Whitepages Free & Premium Opt Out-Revised
This tutorial will guide you through removal of your information from Whitepages and from Whitepages Premium. This is important because opting out of (free) Whitepages does not simultaneously remove you from Whitepages Premium, a service that provides vast amounts of personal data for a minimal fee. Please know that Whitepages constantly makes changes to its site and opt outs as seen by the fact that this is my 5th tutorial for Whitepages opt outs since 2013. NOTE: This article was updated on 2/28/18 to reflect another change to the whitepages opt out procedure.
If you notice any inaccurate information as you follow the tutorial directions, please let me know so I can update these directions, yet again.
When using this tutorial please note:
- The links will open up in a new window to allow toggling back and forth to this page.
- Using an Incognito Window or a browser that does not track is advised. (This is sometimes necessary to see the blue boxes for Whitepages Premium opt outs.)
- If you find you have more than one record on free Whitepages or on Whitepages Premium, you should repeat this tutorial for each record.
How to remove yourself from free Whitepages:
- Go to whitepages.com and enter your name and optionally, your location, to narrow the results if you have a common name. Click the search icon or return.
- Once you find your information, right click on “VIEW DETAILS” and select “Copy Link Address” from the drop down menu.
- To get to the whitepages Opt Out page, click here!
- Right click in the box that appears and select “Paste” from the drop down menu.
- Click “OPT OUT” and follow the directions which will include clicking “REMOVE ME” after you verify the information belongs to you. Select a reason for your removal, (“I just want to keep my information private”) then click “SUBMIT.” (If you cannot see the entire “OPT OUT” button, click on the part you can see.)
- Answer the telephone number associated with your listing and provide the verification code on your screen. You will get an online and a robot (voice) confirmation.
- If there is no number associated with your listing, provide any phone number you have current access to.
- Go to whitepages and search for yourself again.
- If you don’t see the information you just aimed to remove, congratulations on a successful removal!
- If your information is still there, try again or contact whitepages for assistance.
Don’t forget to repeat the process for additional listings. If you have no additional listings, you are ready to tackle Whitepages Premium.
How to have your information removed from Whitepages Premium:
- Go to whitepages.com and enter your name and optionally, your location, to narrow the results if you have a common name. Click the search icon or return.
- Premium listings are in light blue squares. If it’s an option, click on “SHOW MORE PREMIUM RESULTS” because you will need to repeat this process for each listing that belongs to you.
- If you see your information in a light blue rectangle, then right click your mouse on the “VIEW FULL REPORT” button to get a drop down menu.
- Click on “Copy Link Address.” ** For mobile devices: press and hold or right click on ‘view details’. Pressing and holding brings up the ‘copy URL’ needed for removal when you don’t have a mouse or keyboard to click.
Locate your Premium Whitepages results and then remove them. All of them.
- Click here to contact Whitepages Premium. Complete necessary fields (no attachment needed) and right click in the field labeled “Personal Information URL.”
- Select “paste” from the drop down menu then click “SUBMIT.”
- Once you receive removal confirmation, verify that you have been completely removed by going back to whitepages.com. If you find your information remains after 72 hours have passed, contact Whitepages Premium (repeatedly) until your information is gone.
- Repeat all steps for each Premium listing belonging to you.
If you’re lucky, this will work seamlessly the first time. But if it does not, please don’t give up. Like many of the other online broker directory sites, they will eventually remove your information but the burden of making sure it’s done correctly and completely is yours. Wishing you quick and easy success on your mission!
Until next time,… Stay Cyber Safe.
Hi Haley,
This is great information but it doesn’t seem to work for me. I have a blue box that says “View Full report”.I don’t have a box that says view details. I right clicked and copied the link address but I don’t see “Click here for more results. I went to the opt-out page and right clicked and pasted the URL info in and the box and it gave me this error message. is invalid
Sorry, we’re not able to locate the listing associated with the URL provided. Please make sure that you’re copying the URL of the page that contains your contact information.
Submitted URL is too long (maximum is 200 characters)
Submitted URL is invalid.
