Why this matters
Right now, if someone types your name into a people-search site, they can pull up your home address, your phone number, your age, who you live with, and often a rough idea of what you earn. These sites are called data brokers — companies like Spokeo, Whitepages, BeenVerified and dozens more — and they make money by scraping public records and selling that profile of you to anyone who pays.
You never agreed to it, and most people have no idea how exposed they are. For women running businesses with a public profile, that's not a small thing — it's your address sitting next to your face on the internet.
The catch has always been the work. Each site has its own opt-out process, buried in different places, and there are dozens of them. Doing it by hand is a weekend you'll never get back — and they re-add you a few months later anyway. That's the gap Claude closes. It finds them, writes the requests, and keeps doing it.
Before you start — what this can and can't do
"Erase your digital footprint" gets oversold all over the internet, so here's the straight version:
- This targets data brokers and people-search sites — companies with an actual opt-out process. It can't remove news articles, court or government records, other people's posts about you, or your own social accounts. Those are a different problem with a different fix.
- No list will ever be complete. Some broker profiles only appear when you search on their site directly, so even a thorough web search can't see everything — and new broker sites pop up constantly. That's why the prompt tells Claude to include the big known brokers even if a search doesn't surface your profile on them.
- Removals don't stick on their own. Brokers rebuild profiles from public records a few months later. That's the whole reason step 3 exists.
- Your legal leverage depends on where you live. The strong deletion rights are Californian (CCPA) and European (GDPR). If you're in Australia like me, most brokers will still process your request — they just aren't always legally forced to, so a few will drag their feet or ignore you.
- Claude can get a link wrong. Opt-out pages move around, and occasionally you'll get a stale or wrong URL. Click each one and check it actually lands on that site's removal page before you rely on it.
- Removals aren't instant. Even cooperative brokers take days to a few weeks to process a request, and some make you confirm by email first.
None of that makes this pointless — it makes it a job that needs to repeat, which is exactly what you're setting up. A lost weekend becomes a task that runs itself.
Step 1 — Find every site exposing you
Open a fresh Claude chat. This step lives or dies on one thing: Claude has to actually search the web, not recite a generic list of brokers from memory. Use a version of Claude with web search (claude.ai, the desktop app, or Cowork all have it), and if you've ever switched search off in Settings, switch it back on. The prompt below spells out exactly which searches to run, so paste it in, fill in your details, and let Claude hand back a clean list with the opt-out link for each site.
Search the internet for everything you can find about me and build me a removal list. Use your web search tool for every part of this — do NOT answer from memory or hand me a generic list of data brokers. Run real searches: my full name in quotes, my name + my city, my name + my phone number, and my public email addresses. Also check the major people-search sites for a profile on me. My details: - Full name: [YOUR FULL NAME] - Any other names I've gone by (maiden name, nicknames): [OPTIONAL] - City / state / country: [WHERE I LIVE] - Age or rough age: [OPTIONAL] - Email(s) I use publicly: [OPTIONAL] Find every data broker and people-search site that is exposing my personal information (home address, phone number, age, relatives, email, anything). Include the big ones (Spokeo, Whitepages, BeenVerified, Intelius, MyLife, PeopleFinders, TruePeopleSearch, etc.) and any others your searches turn up. Give me the result as a table with these columns: 1. Site name 2. What kind of info they expose about me 3. The EXACT opt-out / removal URL for that site (the direct link to start the removal, not just their homepage) — verify each link with a real search rather than guessing it 4. Whether you actually FOUND my profile there, or you're including it as a likely suspect I should check myself Be thorough and only include sites that have a real removal process. If you couldn't verify something, say so — don't guess.
How to tell Claude actually searched
When Claude searches, you'll see it running web searches and linking the sites it found. If it fires back a tidy list two seconds after you hit enter, it answered from memory — reply with "You didn't search. Run real web searches on my name before answering." and it'll do it properly. If Claude says it can't search at all, web search is switched off — turn it on in Settings and try again.
Keep this chat open
Don't start a new conversation after this. Steps 2 and 3 build on the list Claude just made, so everything stays in the same chat — Claude already has all the context.
Step 2 — Get Claude to write the removals
Here's the part that usually stops people: every site wants a slightly different removal request, and some want it as an on-site form, some want an email. You're not going to write each one. Claude is. In the same chat, paste the next prompt and it'll draft the exact request for every site on your list — worded properly, ready to send.
Now write the actual removal request for every site on that list. For each site: - Write a clear, polite removal request that asks them to delete my personal information and stop selling or displaying it. - Tailor it to how that specific site handles removals — if it's an email request, write the email (subject line + body). If it's an on-site form, write exactly what I should type into each field. - Reference the relevant right to be removed where it applies (e.g. CCPA/CPRA in California, GDPR if relevant) so the request carries weight. - Use my details from above. Don't ask me to rewrite anything — give me copy-paste-ready text for each one. Lay it out site by site so I can work straight down the list.
At this point you could already go down the list yourself, pasting each request into each site. That works — but step 3 is where you hand the whole job over.
Step 3 — Set the scheduled task
This is the bit that makes it stick. Data brokers re-add you constantly — you can scrub yourself off today and be back on in three months. So instead of submitting the requests once and hoping, you turn it into a recurring task that runs itself.
For this you need Claude Cowork — the version of Claude that can actually open sites and fill in forms for you, not just chat. Turn Cowork on, then give it the instruction below as a scheduled task. Cowork will work through every site, submit the removal you wrote in step 2, and then automatically check again every 6 months to catch any that put you back.
The scheduled-task instruction
Turn on Cowork, set this up as a recurring scheduled task, and paste in the instruction:
Set the schedule to repeat every 6 months. From here, Cowork runs until your details are wiped — and keeps them wiped.
One thing to watch
A handful of sites verify with a confirmation email or a captcha that needs you. When Cowork hits one it can't finish, it'll tell you — just do that single step manually. And removals aren't instant: sites can take days or weeks to actually take your listing down, so don't panic if you're still visible the next morning. Everything else runs hands-off.
That's the whole playbook
Find them (prompt 1) → write the removals (prompt 2) → automate it forever (Cowork scheduled task). Three steps, one chat, and you never have to think about data brokers again.
Want to put AI to work like this everywhere?
Wiping your footprint is one job. The real shift is using AI to run the boring, repeating work across your whole business — that's what I teach.
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