Why I Built This: I Searched My Own Name and Found My Family
I searched my own name and found a public profile connecting my household to addresses, phones, and old email accounts. Here is what I decided to build—and what it cannot promise.
I run My Privacy Agent. In September 2026, I searched my own name on a free people-search site.
I expected an old address and a phone number. The page showed much more: historical addresses, my age, a current phone number, old email accounts, and family relationships. It also showed information about people in my household who had never signed up for that site.
That is my account of one search, not a claim that every field was correct. I have redacted the identifiers and filed our own opt-out requests. The point is what the experience made clear: public records and commercial data can be joined into a page that changes the safety context for an entire household.
It is not only about spam
Fewer calls and less junk mail are useful outcomes. They are not the whole problem.
Someone with a grudge, an abusive former partner, or a scammer building a target list may only need a name to find a street address. An address can lead back to the household. My family members did not choose to be listed through me; an aggregator connected us through records that we shared over time.
That is a safety concern, not merely an annoyance. It is also why privacy work should record the exact public page and the people affected instead of reporting a vague “data exposure” score.
Why the cleanup is hard
Every provider has its own route. One may ask for an exact profile URL. Another may require an email confirmation or a matching field. A successful request may cover one display page while the underlying record remains in a source feed or another company’s database.
The Data Broker Opt-Out Friction guide covers the practical failure points. The Proof Log guide shows what I want people to save: the URL, date, request details, confirmation, and later check.
The work is repetitive, and the result is not permanent by default. A provider can ingest a refreshed record, publish a new page, or keep a suppression record separate from deletion. That is why a privacy workflow needs rechecks and truthful states.
Why I built My Privacy Agent
I could not find a way to keep this work organized that I would actually maintain. My Privacy Agent is designed around that gap: start with a private Leak Check Me exposure report, choose eligible work, and keep the evidence and status in one place.
The agent can coordinate supported opt-out workflows after you authorize them. A provider may still require a CAPTCHA, email, phone step, identity decision, or other human action. When a workflow stalls, the honest state is “needs review,” not “removed.” We mark a record removed only after a later check supports it.
That boundary matters. We cannot erase a breach database, make a lawful public record disappear everywhere, or promise that the internet will forget you. We can help break some public links between exposure clues and a real household, and show what happened site by site.
What I want for my family, and for yours
I want my family’s unnecessary public listings reduced, with a record of what worked and what did not. I want the decision to share a sensitive field to stay with a person who understands why it is needed. I want “filed,” “pending,” “needs review,” and “verified removed” to mean different things.
If you want to start where I did, use the private Leak Check Me report. Treat the result as an inventory to review, not proof that every candidate belongs to you. Then decide whether to handle the official requests yourself or authorize supported work.
Find the leak. Scrub the link.
— Miguel
Editor’s note: This is a first-person account supplied by Miguel Sanchez. The described profile was reviewed in September 2026 and has been redacted. The product and capability descriptions above are intentionally limited to supported workflows and verified status.