Not sure why I keep getting this message. Please help
Sometimes a site makes changes to how things are done and that makes my directions less precise or even completely invalid. Whitepages is notorious for changing their site and as such, I’ve had more versions of tutorials for this site than any other. I have a new client I’ll be doing this for next week. If I notice a change, I’ll update my tutorial at that time. I will also be sending you a private email regarding this. Hayley
I am experiencing the same issue as Gloria. Mine also says “View Full Report” not “View Full Details”, therefore I think the site expects me to pay first for access to my own URL. Error message stating URL is too long and therefore invalid.
One refers to the free whitepages listing and the other to the premium. Be sure to follow the directions for each type separately. It’s two separate opt outs.
Hayley
Yes I did notice mine is Premium. However, that doesn’t change the fact that I still can’t copy the link by right clicking the “View Full Report” tab, as my drop down menu is not the same. My options are: Copy, Cut, Paste, Select All, Print. When I select “Copy” all I get is a copy of my name. And if I click the link and copy the entire address bar at the top, I don’t know if that will work, since that is the purchasing page for my full report. Very frustrating.
Still sounds like you aren’t using a right click. See the email I just sent you privately. You may email me (privately, not on a comment) your full name and city and state and I can see if I can give you that URL. Alternatively, I can be hired to do this for you for a fee. Also reach out privately by email if that’s what you want to do.
Hi Haley, I am also experiencing this issue for the Free White Pages opt-out site. I believe the url provided by clicking on “View Full Report” is not actually the link to a profile, but indicates the results of a name search.
Look at your full free whitepages profile and copy the URL from the address bar, Erin.
– Hayley
Thank you Haley, this was a life saver !!
I love to hear that. Thank you and you’re welcome. 🙂
Haley,
This is Paul again. Please disregard the previous comment. I just discovered that my listed is a premium one. I’ll follow the steps accordingly.
Thanks again!
Excellent. Thanks for letting me know. 🙂
Haley,
Hello, my name is Paul. I followed the steps to have my name removed, however, once I found my name and information, there was no view details box next to my name preventing me from completing the process of having my information removed?
Thanks
Hi Haley: I followed your directions to remove my name info from the White Pages site. When I get to my name it says “we found (my name) on White Pages Premium”. Does that indicate that I’m not found on the “free” site? Also, when I right click on the “view full report” highlighted box the drop-down menu I get has nothing that copies an address link (or any other link). I’ve tried on Internet Explorer and Google Chrome (incognito). Any thoughts? Thanks.
Hi Randy,
If you’re only seeing a premium listing than you may not have a free listing. But if you haven’t already opted out, you likely do have a free listing so search for variations on your name to find it. If you email me your name privately via my contact form, I will look you up and see what’s going on with the link. Some sites have made changes recently in light of the new California Consumer Privacy Act and I will test my tutorial for whitepages with you as an example, if you want. (privately, of course. I won’t share your info with anyone.) Be sure to give me a telephone number when you email me so I can call you if necessary during the process.
Hayley
Hi Haley: Thanks for your quick follow-up. I wanted to let you know that the matter has been resolved. I tried any variation on my name and, as it turned out, I was always taken back to the original (premium ) White Pages listing. Turns out I only had my listing on the White Pages Premium page. I followed your instructions on removing my name from the premium listing and it went flawlessly. I sent White Pages over the info and request on Saturday, January 18, got an auto response acknowledging receipt and received an email from them on Monday afternoon (January 20) saying my request had been processed. I checked 24 hours later and the listing was gone. Thanks a million for your impeccable instructions.
Beautiful! You are welcome! 🙂
Thank you so much for this. My phone number is unlisted, but I was in their whitepages database as premium and I do not wish for my personal information to be online. There website did not contain any information on how to remove my information, but this was extremely helpful. Thank You!
You’re welcome, Karen. I’m glad to be of use. 🙂
thank you for taking the time to post this information. It was very helpful in removing my information from the web
You’re welcome, Val. Thanks for the positive feedback. 🙂
Thank you for your help. Your instructions are so clear and make the process of removing the free information so easy. That information is of particular concern precisely because it is free. Now it’s gone. I will deal with the premium information later.
