How to Opt Out of Intelius (2026 Step-by-Step Guide)

Intelius is one of the largest and most established people-search sites in the United States, operating since 2003. It aggregates billions of public records and sells background report subscriptions to individuals and businesses. Because Intelius data often surfaces in Google results for name searches, removing your profile is a meaningful privacy step — but it requires a more involved process than most competing sites.

What Intelius Shows About You

Intelius compiles deep profiles that go beyond basic address and phone data. A typical Intelius report includes:

• Full legal name and all known aliases or maiden names
• Current and previous addresses with move-in and move-out dates
• Phone numbers — mobile, landline, and numbers associated with past addresses
• Email addresses across multiple accounts
• Relatives and household members
• Neighbors — names and addresses of people who live near you
• Criminal and court records — arrests, charges, sex offender registry entries
• Property records — real estate ownership, assessed values
• Civil judgments and liens — lawsuits, bankruptcies
• Professional licenses in regulated industries
• Social media profiles linked by name and email

Intelius offers three tiers of reports: a basic people search, a full background check, and a reverse phone lookup. Each pulls from the same underlying database. Subscribers pay $29.95–$39.95/month.

How to Opt Out of Intelius: Step-by-Step

Intelius accepts opt-out requests through its privacy center. The process requires email verification but no government ID for the standard opt-out.

Step 1: Locate your profile on Intelius

Go to intelius.com and search for your name combined with your city or state. Note the exact URL of the profile page you want removed — you will need it in Step 4.

Step 2: Navigate to the opt-out page

Go to the official Intelius Privacy Center. This is where Intelius processes opt-out requests.

Step 3: Search for your record

On the opt-out page, enter your first name, last name, and state. Intelius will return matching profiles.

Step 4: Select your record

Identify the profile that corresponds to you and click "This is me" or the equivalent selection button next to it.

Step 5: Enter your email address

Intelius sends a verification email to confirm the opt-out request. Use an email address you can access. The address itself is not added to your Intelius profile.

Step 6: Confirm via email

Open the verification email from Intelius and click the confirmation link. The opt-out is processed within 24–72 hours after confirmation.

Step 7: Verify removal

After 72 hours, search for your name on Intelius again. If the profile is still visible, contact Intelius privacy support at privacy@intelius.com with your confirmation email as evidence.

Multiple Profiles: How to Handle Them

If you have lived in multiple states or have a common name, Intelius may show several profiles associated with you. Each profile must be opted out individually. The opt-out system does not automatically remove all entries associated with your name — it operates profile-by-profile.

If you find more than three profiles, it is worth doing the opt-out process in one session and keeping a list of the profile URLs you submitted. Intelius occasionally re-creates profiles from new public record data, so documenting what you removed makes follow-up requests faster.

Intelius vs. Competing People-Search Sites

Intelius and Spokeo tend to have the highest Google search visibility, meaning their profile pages appear most often when someone searches your name. This makes opting out of these two sites the highest priority for most people.

Corporate Connections: Intelius and Its Sister Sites

Intelius operates a network of related properties under the same ownership umbrella. Opting out of Intelius.com does not automatically remove you from these affiliated sites, which may maintain separate databases:

• iSearch — a white-label version of Intelius data
• Classmates.com — owned by the same parent, uses overlapping person data
• Zabasearch — originally a separate site, now shares data infrastructure

If your name appears on any of these affiliated properties, submit separate opt-out requests to each.

Why One Opt-Out Is Never Enough

Intelius is one of 500+ data brokers that have compiled profiles on most US adults. Removing your Intelius profile does not affect your profiles on BeenVerified, Spokeo, TruthFinder, Radaris, WhitePages, FastPeopleSearch, PeopleFinders, or hundreds of smaller aggregators.

The underlying problem is structural: public records (court filings, voter rolls, property deeds) are legally accessible, and data brokers continuously re-ingest them. Even a successful removal can be overwritten within 90 days when a new public record triggers a profile rebuild.

OfflistMe sends opt-out requests to 500+ data brokers in a single session and monitors for data reappearance on your behalf. The cost is a one-time $7.00 for a 24-hour snapshot, $40.00 ($24.00 currently at 40% OFF) for a 3-month window, or $90.00 ($45.00 currently at 50% OFF) for annual coverage — with no subscription, ever. Start your removal here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does opting out of Intelius require a government ID?

