Is that people-search site legit?

Almost every site on this page is operating lawfully, and that is the finding rather than the exoneration. The United States has no general law against assembling public records into a searchable dossier and selling access to it, so the industry's existence is not in question - only its conduct at the edges, which is where regulators have actually intervened.

The scale of the compliance problem is visible in one case. In February 2024, Atlas Data Privacy Corp. filed more than 130 lawsuits in New Jersey against data brokers accused of ignoring takedown requests under Daniel's Law, on behalf of over 20,000 police officers, state troopers, prosecutors and their families. Daniel's Law was passed after the murder of a federal judge's son at his home. If serving officers with a statutory right to removal had to sue in those numbers to get it, an ordinary person filing an ordinary opt-out should expect to verify the result rather than assume it.

That is the practical takeaway across all twenty of these pages: the free opt-outs are real and worth doing, but treat removal as something to confirm and repeat rather than a box you tick once.