BROADCASTS.com

A lot of personal data \u2013 stuff like your home address, phone number, marital status and more \u2013 is out there on the internet. Anyone can buy it from sites like Whitepages, PeopleFinders or Intelius, which aggregate data from public records and social media. You can contact each of these \u201cpeople search\u201d sites and request they take down your information, but it’s a bit of a game of whack-a-mole. Naturally, a whole industry of data-removal services has sprung up. For a price, they promise to do the dirty work for you. But do they deliver? Marketplace\u2019s Meghan McCarty Carino spoke to Yael Grauer, a researcher at Consumer Reports, who recently looked into the efficacy of the data-removal industry.