about the information on MyLife.com. The information on each profile page is gathered from public sources, which can be easily found online using a simple Google search. This information will not be removed as these types of information are considered “public records” under the law, which means that anyone has the right to access them.
MyLife helps you see your personal information that’s exposed across the Internet. You can view your background report information and make sure it’s accurate. With your MyLife.com Premium Membership you can request removal of your information from over 35 websites that publish and sell personal information. Who’s Searching For You™ notifies you when people search for your personal information online.
You can contact a MyLife.com Customer Care Representative to learn more about MyLife Premium and how to control and monitor your personal information online.
If you need additional assistance or have further questions, please feel free to contact our MyLife.com™ Customer Care representatives toll-free at (888) 704-1900.
We are open Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-5pm PST to provide unlimited free member support.
Sincerely,
Lawrence
They want to sell you their removal service from other sites. You can ignore that sales letter. If your info is not removed by tomorrow, simply reach out and ask them to remove it again. 🙂 Hayley
I had to use my aol email address,,,,my gmail account didnt work for them for some reason
Glad you figured out the reason. You got the same letter many people get. If they don’t remove your info, reach out again. They will eventually remove it.
I got a response,,I used a different email account,,for some reason my gmail account wont work for them,, I had to use my aol email account and i got a response back
Thank You, Hayley!! Very Helpful information –
You’re welcome, Jean!
Thank You, Hayley!! Very Helpful information – I’m interested to see the result I get – I was curious because of an email I received stating ‘someone’ may have done a background check…. I googled my name and my life came up with inaccuracies, some accurate, but none the less, not all, and that was the problem. I’m hopeful. It’s impossible to chase it all down, but certainly worth the effort. Thank you for your efforts in sharing this information. You certainly do rock 😉
I can’t say with 100% certainty, but I suspect the email about “someone’ doing a background check is a marketing ploy and not legit. Best to get out of dodge and get out of there completely. 🙂
Hi Hayley! So, I have an update I’d like to share. I initially went on and requested they delete the info and they sent back a letter denying the request, and as you suggested I sent a second email to support and sure enough, my information is deleted!! GO HAYLEY!!! whoop! whoop! had you not given step by step I probably would have thought it was a lost cause and not bothered!! thank youuuuu!!!
Whoop, whoop, indeed, Jean! Thanks for sharing and you’re welcome! 🙂
Thank you, Hayley! Like others, I have been pulling my hair out trying to get them to remove my profile; which included inaccurate information. I followed your instructions and received the typical canned response. Within four hours I received another canned response saying they won’t delete it because it’s readily available with a Google search and everyone has a right to it by law. I replied with a Thank You and advised them that I will be submitting a complaint to the BBB. My profile was down within 30 minutes. Amazing. You’re doing great work here. We appreciate it.
You’re welcome, Derek. Glad you had success!
🙂 Hayley
This is the response I received from my request to: removalrequests@mylife.com
I’m being held hostage for money. Now what?
——————————————————
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ Customer Care.
We appreciate your Inquiry about the information on MyLife.com. The information on each profile page is gathered from public sources, which can be easily found online using a simple Google search. This information will not be removed as these types of information are considered “public records” under the law, which means that anyone has the right to access them.
MyLife helps you see your personal information that’s exposed across the Internet. You can view your background report information and make sure it’s accurate. With your MyLife.com Premium Membership you can request removal of your information from over 35 websites that publish and sell personal information. Who’s Searching For You™ notifies you when people search for your personal information online.
You can contact a MyLife.com Customer Care Representative to learn more about MyLife Premium and how to control and monitor your personal information online.
If you need additional assistance or have further questions, please feel free to contact our MyLife.com™ Customer Care representatives toll-free at (888) 704-1900.
We are open Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-5pm PST to provide unlimited free member support.
Wait 24 hours and see if your info was removed in spite of this email. If it wasn’t, start the tutorial over and repeat your opt out request. No need to reference the first one. Sometimes you get someone who knows what they are doing, and sometimes you don’t. If you don’t have success reach out again to them. If necessary reach out to me too for help. But DO NOT pay them for removal. I am working with a client right now who paid for their service and still remained on their site. That’s not acceptable, right?
I got the same letter , but they still removed my info, although Iam still on the search engine but if you click on my life it says page not found but the cache is still there, when does the cache get deleted?
Disappearance of cache varies. It could be anywhere from hours to days to weeks depending upon when Google next crawls the MyLife Site and discovers it’s result does not match what’s on the site.
ok thanks ,cause I can still click on the cache and mylife page comes up with my info,, but if i click on my name on the mylife link ,it says page not found
I requested for my info to be removed and I didnt get the letter ,I got no response at all from mylife
Check your junk folder. They’re not known for ignoring requests. That said, if you reached out over the weekend, you should give them until a business day to respond.
I got the same letter , but they still removed my info for free,
You rock Hayley! My MyLife profile page was removed after the 2nd request from a different email address. 1st request was sent to removalrequest@ and 2nd was sent to privacy@ — for what it’s worth. Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed post to help others and for being involved after all these years.
