How we check opt-out guides
Opt-out guides affect people’s safety: someone removing a home address because of a stalker needs the steps to be right today, not as they were two years ago. This page explains what a guide on StopBrokers has been through before you see it.
What “verified” means
A guide says Facts verified by [name] on [date] only when a named person went through the opt-out themselves on that date: opened the site, found the form or address, submitted a request with a test profile where the site allows it, and recorded what the site asked for and how long removal took. The scope line next to the name says exactly what was tested. A guide that says Checked on [date] by an automated review was compared against the site’s own opt-out page, privacy policy and help pages by a review agent on that date: every step had to match what the site says, and anything it could not confirm from the site itself or the California data broker registry was removed. No request was sent and no person has tested the process yet. Articles use the same two levels. We say which level applies on every page.
What is in the facts box
- Opt-out method and what the site asks for. From our own test when the guide is verified by a person; otherwise from the site’s own opt-out page and privacy policy, which can differ from what the form asks for in practice.
- Removal time we observed and does it come back. Only filled in when we measured it. Sites relist people when they buy new data, so we note what we have seen, not a promise.
- Run by and sister sites. From company registers, privacy policies and the site’s own disclosures. Sites with one owner usually share one database.
- California. Whether the company appears in the California Privacy Protection Agency’s data broker registry and whether it must process requests from the state’s Delete Request and Opt-out Platform (DROP). Registration is self-reported by the companies; absence from the registry does not mean a site is not a data broker.
- Screenshot. The opt-out form as it looked on the date shown. Forms change; if yours looks different, the steps may have moved.
How we use AI
Drafts are written with AI assistance from the sources listed at the bottom of each guide. Nothing is published from a draft alone: before a guide goes live, a review re-opens the site’s own pages and checks every step against them, and deletes what cannot be confirmed. A person then tests the most-used guides and signs the verification line; until that happens the page says it was checked by an automated review. We say so on every page because we think you should know how what you read was made.
How often guides are re-checked
Every week we fetch the opt-out page behind each published guide and flag the ones whose page changed; flagged guides are re-checked, and so is any guide a reader tells us no longer works. The checked on date moves only when a guide was actually re-checked. A guide we could not re-verify is marked as such or taken down.
What a guide cannot do
A guide cannot promise that a site honours your request, stays clean, or that the law gives you a deletion right in your situation. Where a statute matters we link to it and say what it covers; that is information, not legal advice. If you are in danger because your address is online, contact local authorities first and use an address confidentiality programme where your state or country offers one.
Tell us when something is wrong
Every correction improves the guide for the next person. Write to mail@lennard-klein.com with the site, the step and what you saw instead.