(Credit: Douglas Sacha via Getty Images)
National Public Data, a website infamous for its role in leaking millions of Social Security numbers last year, has returned with the ability to look up anyone's personal information.
The site shut down in December amid a wave of lawsuits against parent company Jericho Pictures after a breach exposed an estimated 272 million unique SSNs and 600 million phone numbers. Since then, the site has been relatively dormant. But today, we spotted the nationalpublicdata.com domain springing back to life with a new interface.
It looks like the domain has changed hands: In a page about last year’s breach, the site’s new owners write: “Important Notice: Jerico Pictures, Inc., the Florida company that suffered a major data breach in 2024, no longer operates this site. We have zero affiliation with them. We’re keeping this page, originally posted by Jerico Pictures, Inc., intact so its history remains traceable.”
(Credit: NationalPublicData.com)The site doesn’t explain who the new owners are, but a domain lookup shows that it's registered to Florida-based “Perfect Privacy LLC,” a company known to help users register a web domain, anonymously. (Meanwhile, Perfect Privacy VPN told us it had no affiliation with the National Public Data site.)
The new site functions as a “free people search engine,” which might alarm the public since National Public Data housed a huge trove of sensitive data on Americans.
It is unclear where the site is getting its data. But the new National Public Data says: “We collect the data you find on our people search engine 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.”
(Credit: NationalPublicData.com)Still, what makes the site disturbing is how you can freely look up people’s data and sometimes find accurate addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth, along with a person’s relatives. None of the data is behind a paywall. That said, the new site isn’t much different from other people-finding services, which serve up similar data for free.
The new National Public Data adds: "On our people search website, you can find pretty much anything you need, from someone’s contact info, location, age, and birthday to workplace, relatives, and criminal records. No need to sift through different web pages."
How to Remove Your Profile From National Public Data
The new National Public Data site has an opt-out form to delete your profile data. However, many users are likely unaware of such an option, enabling these type of sites to continue trafficking their information. Here's how to delete your data:
- Search your name on nationalpublicdata.com
- When you find your profile, click View Full Profile
- Copy that URL
- Go to nationalpublicdata.com/optout.html
- Drop the URL into the Your Profile Link field and click Request Removal
- Enter an email address, and the site will send you a message and ask you to click to confirm deletion. You need a separate email address for each profile you want to delete.
- Consider submitting a throwaway email account you have access to in order to protect your privacy.
We tried the opt-out function, and the site appears to remove your data immediately. Some in the comments say they haven't received the confirmation email. Check your spam folder and make sure you're dropping the full URL for your profile into the link box, not just the search results page.
We contacted nationalpublicdata.com and Perfect Privacy, and we’ll update the story if we hear back. In the meantime, sites such as Atlas Privacy have emerged to help people remove their data from the open web and people-finding services. You can also check out PCMag's roundup of the Best Personal Data Removal Services.