How to Remove Your Profile form Yatedo

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Yatedo is a search engine with the aim of helping you find anyone throughout the web. However Yatedo is also what is known as a scraper; it searches the internet and rips your public information from social networks in particular LinkedIn and Facebook. Yatedo is an opt-out rather than opt-in service because it takes your public information and displays it on its own website, without your consent.

The makers of Yatedo claim their service to be:

Yatedo is a free people search engine which helps you find and contact anybody throughout the web. Yatedo has developed and continue developing technologies that simplifies and facilitates the search and social experience to help people find and connect to each others.

This may seem fine, but in my opinion the method of doing this is morally wrong. The service should be something you sign up to and give information to freely. Not a service you have to liberate your data from.

If like me you don’t mind your information being public on the internet, then good for you you have nothing to worry about. However if your Social Media profiles are public and Yatedo has used your information without your permission and you want it to stop, here is how to do that.

First to check that your Facebook timeline is not visible to search engines:

  • Go to facebook.com/settings/?tab=privacy
  • (login if necessary) Find the section where it says: “Do you want other search engines to link to your timeline?” – click the “Edit” button
  • Now uncheck the box that says: “Let other search engines link to your timeline“
  • Facebook then asks you to “Confirm” this action

Next to check that your LinkedIn profile is private:

Finally to remove your Yatedo profile:

  • Go to Yatedo
  • Search for your profile
  • Click your profile
  • Copy the URL of your profile
  • Now go to yatedo.com/index/privacy
  • In the profile URL box paste in the address you copied before
  • In the verification box type the letters you see
  • Click the Confirm button

Your unwanted Yatedo account should now be deleted, but it can take two or more weeks to be removed from all search engines.

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74 thoughts on “How to Remove Your Profile form Yatedo”

  1. I have tried to follow all of the steps to delete my yatedo. The problem is they gathered information from me from LinkedIn. I had closed the LinkedIn account long ago. When I follow the steps to delete my yatedo info, it blocks me due to having already closed my account.
    I tried to create an alternate Yatedo account & alternate LinkedIn profile but every way that I’ve tried to claim & delete my old profile is not working.

    Thanks! Yatedo totally sucks & is evil!

    Reply ↓

  3. Hi Aron!

    Thanks for that, this was very helpful! I have successfully delete my account on Yatedo but when I google myself there is still an entry on google with some information, do you know how to delete that entry completely from google?

    Thanks

    F.

    Reply ↓

    • Hi Fleur,
      Thanks for you comment, it’s good to here the instructions worked for you :) As for the search results, Google says:

      “When a page is updated or removed, it will automatically fall out of our search results. You don’t need to do anything to make this happen.”

      Reply ↓

  4. Is there a page that comes up stating information has been deleted? I ask because I keep getting a “Required field cannot be left blank” message under reason after I click submit. I havent left that portion blank but every time I try to re-submit it I get the same message.

    Reply ↓

  5. When i try to delete my yatedo account – i keeps telling me that i left the REASON pull down blank.

    GGGRRRRRR!!!

    Reply ↓

  6. Hello.
    I never signed up information about me this site called yatedo. Please delete my information because it is causing me problems.
    I hope you respect and stop copying information from Linkedin.
    Monica Tanaka

    Reply ↓

  7. Thank u for the article. Seems my profile has been deleted after I followed ur instructions.
    I still have a few questions, maybe u know the ansers… Actually, what is the legal basis allowing this kind of search engine to gather info on you without u knowing and ur consent? For instance, my FB profile was never set on public search (the yatedo profile that existed on me had just taken my FB picture and name, no supplementary info) but still, the profile got created.
    Could u also tell me how I can be sure, yatedo won’t create a new profile on me in a few weeks? Is there a way to prevent it (does writing an email to their support team really work) – i.e. will en email that is written to them, stating my social network profile is not publicly available and won’t be until I said so, be taken into consideration? Is it somehow legaly binding for them?
    Thanks for your answers.

    Reply ↓

    • Hi Julie,
      Thanks for your comment. With regard to your Question:

      What is the legal basis allowing this kind of search engine to gather info on you without you knowing and your consent?

      First I’m not a lawyer, so this is not legal advice:
      However the information Yetado gathers about people is publicly available on the internet; and since no one owns the internet there is no legal basis.

      Reply ↓

  8. Hi all,

    I work at Yatedo as a Social Media Manager. I’d like to shed light on Yatedo’s activity regarding your questions :)

    Yatedo is a people search engine, which means that we have access and display the exact same information as any other search engine like Google or Bing. This information is the one that users chose to share publicly online and accepted that it might be indexed by search engines. The only difference we have with other search engines is that we don’t display the information as links to other web pages. Instead we display it in a profile fashion which is the easiest and most common way to read information about people online.

