Can Optery remove criminal records, mugshots, or official government records?

**Optery is a privacy service that manages your visibility with Data Brokers. **We are not a law firm and cannot modify or remove official government records, and we do not send opt-out or deletion requests to government agencies on your behalf.

While Optery works to remove your information from the web, it is important to distinguish between official government records and the private companies (Data Brokers) that copy and publish them.

Official government records (such as arrests or court filings) are held by courthouses, the Department of Corrections, or other governmental or law enforcement agencies. These records generally are considered Publicly Available Information and are not covered by most state privacy laws. This means the official records continue to exist at that government source unless or until they are longer publicly available.

Government records like a prior arrest or court filing appear in online searches because Data Brokers crawl government websites to copy the records into their own searchable databases and publish your information directly on the open web. These Data Brokers, also known as People Search Sites, combine your personal information (e.g., your name, home address, and criminal history) into a single profile that anyone can access for a fee.

As your Authorized Agent, Optery submits requests to these Data Brokers to delete **your profile, **opt-out of sale or sharing of your profile, or suppress (hide) it from search results. When Optery sends a request to a Data Broker, the outcome depends on the specific state law and the broker's internal policies, but some possible outcome include:

• Suppression: The broker hides your profile from public searches.
• Deletion: The broker removes your profile from their database entirely.
• Refusal: The broker denies the request based on the "publicly available" exemption.

Remember: Even if Optery successfully removes a profile from a People Search site, the original government record still exists at the source. To truly "erase" the history, you may need to address the government record at the source through legal means.

Updated on: 23/12/2025