Who wouldn’t enjoy being told they rock? 🙂 You’re welcome, Don. Glad it worked out for you.
MyLIfe.com has slandered me and will not remove their stuff on my “profile” even though I did pay for them to remove it.
I am a college senior and have been applying to jobs, surprise, surprise, nothing for stuff even high schoolers are overqualified for. What do I do to sue or otherwise destroy MyLIfe.com? They have been instrumental in blocking my financial gains for their ill-gotten ones!
Hans, they will remove it in spite of boilerplate emails you get from them along the way. Please follow the tutorial step-by-step. Stay polite and respectful because they are not doing anything illegal even though it feels like they are to you and to many other people too. You will succeed if you follow my directions. If you don’t, let me know via my contact form and I will help you.
Haley,
_Maybe_ they are doing nothing illegal, but MyLife and related companies have been targets of (at least some successful) class action lawsuits. They certainly behave unethically. I even read that Jeff (Jeffrey) Tinsley (MyLife founder and CEO) may be a sex offender. See how that works?
You are correct. They have been the target of lawsuits and it feels unethical that they are profiting from the sale of our personal information.
I just saw today that MyLife is facing another class action lawsuit. See https://cookcountyrecord.com/stories/511373194-class-action-people-finder-site-mylife-com-s-reputation-scores-violate-illinois-publicity-rights-law
So the jury is still out regarding the legality of some MyLife practices, at least in some locations. This is one of the beautiful things about online “services”, particularly those like MyLife, that handle the data of many people outside the jurisdiction where the service is incorporated. Now the online service is subject to not only laws/regulations of the jurisdiction where it is incorporated, but also (potentially) subject to laws/regulations of jurisdictions of the people whose data they collect. I stand by my earlier unequivocal statement that at the least, MyLife behaves unethically.
I find many of these sites to behave unethically. Anything that can change that is a plus in my book! Thanks for sharing.
Um.. wow! So far, looks like the process is underway. Thanks?!
You’re welcome! 🙂
Thanks Hayley! I was just made aware of this false information and your instructions resulted in an immediate response and it looks to be underway. THANK YOU!
Fabulous. I’m happy to know that, Kent. 🙂
I made the mistake of paying for access to my account and now the URL for my “””profile”” has /[fake email account name] after my REAL name! Will they still remove my public info?? They deliberately have false information on mine, I’m in college and trying to find a first job, it’s been really scary with false information on MyLife! Please help!! 🙁
I DO think they’ll remove it. You’re not the first person that has added inaccurate info in frustration. But I don’t recommend that strategy because they are willing to remove your info completely. Simply follow my directions in this tutorial and put in the URL for the profile you want removed. If you run into any issues, reach out to me via my contact form and I will step in and help you directly. 🙂 Hayey
Oh, I spoke too soon. 15 minutes after sending me an email saying they’d remove my info, they sent another email saying they wouldn’t. Ugh. I sent a response asking them to remove it. This is going to become a tiring game if this continues.
They sent another response saying they wouldn’t remove my info. I sent another email (third request) to remove my info. Got a response saying they would less than 10 minutes later. I just checked (about 20 minutes after they sent their response) and my info is gone from their site. So, I guess you really do just need to persist. I didn’t alter what I wrote to them, just kept repeating my original ‘please remove my info’ email and the third time was the charm. Keep trying–they will eventually remove your info!
Good job, Fay! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you SO much for putting up all those opt-out tutorials! I imagine at some point my info will reappear on those sites, right? How often do you suggest a person re-check these sites?
You are welcome. In my experience, if you remove the information properly the first time, it usually doesn’t come back. That means, look hard to find every version of your name on each site to make sure all of them are removed. Many people will show up on one site with many records.
I recommend searching for yourself on Google every few months in different ways so you catch your personal information on new or different sites. But it will feel a lot like Whack-a-mole because there are a LOT of sites. My removal service covers about 75 sites nowadays. When you search on Google, put in your name and part of your home address and that will expose some of the sites that have your address on Google. Also click through links on other sites on PeekYou and Pipl so you can ask those sites that advertise on these sites to remove your info. Good luck. 🙂 Hayley
I just emailed MyLife (using the template Hayley provided) and asked that they remove my info. 7 minutes later I got the boilerplate response of ‘this is public info, we aren’t removing it because everyone has a right to it’. I immediately copied and pasted the text of my original email asking to remove my info in a response to them. 1 minute later they sent a response saying they’d remove my info in 7 to 10 business days. I will definitely keep checking to make sure they DO remove my info, but the advice to persist in your requests is good–it seems their standard response is ‘not gonna do it’ and you just have to stand your ground. Good luck everyone!
I rarely comment online on anything but I have to give you kudos for your process I have been battling this fools for a while and like you I get enraged when they ask me to pay to remove my info that I did not give. Your process was straight forward and painless. Thank You!!! You absolutely Rock !!
My pleasure. I appreciate your comment very much. 🙂
Has everyone here who had success – PAID – in order to get the URL link? I am on my second kind request to them, and they are saying they will not remove it. This is awful! When I call I get a fake answering service with a recording saying, “Press 1 for , Press 2 for, etc.. etc.. and it leads you to nowhere, in fact it just hangs up on you. 🙁
Rachel,
There is no need to pay in order to have your info removed. Often what happens is people get a rejection and then their info is removed anyway. Hopefully that same thing will happen for you.
