Finds where your personal details are published online, and helps you get them taken down.
This page is just an explainer. Vanish is a command-line tool that runs on your own computer. There is nothing to sign up for here, and this site collects nothing — no analytics, no cookies, no forms.
Hundreds of companies publish your home address, phone number, age and a list of your relatives, and sell access to it. You were never their customer and most of them you have never heard of. Some sites show the lot for free, so anyone at all can look you up.
You can ask them to remove you. It works more often than people expect. It is also tedious, easy to get wrong, and needs redoing — which is what this automates the boring parts of.
Builds a list of ~1,400 companies from a public government registry and a public directory, then tells you which to check and how.
Current address + phone + relatives together scores worst — that combination is what lets a stranger turn up at your door. Every score shows its reasoning.
Cites the right law for where you live — PIPEDA, Quebec's Law 25, GDPR, or the relevant US state law — and names the regulator to complain to.
These companies re-list you. It remembers what you sent, when, what came back, and what's due for a recheck.
Most of these sites are the same company wearing different hats, and they have to declare it to California's regulator. Spokeo also runs ThatsThem and AnyWho. Intelius runs twenty-two sites including ZabaSearch.
Vanish reads those filings, so one removal request gets credited with everything it covers — and it puts the wholesalers above higher-scoring websites in your list, because clearing a supplier stops the sites downstream of it coming back.
node src/cli.js startThat's the whole thing. It asks a few questions, does the automated parts, and writes you a plain-English checklist with the links filled in. The first three items take about half an hour and do most of the work.
If you get lost:
node src/cli.js guideShows where you are, what to do next, and explains any word or command.
PIPEDA has no outright deletion right, so requests withdraw consent instead and push back on the "publicly available information" excuse these sites reach for. Escalation is the Privacy Commissioner. Quebec is much stronger — Law 25 §28.1 is a real right to be forgotten, with minimum $1,000 punitive damages.
One government form legally obliges 581 registered brokers to delete your data, with $200-per-day penalties. It became binding on 1 August 2026. Nothing else anywhere comes close, and the tool puts it first.
Twenty-plus US state laws, GDPR and UK GDPR are covered, each with the correct citation and complaint route. Where a section number couldn't be verified against a primary source, the letter cites the act instead — a wrong citation is worse than none.
Should you just pay a service instead? Honestly, maybe — $20/year is less than the 20–40 hours this takes by hand. But every such service requires you to hand a company your complete verified identity dossier, which is exactly what a data broker wants. In 2024 it emerged that one removal service's CEO also founded a people-search site. Decide with that in mind.
The demo is filled with invented data for a person who does not exist. A real dashboard contains your full exposure map and is never uploaded anywhere — it's gitignored, and it makes no network requests even when open in your browser.
Not legal advice. Privacy law changes several times a year; the tool tracks how fresh its own citations are and tells you when they're due for review.