You’re welcome, Mike. Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. 🙂
Important note–I got the blank screen and other error messages when trying to opt out. Found out it would not work in Internet Explorer browser but it was successful after switching to Edge.
Thanks for that update, Jan. You make a good point about switching to a different browser when you can’t get it to work in one of them. 🙂
Thank you for taking the time to provide instructions!!! it shows you care.
You’re welcome, Nelissa. Thank you for your kind words.
I have one premium listing and when I click on the blue rectangle, the ‘copy link’ is not an option. The following is a list of options I get:
Open
Open in new tab
Open in new window
Save target as
Print target
Copy shortcut
Email with windows live
Translate with blog
All accelerators
Inspect element
Add to favorites
Send to Onenote
Properties
When I try to paste the URL, whitepages rejects it. I have Windows 10 and was using private browsing.
I work on a Mac so I can’t try these options out for you. Have you tried “Copy Shortcut?” If that does not work, try “open in a new window” and go up to the address bar, copy and paste the URL from there and see if that works. If neither works, use my contact form to email me your name, city and state (and anything else that will help me identify your record) and I’ll look it up for you and send you the URL privately. Hayley
Hello Hayley, I am also having difficulties removing myself from the Whitepages. I have tried different search engines-Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Safari. After I copy and paste the link of the profile I want to delete, it is saying that the URL is too long. I am also using Macbook. What other suggestions can you give me for removing my information from the Whitepages? Thank you.
Good Morning, Sheila,
I tested this tutorial and all worked fine for me. It’s important you do not grab the URL from the address bar. You need to follow the directions precisely in Step 4 to get the correct URL for whitepages premium. I have it diagrammed out in a screenshot. The free whitepages opt out is quick and easy and seems to work for me in multiple browsers. Are you having trouble with your removal from free or from premium? Alternatively, I can do both removals for you for a fee.
Hayley
Hi I was able to remove the free listing but not the premium. I’m using a masked email address from Blur and I receive a message from whitepages support saying they won’t assist with my request because it appears it’s coming from an unauthorized 3rd party. I’ve tried it 3 times now and I’m worried if I use my actual personal email that my listing has been flagged and they would still reject it on top of now having my personal email address. Any advice please?
It’s not uncommon to not manage to do opt outs or to even visit some sites when using a VPN or something like Blur. I like that you are not willing to use a personal email address. I suggest you create another email address to use for things like opt outs. I use gmail when I have to do this because I can set up the account without having to give a phone number. Give as little info as possible when setting up a new account.
Thank you for this article. I was able to remove from White Pages (got the automated phone call with confirm code to punch in) Yet the blue box premium one had me fill out the info from the listing and since I cant access it completely, I just put my info. The subject I chose was to “remove or edit” my listing – which I felt was unfair because they are treating it now like I want to edit it, and instead of fast removal & confirmation, it sent me an email saying (I x’d out my confirm number) :
Hello from Whitepages!
Thank you for contacting our Customer Care team. Your request (# XXXXXXX ) has been received and is being reviewed by our team. While we review the request, we’d like to provide a few resources that might help answer your questions.
To answer the most frequently asked questions, we’ve set up the Whitepages Help Center.
If the Help Center articles resolve your issue, please notify us by responding to this message. This will ensure the fastest service possible for all of our customers. All emails are answered in the order they are received, usually within 24 hours. Submitting more than one request may result in a delay in your original request being processed.
Regards,
Whitepages Support
http://www.whitepages.com
————–
So, now I have to wait for it to be reviewed?
Yes. It should be removed in a few days. If not, reach out to them by email to follow up. In my experience they sometimes remove it correctly the first time. Other times I need to send a follow up email once or twice to get it done.
Thank You So Much. I really appreciate you did this. I spent a long time trying to get removed from other services and this is the last one that keep showing up. I even contacted the BBB about mylife because they repeatedly said they would remove me (phone calls and emails) and no action was taken. The BBB is what got it done. Thanks again!!
You are welcome. Here’s a link to all of my opt out tutorials in one place. https://what-is-privacy.com/category/opt-out-2/
THANK YOU!!! 🙂
was shocked that they were displaying my physical address for free. I never list my address. how can they do this? I was able to remove my listings thanks to you. they should be sued.
