Many people who worry about online privacy have already tried the basics: searching their own name, finding it listed on sites like Spokeo, Whitepages or BeenVerified, and filling out opt-out forms to get the listing removed. That work matters, but it does not guarantee lasting protection, and for retirees in particular, the gaps in that process can carry serious financial risk.
Data brokers operate across hundreds of separate companies in the United States. Submitting an opt-out request to one site, such as Spokeo, only addresses that one listing. Other brokers can still hold a person’s name, home address, phone number and information about relatives, along with estimates about finances and property. Even the original site can relist the same information later.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, information can reappear on people-search websites whenever the underlying public records change, including property filings and other government documents that remain publicly accessible. That means a single round of opt-outs may only provide temporary relief.
Family Members Create Exposure Too
Data broker profiles often include information about relatives and household members. A person could remove their own listing entirely while still appearing in someone else’s profile as a relative, with details about where they live.
That connection has been exploited in what is commonly called the grandparent scam, where a caller claims to be a family member in trouble and asks for money. Knowing a grandchild’s name and the family relationship can make the call sound convincing, and artificial intelligence voice cloning has made it possible for criminals to imitate a loved one’s voice if they have access to an audio sample.
The FBI’s 2025 Internet Crime Report found that people 60 and older filed more than 201,000 complaints involving over $7.7 billion in reported losses, an average of roughly $38,500 per complaint. Those figures cover internet crime broadly, not grandparent scams specifically, but they illustrate the scale of financial danger facing older adults. Agreeing on a family code word and a policy of calling relatives back at a trusted number can help prevent this kind of fraud before any money is sent.
“I’m Not Important Enough to Target” Is a Myth
Many retirees assume they are not interesting targets because they avoid social media or have lived relatively private lives. But criminals can combine publicly available records with other information to build a convincing profile of almost anyone, and many companies still use old addresses or family history to verify identity, which makes that information valuable to someone attempting impersonation.
A 2025 analysis of FBI data estimated that access to personal information online could have contributed to 72% of reported internet-crime incidents involving older Americans in 2024. That figure is based on an assessment of crime categories rather than proof that data brokers were involved in every case, but it points to how exposed personal details can assist scammers. Retirees can be attractive targets in part because scammers assume they have accumulated savings or property.
Personal Data Has Already Been Sold to Criminals
Some data brokers continually update their records, meaning information removed once can reappear later. There is also documented evidence that personal data has been deliberately supplied to criminals. In September 2024, the Department of Justice announced prison sentences for two former Epsilon employees convicted of selling targeted consumer lists to fraudsters. Prosecutors said those lists helped criminals target older and vulnerable Americans through fraudulent mail campaigns, and in one scheme the criminals defrauded more than 218,000 victims out of over $23.7 million.
Privacy Concerns Aren’t Just for the Social-Media Generation
Some retirees assume online privacy issues mainly affect younger people who grew up with smartphones and social media. But data brokers do not need an Instagram account to compile a profile. Decades-old property transactions, employment records and other public filings can remain searchable long after they were created, and in some cases a retiree’s public record history is far longer than a grandchild’s social media footprint.
What Retirees Can Do
The Federal Trade Commission confirms that manual opt-outs are free, though time-consuming, and require periodically rechecking whether information has reappeared. With hundreds of data brokers in operation, tracking every site can be difficult to manage alone.
Some people instead use a personal data removal service that automates opt-out requests across multiple sites and continues monitoring for new listings. Some of these services offer family plans, which can be useful given how relatives’ information is often connected. No service, however, can remove every piece of information from the internet, since public records and databases outside a service’s reach may remain accessible.
The larger point is that opting out once is not the end of the process. Staying consistent, checking periodically, and talking with family members about protecting their own information are what actually reduce the amount of material a scammer can use to build a convincing story.