No. The standard Intelius opt-out only requires email verification. You do not need to submit a driver's license or passport. If Intelius requests ID for a standard opt-out, that is unusual — contact their privacy team directly at privacy@intelius.com.

How long does Intelius take to remove my profile?

Intelius states 24–72 hours after email confirmation. In most cases, profiles disappear from search results within 48 hours on business days. Weekends and holidays may add a day or two.

My Intelius profile shows an old address. Can I just update it instead of removing it?

You cannot edit Intelius profiles — only remove them. Requesting a correction is not an option through the standard interface. The opt-out removes the entire profile.

Will Intelius sell my email address that I give them for the opt-out?

Intelius's privacy policy states the email used for opt-out verification is used only to process the request and is not added to your profile or sold. However, if you are concerned, a dedicated email address (e.g., a new Gmail account) works just as well for receiving the verification link.

Can I opt out on behalf of someone else?

Under CCPA, authorized agents can submit deletion requests on behalf of California residents. For a family member in California, you can use Intelius's authorized agent process, which requires a signed permission statement from the data subject. For non-California residents, Intelius typically requires the subject to submit their own request.

What Intelius Does With Your Data

Intelius is not just a passive aggregator — it actively commercializes personal data in several ways that go beyond showing your profile in search results.

Subscription revenue model: Intelius charges $29.95–$39.95/month for subscriber access to full background reports. That means your address, phone number, relatives list, and criminal record history are being accessed by paying subscribers on demand. Intelius does not disclose how many subscribers it has, but as one of the oldest and largest US people-search platforms, the subscriber base runs into the millions.

Data licensing to third parties: Intelius licenses its compiled data to other businesses — insurance companies, financial institutions, HR platforms, and other data brokers. This means your Intelius profile data flows outward into other databases that you may not be aware of.

API access for businesses: Intelius offers a B2B API that allows businesses to query person data programmatically. This is how your data ends up embedded in tenant screening tools, pre-employment background check services, and identity verification platforms used by businesses you interact with.

Reverse phone and email lookup products: Beyond name-based search, Intelius monetizes reverse phone and email lookups separately. If you have opted out of your name-based profile but have not addressed your phone or email profile, those still generate commercial value.

Who actually uses Intelius: The documented use cases include landlords running tenant checks, individuals verifying someone they met online, journalists researching subjects, and law firms locating witnesses or defendants. Less documented but also real: ex-partners, stalkers, and debt collectors using Intelius to locate people who have deliberately moved without leaving a forwarding address.

Understanding the commercial ecosystem around Intelius helps explain why a single opt-out is an important step but not a complete solution — your data has already been licensed downstream.

After You Submit: What to Expect

Submitting your Intelius opt-out is step one of a multi-part process. Here is what actually happens in the days and weeks after you click confirm.

Within 24–72 hours:

• [ ] Your profile disappears from Intelius.com search results
• [ ] Subscriber background reports no longer return your data
• [ ] The Intelius API stops returning your profile to business customers

Within 30–60 days:

• [ ] Google's cached version of your Intelius profile page drops out of search results (Google re-crawls and finds the page gone or redirected)
• [ ] Other sites that pull from Intelius' data feed may update their own records

What does NOT happen automatically:

• [ ] Your profiles on BeenVerified, Spokeo, TruthFinder, and other brokers are untouched
• [ ] The underlying public records (court filings, voter rolls, property deeds) are unchanged
• [ ] Data Intelius already licensed to third parties before your opt-out is not recalled

Within 90–180 days — watch for reappearance:

• [ ] Re-check Intelius directly by searching your name
• [ ] If a new profile has been rebuilt from new public record data, resubmit your opt-out
• [ ] Common triggers: new voter registration, property transaction, court filing, or address update through USPS NCOA

Practical tip: When you submit your opt-out, save the confirmation email with a subject line like "Intelius opt-out — [date]" in a dedicated privacy folder. When you do your 90-day re-check, search for your name on Intelius first. If a profile reappears, forward that saved confirmation to privacy@intelius.com — it speeds up reprocessing significantly compared to starting a fresh request.

The broader lesson: Intelius removal is meaningful, but it is one node in a network of 500+ data brokers. Effective privacy requires removing yourself from the full ecosystem, not just the one site that showed up in your Google search today.

Related Guides

• How to Opt Out of BeenVerified
• How to Opt Out of Spokeo
• How to Opt Out of TruthFinder
• Complete Data Broker Opt-Out Guide
• Why Your Data Keeps Reappearing