It is shocking to see our home addresses online for free. But you should know that they pick this up from public records and whitepages is one of MANY, MANY sites that shares personal data.
Hi Hayley, just followed your simple instructions to remove my White pages listing that’s only under premium. You sound awesome and I may actually contact you to remove me from the many very annoying sites! Anyway as thanks, with so many mobile devices, you might want to add press and hold or right click on ‘view details’. Pressing and holding brings up the ‘copy URL’ needed for removal when you don’t have a mouse or keyboard to click. People are getting the URL is too long error because they are copying the one in the address bar. (I did it first time too. 🙂
That is excellent feedback, Mel. Thank you and I’ll add that to the tutorial today. Reach out anytime if you want help dealing with more sites. FYI – I offer a paid removal service that covers over 100 of those annoying sites!
Thanks again, Mel. I added your valuable suggestion to the tutorial!!!
Thanks for the article. I followed your instructions for both the standard and premium listings and it worked. Your tip about the premium listing was especially important.
Do you know if what these sites (white pages, people search, etc) are doing is legal? Sometimes it seems some of the information they display were gathered illegally. For example, someone told me he believes their data was gotten from DMV and I know most state DMVs will not release data to people search sites.
Excellent. I’m glad it went smoothly for you because some people seem to be challenged by this particular tutorial. Unfortunately for everyone, these sites are not breaking the law and it is perfectly legal for them to publish all of this personal data because it stems from public records. But new laws are in the works starting with CA and taking effect in January 2020. Stay tuned.
Thank you so much for these helpful instructions. The Free site listing removal was indeed immediate! Just a small note — it appears any phone number to receive the confirmation code suffices, not necessarily the one associated with the listing. Just did this for my four family members and we used an old Google Voice number for all off us successfully.
Also submitted for the removal of the Premium listing per the contact firm and will check back in a few days.
Thank you!
You are welcome, Jim. Thanks for sharing your experience and the fact that you used your Google Voice number for the removal.
🙂 Hayley
hi,
I tried exact steps to remove but when I submit the “copy paste” URL it throws an error saying the URL is too long. Its a free account. Can you add a screen shot on how to remove the listing for a free account please.
Please go back to the tutorial and carefully follow all steps again. You do not need to have any account, free or paid, to do the removal. I already have the correct screenshots in the tutorial.
This worked great. I followed your instructions and I received an email to the address that I provided. A day later, I received an email from customer service saying that my profile had been removed. I have confirmed that it has been removed. I also received a customer satisfaction survey. I expected the worse and it all went great. and it only took about 24 hours which is much better than the time they said to expect it to take. Thank you very much for the helpful instructions!
Awesome – I’m thrilled it went smoothly for you, Andre. Thanks for sharing your positive experience. I appreciate that!
Excellent. Thank you!
You are welcome!
What you suggested here does NOT work.
And NO, I will NOT pay you to help.
I don’t have the money.
I need them to remove ALL my listings for safety reasons.
The process is very confusing and frustrating, and your attempts to make money off people like me is shameful.
I am sorry you are having a difficult time, Diana. I provide help in the way of free tutorials as a courtesy and I answer questions on my tutorials and also make corrections when sites make changes to their opt out procedures that render my directions inaccurate over time. You are right that opt outs can be confusing for some sites. Additionally, some sites don’t remove the information in the way they say they will and I succeed by repeatedly following up on each opt out I do until I ultimately end up with a successful result. That’s the way it is and that’s not related to my tutorials but rather to the sites that provide the information in the first place.
My business was started by people asking if they could pay me to do the work for them rather than trying to do the work themselves. My time is extremely valuable and I don’t think it’s shameful to charge for my time and my expertise.
I followed your tutorial but at the opt-out page I get an error reply stating they could not find the site associated with the url, the url is too long (more than 200 characters) and url is invalid.
Hi Wes,
FREE: Once you find your information, right click on “VIEW DETAILS” and select “Copy Link Address” from the drop down menu.
