Our removal rate
Published monthly, whatever it says. If it goes down, it goes down in public.
CURRENT RATE
We don't have one yet.
We have not removed anything for anyone, because we have not opened to customers. Publishing a projection, an industry average or a number from a pilot we ran on ourselves would make this page marketing, and this page is the opposite of marketing.
The first number goes here in the month after the first real removals, and every month after that.
How we will count it
Written down now, before we have a number, so we cannot quietly pick a flattering definition later.
- The denominator is every record we filed against
- Not every record we found, and not every broker we contacted — every individual listing we actually filed a request for. Brokers that held nothing about you never enter the calculation.
- The numerator is verified gone
- A record counts as removed when we re-checked and it was absent, or the broker confirmed it in writing. "We sent the request" is not a removal. Most of this industry counts it as one.
- Reappearances count against us
- A record that comes back is no longer removed, and the rate drops until we get it down again. Counting a removal once and keeping it forever is how you get a number that looks nothing like reality.
- Measured at 90 days
- Brokers are slow. A rate measured at 14 days flatters nobody and tells you nothing.
Why this page exists
Consumer Reports tested this industry: four months, 32 volunteers, 332 exposures across 13 people-search sites. The best paid service removed 68%. The biggest brand in the category removed 27%. People doing it by hand, for free, removed 70% — beating every paid service in the test.
Not one company in this category publishes its own measured rate. That is the gap this whole business is built in, and a page that said anything other than the truth would close it.
We'll link the study here rather than paraphrase it, once we have confirmed the current citation.