🙂 Hayley
Hayley- thank you so much for your reply 🙂 Appreciate it! Does it actually take time for them to remove for most people? (7-10 days?) or is it immediate? Again- thank you so much for responding – anxiety level decrease! ha! 🙂
It’s usually very quick (48 hours) but some people seem to get the runaround and this timing can vary. The good news it varies both ways and sometimes the removal is within 24 hours.
🙂 Hayley
Hi Hayley,
Thank you! I followed your instructions exactly, sent a single email, and despite receiving the “sorry, these are public records” automated email, my information was removed within 24 hours.
I discovered the Mylife profile when I Googled my name. Interestingly, when I searched Mylife for my name, it said there were no results. Yet there it was – on the Google search. I just used the URL from the Google result when emailed Mylife for removal, but found it odd that Mylife had a detailed profile page for me but couldn’t produce that result in their own search engine.
Last note – I had two profiles removed as they had two separate profiles/URLs for me, one with my married name, one with my maiden name. I sent the requests within 48 hours of each other, and both were promptly removed. Now just waiting until it falls off of the Google results.
Thanks for all that good info, Bonnie. You hit on a very important point when working on removing online information – be sure to remove all versions of your name when opting out of any of these sites. 🙂 Hayley
Thanks, it took me 3 emails to have it removed. Feels better knowing there’s a little less of me on the internet.
Good job! Glad it eventually worked.
Thank you for this. I am appalled they want you to sign-up to control your data. That’s extortion!!!
I decided to add this sentiment to my email request.
Sent an email and was quickly told they would comply, then received an email stating this was public information. Agree with many the majority of the information if false. Will continue to send emails until they remove my information from their site.
I suspect your info will be removed based on the first email you received so don’t send another unless your info is still there after a few days. The second email you received is a standard follow up email. 🙂 Hayley
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! I followed your exact instructions and my info was removed within an hour. It is absolutely scary how much information they were offering!
You are welcome. I’m thrilled to hear when it goes so smoothly. 🙂 Hayley
Seems like they’re back to being stubborn. Unfortunately for me, I got a response from a rep named Charm G. thanking me for my removal request, but stating “This information will not be removed as these types of information are considered “public records” under the law, which means that anyone has the right to access them.”
I’ll send another request in a couple of days, and keep you posted. It seems I have yet to experience the good luck that others have had this month 🙁
Carmel
Sorry, Carmel. Sometimes they say that and it’s removed anyway. Please let us know what happens in your case.
Quick update, I used a Boomerang extension for gmail, and scheduled a recurring removal request 3 more times. I finally got MyLife to agree to remove the profile. I double checked my old link, and thankfully my page and information are gone!
Thanks so much for outlining the steps; the key is persistence!
Sorry you had to jump through hoops but I’m glad you had relatively quick success. Thanks for sharing. 🙂 Hayley
Hi I have the same problem trying to contact them via email I did send an email but heard nothing back. I used the removalrequest@mylife.com emal address
Have you checked your spam/junk folder? Maybe their response ended up there. Start by checking to see if you were removed or not. If your info is still on the site, either send another email or call them on the number listed in the tutorial. – Hayley
I was shocked about how much information is “out there” and not very accurate! thank you for your directions on removal from the MyLife site. the whole removal process only took a couple of hours. thank you again.
Yay! They finally seem to be getting more consistent with their removals! Good job, Virginia. 🙂
Thank you very much with your helpful information. My info was removed in a matter of hours. The information made me out to have a criminal background with a bad reputation, which is not the case. They got some bad info somewhere. Even my wife’s has incorrect info on her background. I’m a very private person and wish I could keep it that way. Thanks again for your help.
Excellent, Jon. There is a lot of inaccurate personal info and it is indeed frustrating. Here is a link to all of my tutorials. https://what-is-privacy.com/category/opt-out-2/
Most people aren’t aware just how much of their personal info is online. I offer a variety of paid online information removal services in case you are interested. My most common service removes personal data from approximately 50-75 broker directories. (ie. MyLife, Nuwber, whitepages etc.) Good job fighting for your privacy!!
Thank You!!!! I sent an email requesting to have my information removed from their website. They have responded back letting me know they will comply. I will continue to watch them until it is gone.
Thanks for sharing!!
I love hearing that your first response was yes. Not everyone is that lucky. Thanks for sharing. 🙂
My information has been removed. Thank you for this. I am currently job hunting and I dont need anything hurting my chances.
Great. I’m so happy to learn it’s going more smoothly now than before. Wishing you much success with your job search, Shavon!
Fantastic. Wishing you much success with your job hunt and thank youfor sharing. 🙂 Hayley
Thanks for the Direction on how to get it removed.
I was shocked that I had such a negative profile.
What angers me is that this used to be a site called CLASSMATES then Reunion. How rude of them to just create such a profile with old or false info.
