You may wonder how scammers find out personal information about you. Unfortunately, on the internet there is so much open source information out there that anyone can find just by Googling a name. Monmouth Police Department Investigator Josh Kramer informs you can request to have your information removed from those sites:
“I recommend that you Google your name and put the hometown you are from or where you live currently. There is going to be a lot that pop up and will have your information that might say Galesburg, Illinois, sometimes it will have a school that you went to, sometimes associate relatives; click on them. Some will ask for you to provide a service charge for the information, but if you keep looking, you will find free sites. They are usually more towards the bottom. The free sites have a lot of ads on them. When you find the sites that have your information, scroll to the bottom, and in very small print, you can request that your information be removed from that site. The federal government imposed laws on this a couple of years ago that they have, I think, 30 days to get that information removed. You have to look very hard to find it, but you can get your information removed from those sites. Now, the thing to think about is there are several of them.”
Investigator Kramer reports Fast People Search and Free People Search are two of the sites that store information that you should request to be removed from.
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