Testing this site

This is an alpha. It works; it is not finished. The fastest way to make it better is someone who did not build it trying to actually opt out of something with it.

You do not need to be technical. If you can follow instructions and say "this step didn't work," that is the whole job.

Before you start

Nothing you type into this site leaves your browser. No server receives your name, address, or progress — it is a static page, and everything is stored locally on your device. You can read the code, or have someone technical you trust read it. The one exception is an aggregate, cookie-free page-view count, which never carries anything from your profile and never records which broker you clicked.

One caution. This is alpha software handling personal information. If your address being findable is a physical safety matter — you are an abuse survivor, you are being harassed, you hold public office — please don't learn this tool on your live data. Try it with a throwaway profile first, or wait for a later release.

The three things most worth testing

1. Does an opt-out actually work, start to finish?

Pick one broker and follow it the whole way. This is the highest-value report by a wide margin — it is the one thing the author cannot do at scale alone. Did the broker's page look like what we said? Were the fields we listed the fields it asked for? Was there a CAPTCHA we didn't warn you about? Did your listing actually come down, and how long did it take?

2. Is the instruction wrong, or just hard?

Those are different bugs and we want them apart. "The page said to paste a listing URL but there's no field for it" means the instruction is wrong. "I couldn't figure out where to find my listing URL" means it is unclear. Both matter; the second is more common and gets under-reported because people assume it's their fault. It isn't.

3. Does it make sense before you've done it once?

Read the home page and the first batch you're given as though you'd never heard of any of this. Where do you get lost? Which word did you have to look up? The author has stared at this for months and can't see it fresh anymore. You can — exactly once. Spend it.

File a report

These open a pre-filled GitHub issue. You'll see everything before it's sent, and you can edit or delete any of it. A GitHub account is required — if that's a barrier, reply to the post that brought you here instead.

• A broker's instructions were wrong or incomplete →
• Something on the site is broken →
• Something was confusing or unclear →

Please don't paste your real name, address, or profile contents into an issue.Describe the shape of the problem, not your personal data. Issues are public.

Known-incomplete — no need to report these

• Most entries are marked "not formally checked" — the large majority of them. That badge is honest, not broken, and it is narrower than it sounds: every entry here is drawn from published broker-opt-out research, and an automated checker has been run against all of their links. What is missing is a person confirming that broker's steps against its own page. Finding that one of them is wrong is exactly the contribution we want. The badge tells you where to look.
• The Harden section is thin. Device guides are next, not done.
• Some brokers are dead. Domains lapse constantly in this industry. Telling us a site no longer exists is a real fix — we drop them.
• No sync between devices. By design. Progress lives in one browser on one machine, and clearing site data clears it.

If the bug is in the broker data itself

Wrong URL, wrong fields, or a dead site belongs in the dataset repo rather than this one:data-broker-registry. One markdown file per broker, no code required — see its CONTRIBUTING.md. The broker-report link above files to the app repo, which is fine; we move them.

Why this exists

A 2024 Consumer Reports study found paid removal services took down about35% of participants' records over four months. Doing it by hand removed70%. Free DIY matches the best paid service and beats the rest — so the only thing standing between most people and that 70% is an hour and knowing where to start. This site is the "where to start," and testing is what makes it trustworthy enough to hand to someone else.