BLOODY HELL.
I don’t care of it is public knowledge or NOT. Don’t just take it upon yourself to decide my worthiness! EFF OUTTA HERE!
They need to be shut all the way down!
I received both of those letters also, so I decided to call to confirm and when they looked me up I was already gone. Double-checked myself and it was true. I was shocked, it took less than an hour!
LOL! I love it. Thanks for letting us all know.
I feel pretty lucky… I hope this is encouraging to others. Even though I ended up not having anything to protest, they were courteous & helpful on the phone. Thank you, Hayley, for providing great info!
You are welcome, Mona. Here is a link to all of my removal tutorials in one place: https://what-is-privacy.com/category/opt-out-2/
Must be nice. I asked them and they sent me an email saying that because the information was from public records, they would remove nothing. They even had the audacity to pimp out their “premium” service to me so I could pay them to make changes.
Try again, Daisy. It seems several people end up with this identical email and they have success the second time.
I sent a removal request on March 8th and received an email back that they received my request and it would be completed in 7-10 days. Then later on March 8th I received a second email stating the following:
“Thank you for contacting MyLife™ We appreciate your Inquiry about the information on MyLife.com. The information on each profile page is gathered from public sources, which can be easily found online using a simple Google search. This information will not be removed as these types of information are considered “public records” under the law, which means that anyone has the right to access them.
…”
Does this mean they will not remove my information? I have checked and my profile they have is still available.
Thank you,
Erinn
This is happening to a few others too. Persist and send a reply asking them to please remove your profile as soon as possible. So far, everyone that has commented on this article seems to have ultimately had success even though it’s harder for some than others for a reason I am not certain of.
Please return to this thread and let us know what happens in order to help others that encounter the same problem. Thanks. Hayley
Hello Hayley,
I re-sent an email to the support email address requesting to be removed. This morning I received an email with the text about it being public records, yada, yada, yada .. but the next paragraph said that the profile was removed. I check the site and I am no longer listed.
Thank you for the assistance!
Excellent. Thanks for letting me know. I think the “song and dance” they give deters many people from following up and maybe that’s why they do it. Their info becomes less valuable if too many people opt out.
Email request worked for me. So glad.
Awesome. That’s what I like to hear! 🙂 Thanks for letting us all know since some people don’t have prompt success.
It didn’t work for me. They responded with the following: “This information will not be removed as these types of information are considered “public records” under the law, which means that anyone has the right to access them.”
Try again, Jay. If you look over the comment thread, that worked for others. But use polite wording because they are not obligated to do the removal. It’s a courtesy because as they say, they are getting this info from public records.
I just received my first denial and am wondering how long to wait to resend the email to a different address. Is it best to wait until another day? Thanks for the helpful advice.
File a complaint with BBB AND ftc.gov and give them 30 days to remove the profile.
Hayley, thanks so much for this info. I sent a message to removalrequests@mylife.com and heard back in less than 2-1/2 hours that my profile had been deleted. I checked, and sure enough it’s gone. Now I need to see what other websites have my info posted, and then follow the instructions in your other tutorials.
Awesome news! Thanks for sharing, Jim, and here’s a link to my other tutorials: https://what-is-privacy.com/category/opt-out-2/ Sites make occasional changes so if you run into issues on any of them, leave a comment and I’ll respond as soon as possible. Thanks again for the good news.
Thank you very much. I sent a request early this morning (a Sunday). Received an email within 15 minutes that they would process my request. Another email 3 hours later stating my profile removed. Verified it at their website. Thank you again for this valuable information.
Beautiful! Thanks for sharing, Karen. 🙂
I have just emailed them asking to remove me also. Thank you for the info. I sure hope it works. The only other site I found with my personal info was my States voter registration info site. Is it possible to have that removed/hidden? Thank you so much Hayley.
You are welcome, Michael. I have good news and bad news for you. The bad news first: If you found yourself on MyLife, I 100% guarantee you that it is on many other sites too. If you email me your full name, your city and state and approx age, I will email you screenshots of your information from other sites in a matter of minutes. Or start by looking yourself up on pipl.com. Now the good news: The good news is that you most likely can remove your personal information from those sites. As far as your State’s voter information, most of the time it’s removable but sometimes it’s not. I need to see the actual site in order to answer that accurately. You can email me that too. I will send this response directly to your email address so you have my email address. You can also reach out via my contact form. 🙂 Hayley
Haley, did you say you do this for multiple sites (information removal?) could you send me your prices and services information?
Hi Haley,
I know this post is regarding mylife but I wanted to reach out and ask about Cubib. They have all my personal info posted and they have a generic opt out and a contact us form but not direct email. I’ve now tried over 3 times to ask for removal through their opt out and contact us submission with no success. Do you have any knowledge on this website? Or any advice or information would be so helpful.
Thank you,
Nunu
I do know how to opt out of Cubib. I will reach out to you privately to go over it.
I’ll be awaiting your email. Thank you so much for being such a great help!
I would also like to know how to remove my info from Cubib.com
I will do my best to write a tutorial for Cubib in the near future. That site makes way too much info easily available but it can all be removed.