PREMIUM: If you see your information in a light blue rectangle, then right click your mouse on the “VIEW FULL REPORT” button to get a drop down menu. Click on “Copy Link Address.”
Please let me know if this works for you or not.
Hayley
I have tried over and over again to complete the instructions you provided for opt-out for white pages free but after I enter the URL on the opt-out page i just get a blank page. what am I doing wrong?
That’s a new one for me, Tim. Can you try doing it from a different browser? If that does not work, email me privately with the URL you are using and I’ll see if you’ve got the right one. Alternatively, I can do both (free and premium) removals for you for a fee.
followed your guide to the letter for the free part and it says url invalid when i try to opt out.
Hmmmm. I don’t know why that happened for you. If you email me your name and city and state privately, I will give you the link. Please note that the link for free whitepages is not the same as the link for Premium whitepages.
Hi Hayley,
Sorry, I entered the wrong email address on my last comment.
I followed your tutorial to remove myself from Whitepages Free & Premium.
However, there is another article about Whitepages Plus (10Digits) that says I should scan a copy of my ID.
When I searched on this site, there are a dew listings at old addresses that I would like to remove. My ID has my current address, so it will not match any of the addresses I would like removed. Will they still remove my listing? If my signature, ID number, and photo is blocked out, how will they be able to verify that it’s me?
Thank you!
Email address is kept private and won’t show on comment. 🙂
Hi Hayley,
I followed your tutorial to remove myself from Whitepages Free & Premium.
However, there is another article about Whitepages Plus (10Digits) that says I should scan a copy of my ID.
When I searched on this site, there are a dew listings at old addresses that I would like to remove. My ID has my current address, so it will not match any of the addresses I would like removed. Will they still remove my listing? If my signature, ID number, and photo is blocked out, how will they be able to verify that it’s me?
Thank you!
Yes. You can use the same ID for every address you locate. But you will need to do a separate removal for each address by providing the unique URL and uploading the same ID with each request. 🙂 Hayley
Thank you for the information. Extremely helpful. Do you have any recommendation on how to remove all information from voterrecords.com?
Lydia, you can use their contact form to ask for some of your information such as your home address to be removed.
It has been very difficult to remove myself: I had to contact customer service last year. And now I have just seen all my information is back again online with even more details. The removal URL is not working, and I have to contact Customer Service yet again. It is really very unethical to contact them to remove my information, and now a couple of months later they put everything back up online again.
I find this site to be among the top of the list when it comes to frustrating and on the unethical side. But I eventually have success although it is challenging and annoying having to reach out repeatedly. Follow all of the directions in my tutorial and you too will succeed. If you aren’t up for it, you can hire me to do it for you for a fee. Tenacity is key.
Thank you for your reply, Hayley.
I followed your tutorial but, as I said, the removal page is (suspiciously) not working. The same situation happened on December 2017. At the time, I contacted WhitePages Customer Service, and they quickly took it down.
As of today, all the information is back online.
The problem is not that I don’t know how to remove the information. The problem is that removal seems not to be permanent. They are very unethical: Whitepages waits a couple of months, and then they repost everything.
Thanks.
It should not be coming back but that certainly is possible. I have not had that happen with my own information.
The confusion is sometimes because of the difference between their free and their paid service. Again, follow my tutorial for removal from both and hopefully it won’t reappear once it is removed properly. Now there is a secondary issue that may make it seem like it’s coming back and that is that it can remain in Google temporary cache after you remove it from the site. It should eventually disappear on its own or I can speed track that for a small fee. If you need help, reach out via my contact form. Good luck. 🙂 Hayley
Hi Hayley – how much to pay you to get everything off for me?
It depends on what you mean by everything. I can remove you from only 1 site, from any amount of sites you want or from my standard list of sites combined with the sites you show up in on Google – that usually covers 75-95 sites. Please email me via my contact form with more specifics or with a telephone number to go over your specific needs. I make my consult calls after normal working hours PST so specify your time zone, please.
Hi Hayley,
I have removed my info from the free white pages. When I tried to remove from the premium listing there is no option “copy link address” by right clicking the “view full report” from the drop down menu. The premium listing is inside the blue rectangle. How can I proceed to complete the process. Thanks so much for your help.
