Removal requests: how they work and how to pass one on

Somebody has written to you saying "take me off your list" or "where did you get my details". There are two separate actions, and both have to happen.

1. Your copy — only you can do this

You are the controller of the file you exported. Delete or suppress the record in your CRM, your mail tool and any spreadsheet it reached. We have no access to your systems and cannot do it for you.

Add the address to your own permanent suppression list rather than just deleting the row — otherwise your next export will reintroduce it and you will contact them again, which is the thing they asked you not to do.

2. Our index — send it to us

Forward the request to privacy@findandclose.com, or send the person straight to us. Either works. Useful to include, though we can proceed without it:

• The business name and city, or better, the Google ID from your export.
• The email address or phone number they want removed.

What we do

1. Suppress the record within 30 days. It stops appearing in searches and exports for every customer.
2. Add its identifiers to a suppression list. This is the important part: a later re-crawl finds the listing again, and without the suppression list it would quietly reinstate the record. A deletion that undoes itself on the next pass is not a deletion.
3. Confirm to the requester when it is done.

Why we keep an identifier after removing the record

Because the suppression list has to be checked on every future crawl, and checking it requires knowing what to check for. We keep the minimum needed to honour the suppression and nothing else. Deleting the identifier too would guarantee the record came back.

Removing your own business from the index

Same process, same address. Worth knowing: suppressing the record here does not remove the listing from Google, Apple or Bing — that has to be done with them — and does not remove it from copies already exported by other customers before the suppression. We suppress our index and can say so honestly; we cannot un-ring a bell.

This is not a data-quality report

If the record is simply wrong rather than unwanted, that is a different and faster process: reporting a wrong or outdated record.

Requests about your own account

Access, correction or erasure of the personal data we hold about you as a customer — rather than about a business in the index — also goes to privacy@findandclose.com. See closing your account.