Cubib is highly invasive. See my latest tutorial for that site: https://what-is-privacy.com/2018/03/opt-out-of-cubib/
Move my data
I’m guessing you think I have something to do with your data, Pinku. But I do not. You have left your comment on a tutorial to teach you how to remove your own data from MyLife. If that is what you are trying to do, please read the tutorial carefully to do just that.
If you need help doing it, I offer a variety of paid services to remove the data for you. Reach out privately through my contact form to set up a phone consultation. You can also read up on the different types of online information on my website’s home page, https://what-is-privacy.com
Absolutely amazing… the comments section was key, too, because Hayley elaboarated that you might have to keep going until you got the result you wanted. I used Hayley’s template, although I added “Please notify me in writing when this has been completed.” Luckily, that didn’t hurt. The first time, I got a denial; second time, they removed the listing. Can’t wait for Google results to update! Thank you so much for this info, Hayley!!
You are welcome, Marisha. I’m thrilled it went so smoothly for you. Thanks for sharing your experience. 🙂 Hayley
I did a search for my name and of course MyLife came up. They have my age wrong by 34 years. They have an address that I haven’t lived at for almost 13 years and my job at a company that has been out of business for 10 years. They did spell my name correctly!
You noticed a very common situation that occurs on many sites like MyLife. Firstly, information goes back further in time than you may recall yourself. Secondly, there will be a lot of inaccuracies – although there is usually a logical reason for them. Thirdly, names are often spelled incorrectly. But here’s the important part about all this: All this old and inaccurate information is connected to the real you and it will all be provided on a background report. Therefore, when removing your information, you need to remove all of it – that which is accurate and that which is wrong!
Don’t worry about the details of what’s showing. Don’t try to correct misinformation. Simply ask that it all be removed.
One of my best friends from high school is linked to my profile. It has his high school graduation year correct, but his age is 18 years to young. In other words, he would have had to graduate when he was a newborn infant!
There’s a lot of inaccurate info online but unfortunately, it all connects to accurate info. My solution – get rid of as much of it as possible. Aim to remove it all!
Thank you so much for sharing this information. I did exactly as you said and received an email almost immediately. Within 5 hours I received the second email with a case # explaining that my profile had been removed as requested and it would take an additional 7-10 days to remove it from Google search engines.
Thanks for sharing this, Candace. Some people seem to have a rather negative experience – I’m thrilled it went so smoothly for you. 🙂
They refuse to remove mine. Not sure why.
Maybe it depends on which MyLife employee gets the email. Also, the first (boilerplate) email you get from them implies that they’re not going to remove the information because it’s from public records. If you receive don’t an email confirming the removal of your info, simply email them the identical email again as my instructions direct you to do. Usually that second email is successful. Let me know if that works for you JC. If it doesn’t reach out and I’ll help you.
I got it. Thank you!
If you use the wording I suggest, I hope you will have success. (See step 3 in the tutorial for wording) Perhaps use a new email address and start over?
What did you say when you emailed them? What email address did you send it to? They’ve now denied mine twice. I’m speechless lol. I just don’t understand why they would deny me only 8 days later, saying it’s considered public information and people have a right to access it.
I replied to their email asking how they can remove one person’s on the 15th, then deny mine the same mine the same month and what’s causing them to deny my request.
I included the exact wording in my tutorial. (Step 3) It seems to work out in the end for everyone according to the comments in this thread.
Just checked the link. Already deleted within 24 hours. Woo-hoo!
Beautiful! I’m happy to hear this JC!
Thanks for this site. I am currently trying to remove my information and got the generic we will not remove your information because it is public. They even have more than one profile for me on the site. My exact address and very sensitive information is on there which is irritating to say the least. Hoping they remove it soon, I am prepared to email them over and over and over again. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Thanks for letting me know. I hope you get a result sooner rather than later and that you don’t have to email them again. In my personal experience, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of emails to get a successful removal. 🙂 If you have sensitive info on this site, please know you likely have it on others too. Try this article to look yourself up more extensively. https://what-is-privacy.com/2015/10/how-to-find-your-personal-information-on-the-internet/ I need to update this article. Note that Peoplesmart is now Beenverified.
You have made defamatory statements about me and I demand you take my information completely off your site or I will seek counsel. I do not live in Eudora along with the rest of your information.
Ann, I am NOT MyLife. You are leaving your comment on what I’d like to think as a helpful article for removing your information from MyLife.
Threatening MyLife won’t do you any good – they are not doing anything illegal. Instead, simply follow the instructions from my tutorial. Read the entire tutorial for important details and then please respond to this comment, if possible, with your result.
Yea mylife simply left me the reply like many others, that they will NOT remove any data simply because it is “public” which some parts I do not mind however they have as the main picture on the profile for me a very personal picture I had up a website I had up 6 years ago and deleted it a couple months after putting it up way back then. I simply request that they remove the picture since it was personal and from a personal site and its not being removed. Will have to probably go to court to remove a simple picture that wont be deleted.
QO – review my tutorial and follow all steps. I suspect they will remove your info and your photo will go with it too. No need to entertain the idea of going to court.