If you’re getting the blue box, you should be able to get the link by right clicking the “view full report.” Send me the link to your info via my contact form and I’ll email you the link.There are several people with your name so alternatively, you can email me your middle name, age and city and I’ll be able to send you the link from that. 🙂 Hayley
There is no option to opt-out of white pages. It doesn’t matter if I’m logged in or not.
Thank you for pointing this out, Steve. I updated the tutorial as a result of your comment. 🙂 Hayley
Thank you for all of your help, Hayley. I have another quick question…. I just read that even after removing yourself from free whitepages and premium whitepages, people who have pro whitepages still have access to your information? But this information was in an article from January 2017, and it seems like whitepages changes so frequently. Do you know if this is still true?
Thanks for bringing my attention to Whitepages Pro. I’ve not made contact with that service before. I will look into it further and will let you know.
Another question… Once I remove myself from the free whitepages, will that page then become a premium page (meaning that I then have to remove it from premium)? Or if I’m just in the free whitepages right now, is that all I have to remove myself from?
I have found four listings that are all me, three of them are free and one is premium. I have no idea why there’s a difference!
Thank you again!
One of the frustrating things I find somewhat unethical is that removing yourself from free whitepages does not remove you from Premiun and for free, you can see quite a lot of info on Premium when you click on the results. But Premium includes additional background info beyond number and address. You need to remove each listing separately by URL. If you go step by step through the tutorial, is takes you through the process in detail. Good luck and let me know if you run into any complications along the way.
PS. In order to see the blue rectangles, I find I need to be viewing from an incognito window. Keep that in mind if you don’t see them because you need to grab the correct URL for the opt out.
My phone number is not showing up in my listing, but my address is. So if I provide my current phone number, will white pages then use this phone number to store in their premium and pro databases? Thank you for your help!
At first I thought I needed to use the number listed but I soon realized it works with any number you choose. You just need to be able to answer the number immediately. Will they keep that information? Probably yes, but they say they don’t. I have a few Google Voice numbers and that’s the number I use for this type of thing. 🙂 Hayley
Hi Hayley, I followed your instructions but when I copy the link by right clicking on the “View Full Report” button I get an error message on the opt out page that says “Sorry, we’re not able to locate the listing associated with the URL provided. Please make sure that you’re copying the URL of the page that contains your contact information.
Submitted URL is too long (maximum is 200 characters)”. So I also tried using the shorter link whitepages.com/name/xxx-xxxx and I get this error message: Sorry, we’re not able to locate the listing associated with the URL provided. Please make sure that you’re copying the URL of the page that contains your contact information.
I believe your confusion may be related to the difference between removing your info from free whitepages vs. Premium whitepages.
FREE whitepages: Right click on the button that says, “View Details.”
Alternatively, you can click on “View Details” and then go to the address bar at the top of your browser and copy and paste that address. But you should get the identical URL from doing it both ways.
Premium whitepages is different. The instructions are clear on the tutorial but if you still have an issue, please email me your name, city and state privately, and I’ll email you the correct URL for you to send to customer service. That’s the only way to remove Premium results at this time. Of course, that could change anytime. Whitepages has a history of changing their directions regularly. (And I have many tutorials reflecting these changes. It is quite frustrating.)
I just went through the process today (09/26/2017), I used Firefox. I followed your instructions to the letter, however, it seems they’ve added a step. I was asked to enter a phone number because an automated white pages robo call was going to happen to verify that it was me who made the actual removal. Once you agree, a 4 digit number pops up, I entered that 4 digit number on the screen when I got the call and the record was deleted successfully.
Thank you again for keeping our cyber security in the forefront!
Hi Yolanda,
The tutorial has 2 parts – one for free whitepages and another for Premium whitepages. The Robocall applies only to free whitepages and actually is in the first part of the tutorial. (See step 6) Maybe you jumped straight to the Premium part of the tutorial? Please check again to make sure you are not in Whitepages Premium. You would know based on the color of the box surrounding your info. If it’s pale blue, that’s Premium (or paid) whitepages.
🙂 Hayley