[wittyusername]

I did a big project to remove myself. It’s a slog. You do a ton of passes, each time you get a little more and escalate your approach with lazy vendors. GPDR can help on the last couple of ones. There are 1-2 spots that I can’t ever remove, public records etc. But generally now the bottom line is if you google my name, no pictures come up, no articles about me come up on page 1. I’m just looking to be incredibly unremarkable to a quick google search of a kidnapper, hotel staff selling the names of guests to criminals, etc.

[1123581321]

I had a similar experience, going from about a hundred results for my name, and showing up before many other people with the same name, to just a handful spread among the first 10 pages of search results. The last 10 or so took some persistent emailing and calling.

It’s beneficial for the same reason a cheap Home Depot door lock is worth installing; it stops a lot of casual prying.

[xupybd]

Any tips on how to do this?

[1123581321]

Just set aside time. I got about a dozen listings claimed and/or taken down in an afternoon and did a couple more followup rounds. I wrote a couple of DMCA takedown requests, which took a bit of time to be sure I was communicating effectively. LinkedIn took awhile as I had an interest in maintaining my profile with the right level of privacy, requiring some writing work. After search results update, you’ll probably find new listings to investigate that weren’t ranking highly before. Like wittyusername said, it takes multiple passes. Also, don’t forget to check Internet Archive results. And don’t be afraid to use the phone; a couple of sites were more reachable that way.