Hi Hayley. I followed your instructions and received the same email as you show in your tutorial. I then received a second email saying they won’t remove the information. I plan to call and send the request to their privacy and security emails. Below is their response:
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ We appreciate your Inquiry about the information on MyLife.com. The information on each profile page is gathered from public sources, which can be easily found online using a simple Google search. This information will not be removed as these types of information are considered “public records” under the law, which means that anyone has the right to access them.
MyLife helps you see your personal information that’s exposed across the Internet. You can view your background report information and make sure it’s accurate. With your MyLife.com Premium Membership you can request removal of your information from over 35 websites that publish and sell personal information. Who’s Searching For You™ notifies you when people search for your personal information online.
You can contact a MyLife.com Customer Care Representative to learn more about MyLife Premium and how to control and monitor your personal information online.
Yes. MyLife offers a paid service to remove information from their site and from other sites too. Call me crazy, but I have a problem with the concept of sites that share personal info being the same ones offering to remove it for a fee! Anyway, there is no need to pay them to remove information. You can call and ask them to remove your information or send another email politely asking them to remove it and you will have success. Sometimes you have to make several attempts before having success. Other times, you may find your info was removed in spite of receiving that second email. Hope your info comes off soon. Happy Weekend. Hayley
They are literally blackmailing me:
” 1 or more judgment and criminal court record is now showing on your Background Report.
These damaging items could be a mistake. 41% of Background Reports have errors.”
…and telling me in order for this information to be removed from their site(accurate or not), that I must pay them money.
That is blackmail.
Sometimes you may get an unprofessional person who doesn’t handle things appropriately. Take a breath and stay calm. Simply email them all over again and ask them to remove your information. Follow my tutorial precisely and read my explanations along the way. I’ve yet to learn of a single person who hasn’t succeeded. No need to pay them.
I hope to hear back from you with a successful result! Good luck. 🙂
I emailed MyLife and requested to have my information removed. They refused and said that all information shared on MyLife is from “public records” which means that “anyone has the right to access them.”
I replied with a short email which said, “I am so sorry you are unwilling to remove my information from MyLife. I will be submitting complaints to the FTC and BBB tonight.” I received a response less than 12 hours later and was informed all of my information would be removed.
Thanks for sharing this, Sarah. I”m glad it all worked out in the end.
MyLife (and other sites too) will provide boilerplate responses saying that the information comes from public records and anyone can access them as a result. This is 100% true. When these sites remove information, they are doing it as a courtesy and not as a requirement. Hopefully this will change in the near future because it causes harm and distress to so many innocent people. (and of course, to many not-so-innocent people too.)
This worked for me too. Thank you for the great info.
Awesome! Thanks for letting us know!
Did they remove your information after you received the email?
Do not contact mylife.com. The owner, Jeff Tinsley, has a criminal record.
By contacting them you are probably giving them even more information about yourself.
They may remove you from mylife.com, but they probably are affiliated with other sites where all of that information will remain along with anything new that you give them through their bait site.
Many of the data broker sites are affiliated with multiple sites. Sometimes this is useful because opting out of one removes you from multiple sites at once. But I don’t know if this is or is not true of MyLife because I have not clearly discovered a relationship between MyLife and other sites although I am aware of relationships between many other sites. Many sites gather information about you as you opt out which is why you need to be careful to not provide any additional information beyond what they already have on you. (They have a lot though) Because a site or because a person asks for information does not mean you need to provide that information either. MyLife does not require additional information beyond the URL of the profile so I must disagree with you in cautioning others not to contact them. MyLife contains pretty invasive information and the only way to remove it completely at this time is to contact them.
I sent the email as was suggested. I received this response almost immediately. Maybe I got lucky and they’ll actually do it? I/m definitely watching.
“Removal Requests
11:18 PM (3 minutes ago)
to me
Dear Customer,
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ Customer Care. This note is to inform you that we have received your inquiry and will begin processing your request.
Please note that we respond to e-mail messages in the order received. Your Removal Request should be processed and completed within 7-10 business days. Please do not send multiple e-mails regarding the same subject as this will only delay our response.
We value your request for privacy and would like some feedback on how we can improve your experience controlling your Online footprint. If you have a moment, please take a few seconds to complete this survey. Your response would be greatly appreciated.
survey link
Thank you again for your e-mail and we look forward to assisting you!
Sincerely,
MyLife.com™ Customer Care Team
====== Your Inquiry ======
Please, remove all of my information from your website. The link to my profile is below.
mylife.com/Fname-Lname/my.name”
That’s fabulous. I love when it works the way it’s supposed to the first time! Thanks for sharing!
Hi Hayley,
Thanks for providing this useful information! I followed your instructions for requesting removal of my personal information from mylife. My profile page was successfully removed by them; however, my name, age, and address still appear when I search for myself on the mylife website. Do you know if this is something that will eventually be removed? When i called mylife customer support they weren’t able to assist with removal of this info (even though they were seeing the same info on their side when they entered my name and zipcode).
