Though it has been dormant for most of the year, the website National Public Data has reemerged with new owners.
As reported by PCMag, the website was well known for a major data breach that occurred last year in which millions of Social Security numbers were leaked online, resulting in a barrage of lawsuits against the former site owners, Jericho Pictures.
The breach exposed at least 272 million Social Security numbers and 600 million phone numbers and after the lawsuits were filed, the site went dormant until recently when it went live again as a people finder site.
Although there is nearly no information about the new owners of the domain aside from it being registered to a Florida-based VPN service called “Perfect Privacy,” it's acting as a free search engine to let people search for information on others.
The new National Public Data lets users look up anyone’s personal information including addresses, phone numbers, birthdates, relatives, location, age, workplace and criminal records – all for free.
While the new site claims to have no affiliation with the previous owners, they’re also not very forthcoming about where they’re gathering their data aside from stating that it’s being collected “from publicly available sources including federal, state and local government agencies, social media pages, property ownership databases and other reliable platforms. After the data is in our hands, we verify and filter it to make sure it is indeed accurate and up-to-date.”
How to remove your data from National Public Data
Now, just because they may be getting the data from legitimate sources and verifying it doesn't mean that you want them to have it or be make it readily accessible and easy to find online. If you would like National Public Data to remove your data from its site, you have that option as there is an opt out form you can use to delete your profile data.
When PCMag tried it, they reported that it seemed as though their data was immediately removed from the site. However, it does appear that many users would likely be unaware of this option, which makes it easy for sites like this to continue posting their information online.
Additionally. there are certainly data removal services like Incogni that can help you delete your online data as well as identity monitoring services that can help you monitor where you data appears online.
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