Questions worth asking.

The basics

What exactly does Privara do?

Privara separates your professional identity (what clients need to find) from your personal trail (what nobody should find). We scan data brokers, search results, breach databases, and real-estate professional surfaces, classify everything we find into four buckets — preserve, remove, decide, deindex — and act accordingly.

How is this different from Incogni or DeleteMe?

They have one bucket: delete everything. That works for the average user, but for a Realtor it means deleting your DRE listing or your Realtor.com profile — the things clients need to find you. Privara has four buckets and treats your professional surface as something to verify and preserve, not erase. Plus we scan the real-estate-specific places generic services skip: DRE, Realtor.com, Zillow, Homes.com, brokerage office pages.

What do you mean by 'four buckets'?

Every finding lands in one of: (1) Personal exposures we remove via standard CCPA opt-out — data brokers, breach databases. (2) Decisions you make — your personal cell appears on your Realtor.com profile, do we replace it with the brokerage line or leave it? (3) Untouchable public records like county tax assessments — we can't remove from the source but we deindex from aggregators. (4) Professional presence we preserve — DRE license, brokerage profile, business contacts. The dashboard shows all four at once.

What stays vs what goes

Can you remove me from DRE?

No, and you wouldn't want us to. Your DRE license record is a required public listing under California law and the proof you're a real licensed agent. We verify it during onboarding, surface it as 'Professional Preserved' on your dashboard, and never touch it. Same goes for NMLS, state bar, and similar registries for other professions.

Will removing my data hurt my real estate business?

No. Privara explicitly preserves your business surface — DRE, brokerage profile, agent listings, business phone, business email, professional headshot. The only things we remove are the data broker listings of your home address, personal cell, family members, and prior addresses. Clients can still find you. Stalkers can't pivot from your professional listing to your front door.

What's a 'mixed' finding?

It's the case where your personal contact info bleeds onto a professional surface. Example: agents often put their personal cell on their Realtor.com profile so clients can text them at 9pm. Privara detects that and surfaces it as 'Needs your decision' — you can replace it with the brokerage line, replace it with a forwarding number, or leave it. We never act on mixed findings without your call.

Process & timing

How long does removal take?

For brokers we have an automated CCPA email path (Spokeo, BeenVerified, Intelius, MyLife, Radaris, ZabaSearch, PeopleFinders, USA-People-Search, AnyWho, InfoTracer, PeopleSmart, ZoomInfo, Apollo, RocketReach, Lusha, SalesIntel), the request is filed within seconds of you clicking remove. The broker side typically clears within 14–45 days. Brokers without an email path — including TruePeopleSearch, FastPeopleSearch, Whitepages, Nuwber, USPhoneBook, FamilyTreeNow, ClustrMaps, FastBackgroundCheck, NeighborWho, SearchPeopleFREE, AdvancedBackgroundChecks, TruthFinder, USSearch, Instant Checkmate, Cyber Background Checks, CocoFinder, RecordsFinder, Pipl, Acxiom, IDCrawl, ThatsThem, SpyDialer, LiveRamp, and AtData — land in our structured web-form queue with pre-filled instructions for ops to file within 5 business days. You see real-time status in your dashboard with screenshots when each removal completes.

What if a broker re-lists me later?

We re-scan every 14 days. If a broker re-publishes your information — and they do — we automatically re-submit the opt-out and notify you by email. No silent failures.

How confident are your findings?

Every finding gets a confidence label: high (name + city + a card signal like phone or street in proximity), medium (one or more signals missing), or low (could be a same-name match). We never act on a low-confidence match without your review.

Privacy & legal

Do I have to give you my real personal information?

Yes — to remove your data from broker sites, the brokers need to be able to identify you. We're explicit about which contacts are 'personal' (we hide them) vs 'business' (we preserve them) — onboarding asks you to label each one. Everything is encrypted at rest, RLS-scoped to your account, and never used outside the scan/removal workflow.

Is this legal?

Yes. Data removal requests are a legal right under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA / CPRA, Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.105), and many other states have similar laws. We file these requests on your behalf using legitimate opt-out channels. Public-record sources we can't legally delete are honestly labeled 'Untouchable' in the dashboard — we don't pretend we removed them.

What happens if I cancel?

Your data export is available immediately on cancellation. We retain the audit trail of submitted opt-out requests (so brokers don't get confused) but stop new scans and remove your contact details from anything we control. Email info@privaraprivacy.com if you want a full deletion.

Coverage & roadmap

Are you only for real estate agents?

We launched with California real estate agents because that's the founder's market and the problem is sharpest there. Our core architecture is vertical-agnostic — the same four-bucket model works for insurance agents (NMLS), mortgage brokers, attorneys (state bar), financial advisors, therapists, dentists, and consultants. See /pros for the generic-professional version. Vertical-specific scanners for non-real-estate professions are on the roadmap.

Why does Privara ask for an email before a credit card?

Privara starts with a free scan so you can see what's actually out there before deciding whether removal is worth a paid plan. The scan shows every broker we found you on, every breach (on Pro), and every mixed finding — classified into the four buckets. If you want to start active removal after, you subscribe with a card. No charge until you decide.