Woman reveals easy hack to erase personal info from Google and BeenVerified after data breach scare

Maintaining privacy has become more important than ever in the digital age, where one wrong click can expose your sensitive personal information. In one such incident, a woman named Tayler (@taylerrt on TikTok) was spammed with multiple calls during a live stream on her social media. The woman’s phone number was leaked without her having any clue about it, and the stranger “weirdly” kept calling her throughout the night. Now, another content creator named Ronica, who goes by (@vsg_twinboymom), has come forward to help women facing the same form of online harassment.

In the now-widely circulating video, Ronica shared ways to get one’s personal information off search repositories like Google and BeenVerified, the platform she blamed for the “super scary situation” that Tayler had to face. Earlier, Tayler had informed that during her 30 minutes live at around 11 pm, she started receiving repeated phone calls from unknown numbers.

“Each time they called, my signal was disrupted, and I lost connection, leaving me puzzled about what was happening,” Tayler was heard saying in the footage with over 1.4 million views. She was later targeted by a man who kept calling and coming back to her livestream through different accounts simultaneously despite being blocked almost nine times. Being horrified by the act, Ronica asked other women to “not fall victim” to the same malicious act.

Ronica began her instructions by going into how one can remove personal information from the internet without websites being notified. Urging viewers to delete publicly available data as quickly as possible, the video creator claimed that BeenVerified “is an extremely popular site to get people’s information on,” and that “if you have a paid membership, you can get whatever you want.”

Notably, BeenVerified, on its official website, describes itself as software that aims to “empower consumers to learn more about people by providing access to public record information like criminal history, contact info and more.” At this point, Ronica screen-recorded her own device, walking viewers through her first step to get information off the platform. She was keen on getting her personal information down from Google and BeenVerified.

Ronica browsed through BeenVerified’s Opt-Out Page, as she further urged viewers to first fill out the contact form and thereafter click search. Upon doing so, a new page appeared, showing a list of all the names identical to her original search, i.e., her own name. “This is me. All of my information was here,” Ronica emphasized, adding that “every single bit” of information available belonged to her.

After entering all the valid information, Ronica received an email from the platform that her personal information had vanished from their database. “Within seconds, I had a confirmation saying it was all done. I went back to BeenVerified, and my information was already gone,” she added. To confirm the same on a Google search, she typed her name there and found no results. “Write your first and last name into the Google search bar, and you should immediately find results. Scroll down and see if you can find anything,” she concluded.

The almost two-minute-long tutorial from Ronica managed to garner widespread reactions, including around 545.1k views. In the comments section, @lunafromdiego wrote, “I have been verified; none of my information is current, including my emails as far as my address... it has not come up in 10 years.” Adding to it, @hbee716 remarked, “This is helpful but only the tip of the iceberg. Data brokers are so damn annoying - they act like they own my personal information and won’t give it up without a fight.”

You can follow Tayler (@taylerrt) and Ronica (@vsg_twinboymom) on TikTok for more lifestyle content.