{"id":79352,"date":"2025-08-13T10:11:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T10:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/79352\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T10:11:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T10:11:15","slug":"national-public-data-is-giving-out-your-address-and-phone-number-heres-how-to-stop-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/79352\/","title":{"rendered":"National Public Data is giving out your address and phone number \u2014 here’s how to stop them"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though it has been dormant for most of the year, the website National Public Data<\/a> has reemerged with new owners.<\/p>\n

As reported by PCMag<\/a>, the website was well known for a major data breach<\/a> that occurred last year in which millions of Social Security numbers<\/a> were leaked online, resulting in a barrage of lawsuits against the former site owners, Jericho Pictures.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The breach exposed at least 272 million Social Security numbers and 600 million phone numbers and after the lawsuits were filed, the site went dormant until recently when it went live again as a people finder site<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Although there is nearly no information about the new owners of the domain aside from it being registered to a Florida-based VPN<\/a> service called \u201cPerfect Privacy,\u201d it’s acting as a free search engine to let people search for information on others.<\/p>\n

The new National Public Data lets users look up anyone\u2019s personal information including addresses, phone numbers, birthdates, relatives, location, age, workplace and criminal records \u2013 all for free.<\/p>\n

While the new site claims to have no affiliation with the previous owners, they\u2019re also not very forthcoming about where they\u2019re gathering their data aside from stating that it\u2019s being collected \u201cfrom publicly available sources including federal, state and local government agencies, social media pages, property ownership databases and other reliable platforms. After the data is in our hands, we verify and filter it to make sure it is indeed accurate and up-to-date.\u201d<\/p>\n

How to remove your data from National Public Data<\/p>\n

\"National<\/p>\n

(Image credit: National Public Data)<\/p>\n

Now, just because they may be getting the data from legitimate sources and verifying it doesn’t mean that you want them to have it or be make it readily accessible and easy to find online. If you would like National Public Data to remove your data from its site, you have that option as there is an opt out <\/a>form you can use to delete your profile data.<\/p>\n

Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips.<\/p>\n

When PCMag tried it, they reported that it seemed as though their data was immediately removed from the site. However, it does appear that many users would likely be unaware of this option, which makes it easy for sites like this to continue posting their information online.<\/p>\n

Additionally. there are certainly data removal services like Incogni<\/a> that can help you delete your online data as well as identity monitoring services <\/a>that can help you monitor where you data appears online.<\/p>\n

Follow Tom’s Guide on Google News<\/a> to get our up-to-date news, how-tos, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.<\/p>\n

More from Tom’s Guide<\/p>\n

Today’s best Incogni deals<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though it has been dormant for most of the year, the website National Public Data has reemerged with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[191,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-79352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-computing","8":"tag-computing","9":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}