Thanks,
Heather
Heather,
Nothing should remain on the site once it’s properly removed. I’m going to suggest that you contact them once more and hopefully the person that answers this time will manage to do the removal properly. On the phone, push the option for Technical Support to get to someone who can do this for you.
Good luck and please let me know if it is eventually removed completely. It should be.
🙂 Hayley
Hi Hayley,
Thanks for your response. I called mylife technical support again today and they stated they will forward the request to delete the cached information to whoever is responsible for this. I am to check back in 24 to 48 hours. This was my third call after exchanging 6 emails. I don’tthink I would have had the patience to call again if it wasn’t for your blog and words of encouragement! Fingers crossed it works…
My fingers are crossed too, Heather. It should work! 🙂
I am happy to tell you that after emailing via your link only once, my information was gone within an hour. It may have helped that I told them it wasn’t worth my while to go through the removal process because only one person had ever searched for me. They don’t make money from people no one looks for.
Thanks for the guidance – it worked! About 90% of the information was inaccurate and I told them that too, which might also have helped. I will check their site again in a week or so to make sure it wasn’t put back.
Excellent. I love when it goes so smoothly!
MyLife refuses to remove information. Is this a legal defense? BTW, their customer service line has no person for personal information questions and promptly hangs up after giving you an email address.
——————— FROM MYLIFE————————
Thank you for contacting MyLife™ We appreciate your Inquiry about the information on MyLife.com. The information on each profile page is gathered from public sources, which can be easily found online using a simple Google search. This information will not be removed as these types of information are considered “public records” under the law, which means that anyone has the right to access them.
MyLife helps you see your personal information that’s exposed across the Internet. You can view your background report information and make sure it’s accurate. With your MyLife.com Premium Membership you can request removal of your information from over 35 websites that publish and sell personal information. Who’s Searching For You™ notifies you when people search for your personal information online.
You can contact a MyLife.com Customer Care Representative to learn more about MyLife Premium and how to control and monitor your personal information online.
If you need additional assistance or have further questions, please feel free to contact our MyLife.com™ Customer Care representatives toll-free at (888) 704-1900.
We are open Mon-Fri 6am-7pm, Sat-Sun 6am-5pm PST to provide unlimited free member support.
Hi Ashley,
MyLife has no legal obligation to remove the information because they are correct in saying it stems from public records and is available on many other sites too. The key to removal on all sites is tenacity and follow up. It’s a nuisance but from someone who’s been doing it for many years, trust me when I say the hardest part of removing information is following up to make sure it’s done correctly and then persisting if it’s not.
Please read the entire article and follow those steps. In particular, pay attention to step #7.
“(7) Since complete and prompt removal from MyLife is inconsistent, you may need to reach out to them multiple times. You can follow up by contacting them via 2 separate email addresses: (there are links to both in the article) or you can phone them and ask for assistance at (888) 704-1900 Mon-Fri: 6am – 7pm PST and Sat-Sun: 6am – 5pm. Be optimistic that you will succeed promptly. But if not, multiple attempts and persistence will ultimately result in success! The key is follow up.”
NOTE: When calling them, press Option 4 for Technical support and politely ask them to remove your information. You will need to provide the full URL. I know this works because I did it a moment ago to test it and the result is already gone.
Please let me know if you succeed! I think you will. 🙂 Hayley
Hi Hayley
When googling myself last night I found my details listed on MyLife. I’m not American and nor do I live in the States. Up until last night had never even heard of MyLife! The information within the actual google search showed my area post code and street address! without anyone even having to click to go any further. However when I did click the link it showed me a profile with my name and address details to my shock and surprise. The odd thing was that when I did use the people search option on MyLife my details didn’t come up. After googling and research I came across your website.
I sent an email as per your guide this morning 10 am and this evening I’ve checked and have had an email saying the information has been removed. I’ve googled my name and the MyLife search result does come up still. However, my area code nor full street address is no longer showing. When I click the link now the profile does not come up anymore like it was doing so last night.
I note the MyLife email does say to allow for 7-10 business days for my information to be removed from major search engines. So I shall keep an eye out, and I guess follow up with them if it still continues to show up in searches after that time? As of now I can only see it come up on google. Have you found that if the profile has gone the google search listing will be removed as well within 7-10 business days?
Apologies for the long message I just wanted to say thank you for having such useful information. I was rather panicked and worried last night. I’m now planning on removing myself from other directories too.
I’m glad you’ve found my information helpful, Usi. I didn’t realize that MyLife extended beyond the USA so thank you for teaching me something new today.
Congrats on getting a prompt removal of your info from MyLife. Not everyone has that experience. What you’re seeing now is temporary cache from MyLife in your google search result and the removal timing is up to Google but can occur within hours, days, weeks or months depending upon how often Google crawls the site to update its results. If your info still shows up in a couple of weeks, reach out to me via my site contact form and I’ll guide you further.
🙂 Hayley
Thanks so much for such great info Hayley!
I just went to MyLife’s site and in their FAQ they state:
28. Can I have my Public Page removed?
All of the information is gathered from public records and other sources similar to what you might find in a Google search. Your Public Page cannot be deleted. Premium members have the ability to hide information as they see fit.
