Here's how to slightly lower your profile when people google your name

"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein)
01/03/2019 at 16:07 • Filed to: None

MyLife.com advertises itself as a way to “see & improve your reputation score” and control your private information online. It’s actually a bullshit scam that lets anyone who googles your name leave anonymous Yelp-like ratings of you. You do not want to be on MyLife.com!

I was scheduling a phone interview for one of my customers, and they asked me to add one of their employees to the interview. They didn’t say the dude’s title. I tried searching for him on Linkedin and he wasn’t there. No resumes posted. Not on facebook. So I just googled his ass to see what came up.

The only thing that came up was his listing on MyLife with his name, and the city he lives in, age, family members, etc. That didn’t help me for my purposes but I did think to myself, hmm, I wonder what it says for me. So I put in my name and saw my location, age, family members, etc. I didn’t like this! So I googled “remove mylife” and found !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! .

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

Guess what? There are lots of sites like MyLife that put all your info on google and shit! All of them except MyLife have online opt-out forms that the link will walk you through completing. I’d recommend using a burner email account for them.

MyLife, in addition to not having an online opt-out, makes it look like if you sign up for an account, you can opt out. But you can’t. It’s a scam. They prey on people who google themselves, see these ratings, say, “I don’t want randos on the internet to be able to rate me!” and then click the link to sign up for an account, and possibly a paid membership to “take control” of this information. Except none of that will h ide you from showing in the MyLife search results.

Don’t sign up for a MyLife account!

Apparently the 2 ways to remove yourself from MyLife are:

Email !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that you want them to remove your listing. They will refuse to do so and say you should sign up for a MyLife Premium membership at some cost to control your information. You then need to email them back and say you don’t want their premium membership and to remove your listing. They in theory are supposed to comply.

Call 888–704–1900 and ask them to remove your listing. Be prepared to wait on hold! The auto attendant announced to me that I was caller number 32 with an estimated wait time of 29 minutes. I hoped for an auto-callback option but of course there wasn’t. Most people would probably give up right there but I took the time to fill out the opt-out forms for all the other sites on that Medium link while I waited. I did that but I was still caller number 18 so I figured I’d bang out this post. And I did bang out this whole post except for the end result of the phone call because I still was on hold and caller number 13 by the time I finished everything else in the post. I ended up waiting on hold a total of 61 minutes until it was my turn to have my call answered...and the shit hung up on me. At least I was doing other stuff and was using my headset so I just had the damn hold messages about taking control of your online information and parents being reunited with children they gave up for adoption playing on loop in my ear for an hour for no benefit whatsoever.

Stupid MyLife rabbit hole. I suppose I probably should’ve done the email route. I will...at some point! At least all the other ones are scrubbed.

DISCUSSION (14)

CB > Textured Soy Protein
01/03/2019 at 16:11

I've never heard of these sites, and Googling me brings up a Scottish landscape painter and both my sister's, but not me. So I guess I win?

WilliamsSW > Textured Soy Protein
01/03/2019 at 16:13

This is one of those times where I am VERY glad that I have a really common name. It’s been a while since I tried it, but the last time I googled my name (with or without the middle name, it doesn’t matter), I was on about page 20 of the Google results before any of them were actually about me.

davesaddiction @ opposite-lock.com > CB
01/03/2019 at 16:15

Thankfully for me, there was a well-known politician of the same name who lived on the other side of the globe who dominates the results ...

Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero > Textured Soy Protein
01/03/2019 at 16:18

holy shit you werent kidding, it lists me and my family and my hometown, but it says im black which is WAYYYY off lol. will definetly email them to get myself removed cause thats just creepy

edit: after emailing mylife they said itd take 7-10 business days to remove. Spokeo was super creepy cause it had a picture of my house, intelligus said i was 49 which is about 20 years off

Future next gen S2000 owner > Textured Soy Protein
01/03/2019 at 16:18

Apparently I have known associates in WA! Also, I may or may not have sex offender convictions, liens, and other court issues. I have a net worth of $1 and an annual income between 50-59K. I also have aliases that include my first name, my first and last name, and my first, middle, and last name! Who knew. Good to know.

I am a 4.15/5 though! That means I’m not a terrible person, I guess?

CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever > Textured Soy Protein
01/03/2019 at 16:21

I wish I could nuke myself of google’s results.

nothing incriminating, just don’t want to be viewed.

Textured Soy Protein > CarsofFortLangley - Oppo Forever
01/03/2019 at 16:22

I don’t know if these sites are unique to MURRICA or if you could do the same opt-out links in Canuckistan.

Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero > WilliamsSW
01/03/2019 at 16:30

i used to be in the clear because a MLB pitcher from the Rockies shares my name but hes been out of the league for years and wasnt really that good so hes disappeared from a lot of search results

pip bip - choose Corrour > Textured Soy Protein
01/03/2019 at 16:31

their website doesn’t even load for me

WilliamsSW > Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero
01/03/2019 at 17:28

My guy was in Chicago for a while, has the same full name as me ( even the middle name and spelliing) and is the same age as me ( born a few weeks after me). Plus he’s still doing tv.

Tapas > Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero
01/03/2019 at 17:36

DONT SAY THESE THINGS ONLINE, SPOEKINTELLOUSLIFE ARE WATCHING!

Jayhawk Jake > Textured Soy Protein
01/03/2019 at 20:48

My name is so common that I never seem to find my actual self on Google. LinkedIn is easy enough I suppose, but I curate that so it’s OK.

ITA97, now with more Jag @ opposite-lock.com > Textured Soy Protein
01/03/2019 at 21:00

Despite having an uncommon name, there is an apparently prominet attorney in Toronto and someone in the movie business in LA that share my name, so it was like 15 pages deep in search results before you got to something that was actually me (and even then it was old race results).

Then last year I was on an episode of C-SPAN’s Citys capes talking about a political collection in the archives at work . Between the university’s publicity and my person profile on CSPAN' s website, the third result for my name is something about me and with a picture. I liked it better when I was more obscure in search results.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > Textured Soy Protein
01/08/2019 at 09:45

Kinja'd!!!

WTF is this shit from Radaris ?

OWNERSHIP OF DATA: You agree and acknowledge that the Data is and remains the property of Radaris or its data providers. You understand that you do not have nor will you acquire any ownership interest in the Sites or Data. You have no right to sell, resell, license, rent, transfer, or otherwise provide any of the Dat a to any other party. You shall not combine all or any portion of any Data with any other service, data, or database created or maintained by you. The Data obtained from any query of the Sites may only be used one-time by you. You shall not cache the Data. You shall not disassemble, decompile, or in any way reverse engineer the Sites or Data in any way.

Bullshit I don’t own the data about me, and bullshit to this entire section.