Spokeo is a US people-search broker headquartered in Pasadena, California, founded in 2006. Aggregates public records, social media, and licensed data into name-searchable profiles tied to addresses, phone numbers, family relationships, and historical records. The free tier returns enough to confirm a match; the paid tier ($23 to $30 per month or per-search) returns the full profile.
What it means in practice
A Spokeo lookup typically returns: current and prior addresses with date ranges, phone numbers (mobile and landline), family members listed by name with their own profiles linked, employer history when available from public sources, sometimes assets and bankruptcy filings. The data quality is uneven (cross-references from licensed sources can be wrong or stale), but the operational impact is the same: a stranger with $23 sees your home address, your spouse’s name, your kids if they appear in any public record. Spokeo settled an FTC enforcement action in 2012 ($800,000) for marketing the service for tenant and employee screening without complying with the Fair Credit Reporting Act. The product remains widely used for non-FCRA purposes.
Who uses it, and against whom
Customer base: ex-partners trying to locate someone, parents researching their child’s new partner, journalists running quick background checks, debt collectors, paralegal staff at small firms, and the entire category of casual users curious about a name. Against whom: every adult in the United States with any public-records footprint, which is almost everyone. The opt-out process exists (spokeo.com/optout, requires the URL of your profile and an email confirmation), is documented in the FTC settlement order, and works in 7-14 days for the listed profile. The catch: Spokeo aggregates from upstream sources, so the profile re-populates on the next data refresh from those sources, typically within 3-6 months.
What you can change today
Search your name plus city on spokeo.com from a clean browser session (no Google login). Screenshot the result. Click “remove this listing” on each profile that matches you, paste the URL into the opt-out form (spokeo.com/optout), confirm via the email link. Set a 90-day calendar reminder to repeat. For continuous removal without the calendar work, DeleteMe and Kanary handle Spokeo automatically as part of their broader broker coverage. The structural mitigation is upstream: the more your home address sits in public records (LLC filings under your name, voter registration, donor disclosures), the harder Spokeo is to keep down.