Not sure if they will honor a removal request at this point, but I’m giving it a shot since they claim to have a phone number but my phone is unlisted and not publicly available. Figured it would be worth a try to imply that they’ve overstepped.
You’re welcome, Diana. You should manage to have your public page removed upon request but there is certainly a chance they have changed their policy recently. Please follow the steps of my tutorial and then please report back. If you don’t succeed, I’d like to step in and help. Fingers crossed it works for you.
Thanks Hayley. I just went and checked and they did remove the public info as requested despite their FAQ claim that they won’t. Maybe they just added that to their FAQ to try and prevent people from flooding them with removal requests.
Yay, thanks for letting me know, Diana! Awesome news.
No site has a legal obligation to remove information so it’s great when they are willing to do it and even better when they follow up and do the removal completely!
Yep … I was very happy to not have to fight them.
BTW, I ran across another site that I hadn’t seen before and didn’t see a post here. Have you dealt with Radaris before? I tried sending them an email, and stated that I was not willing to create an account or give a cell number. They replied with their FAQ info … completely ignoring the meat of my request.
I know Radaris well. Radaris is like an onion with lots of layers and lots of other sites connected to it. That’s a hard tutorial to write because it’s a very complex removal process. After you make your profile private, your address will still show up in search engines so you have to do a combo of info removal and info control.
Thanks. I don’t realy want to deal with giving sites like that any more info (power) but if it’s the only way I guess I need to consider it.
Actually, my advice is to not give them any new info you don’t already see online. You can call them and ask them to help you without providing additional info. You can also email them for help but those layers get complicated – heads up.
Thanks again … it actually ended up being a bit easier for some reason.
My original email to them basically just requested that they remove my info and that I didn’t want to create an account or provide an unlisted phone number.
They replied with a looong email which is just a copy of their FAQ instructions on what they want you to do.
That annoyed me so I sent a reply email saying:
“Clearly you didn’t bother to read my original email.
I have already looked at the “procedure” you have listed on your site and am NOT WILLING to create an account or provide an UNLISTED phone number. (as I originally stated)
If you prefer to be jerks about it, the least you could do is be honest about being unwilling to remove information.
At least I now know who I’m dealing with. You might want to attempt to at least respond to what’s written instead of assuming people are too lazy or stupid to read the info on your site.”
I was totally surprised when they sent back an email saying my information had been removed … and I just verified that it is no longer there (at least publicly).
Going to try the same with hubby’s info … maybe if you’re a little cranky they figure you’re not going away?
LOL! You got their attention with your wording. Way to go and I’m glad you had success. Thanks for sharing… and for giving me a laugh too. 🙂 Hayley
I just received an email from them saying that they were refusing to take down my information, that it was public information gathered across the internet. He informed me that I would have to pay for a Premium membership to control what information is on my profile page, basically blackmail 🙁
Some people or employees are less helpful or less knowledgeable than others. Follow the steps of my tutorial and try again. Do not pay for a Premium membership to do this. I believe you will succeed. Please let me know.
Hi, Haley:
I just made request number 4 to have myself removed from MyLife.
The responses are always the same – never do they say they will remove the information. They tell me to claim my public page (which I did), click on ‘my privacy’ to see who is searching for me, etc.. To claim my public page I clicked on the view public page and answered that I was the person named. I copied my URL bar and requested removal of all my information and sent to the ‘privacy’ email and I also tried the ‘support’ email (at different times) but had no success with either.
My most recent response said to click the edit/control link and enter a valid email address.
I suspect this will take me to the paid portion of MyLife ? because no where in your directions does it mention needing to do this. So I will continue to email occasional requests to delete me and hope one works. Any thoughts?
Thanks for your blog and info. It is great to have someone looking out for us.
Best,
Cathy
Welcome to my world. This is how it is with several sites and that’s why it’s so labor intensive and time consuming and why people give up and opt to pay someone to have the headache instead of themselves.
If it was me, I’d be at the point where I’d be asking to speak to a supervisor and requesting immediate removal. Try calling (888) 704-1900 or (310) 571-3144.
Please let me know if you have success. If you do not, email me a screenshot of your information privately and I’ll handle it for you.
Good luck.
🙂 Hayley
Thanks for the instructions on this. I’ve been working to get myself and family removed for over a month now. Of the 6 family members I found on the site, I’ve been able to remove 3 of us by resending the request over and over. Even when you get the e-mail you have been removed – chances are you have not – at least until the 3rd or 4th request. Of all the sites I’ve removed our information from, this one was the most difficult because of their failure to follow through with the actual removal. As I said, I’m already a month into removing my family so I’ll keep at it even if it takes a dozen requests and another month. But.. .. If you don’t have time to be diligent about checking up on it – this one may be best left to the experts – like Hayley.
Hi Cindy,
You nailed the entire personal information removal process on the head! Success comes down to time, tenacity and follow up because MyLife is one of many sites that provide a written confirmation of removal of information even though that information is still on their site. Congratulations on removing 3 out of your 6 family members so far. I hope the last 3 go much quicker!
Thanks for sharing your experience.
🙂 Hayley