    I understand that some people might be surprised when they see the search result for their names on Yatedo because for most of them it is the first time they have the chance to see all the publicly available information about them online at the same time and unfortunately most of the time we are not aware of half of the available information. This is one of the main issues we are trying to answer : helping people being all the time aware of all the publicly available information about them. Being able to see all of it at the same time helps users in being conscious of what they share(d) where and then they can control their online reputation.

    Concerning the opt-out issue, it is the same as in any other search engine if you try to delete a link from another search engine you’ll need to go through the exact same process, because we’ll always need to be sure that the person trying to delete or modify the information is really the owner and not somebody trying to harm a another person. But we understand that it isn’t as easy as it could be and be sure that our engineers are working hard on making your experience as best as possible.

    Is Yatedo legal ? Of course :) Our company is totally legal and our activity is approved by the French Data supervisor, la CNIL with whom we work in order to fully understand the concerns of online users regarding their publicly available information.

    I’d like to thank Arron for this article which explanes pretty well how to delete your Yatedo profile :)

    I hope this helps.

    Let me know if you need further information.

    Best regards,
    Samya Ihammouine
    Social Media Manager @Yatedo

    Reply ↓

    • Just who the f*** gave FRENCH Authorities the RIGHT to give your lame company to breach our information on YOUR website?

      Approved by French Data Supervisor, la CNIL – Sounds like Dog poop to me.

      I was this close to take things in my own hands.

      Reply ↓

    • Hi Samya;
      are you still “working” at yatedo? I’ve just went to www. cnil.fr – on the 11th of july 2012 (this is just 7 days before your reply to this post) the CNIL has this to say to you in their website;
      http://www.cnil.fr/la-cnil/actualite/article/article/avertissement-public-a-lencontre-du-site-internet-yatedo/ – as their reply is in french, you can run an online translation tool, but in resume the national commission’s for informatic and liberties wonders why you haven’t reply to them or to any of the many complains?

      regards
      (from “this, your customer” who wants its “public” information deleted from your “service’s site”)

      Reply ↓

      • The French text you reference is quite a stern warning to Yatedo and outlines numerous complaints the agency received. Yatedo has failed to respond to the agency’s attempts to contact it or its invitation to appear to explain itself.

        Reply ↓

    • I appreciate these comments, but Yatedo’s mechanism for removing my profile is not working. The inaccuracy and incompleteness of the Yatedo information poses a risk for a job search I am involved in. I find it extremely annoying that Yatedo did not even inform me of its activity or give me a chance to review the information it collected. Please remove my information immediately, since I cannot.

      Reply ↓

    • TO: Samya Ihammouine

      “… helping people being all the time aware of all the publicly available information about them”

      I don’t need Yatedo to help me determine what information about me is available on the web. With LinkedIn, I can change my profile and CURRENT information which I CHOOSE can be publically displayed or not. You have taken control of a profile that I do not wish to be made public. I do not believe I should spend my time removing my profile from non-LinkedIn sites, if it is really possible to remove my data.

      While you say legal, Yatedo is a totally unethical member of the internet community and its employees are corrupt human beings. I will never use the Yatedo site, nor will Yatedo make any money from my data. Everyone I know, colleagues, friends, family is aware of your thieving practices and I doubt your company will have a prosperous future.

      Reply ↓

  9. Hi Aron,

    I deleted my Yatedo account over a year ago (they pulled my information from LinkedIn without my permission before I closed that account too) and I still see my name and job title pop up as a hit on Google search. The account no longer exists, but the search result persists. How do I solve this? Who do I contact? Thanks again

    Reply ↓

  10. Hello,
    Yatedo uses your incentive to remove data to gain yet more data. I found information that is available to my connection, but has never been on a public LinkedIN profile today. The only way they could have seen this information is by luring one of my connections to login (and giving them consent for the Yatedo search engine to “scrape” information on his profile, including thereby his connections’ profiles. They have done this and they do not delete this information without me “logging into the web site to confirm my profile is really mine”. In fact, if I do this, Yatedo will scrape my profile (and thereby gain access to not just my information but to many of my connections’ profiles too). No doubt many of my connections, like me, have chosen not to publish their profile. I therefore end up giving public access which i have no right to give away (they have given me access, but not given me consent to further delegate that access to 3rd parties. This website does not just scrape publicly available information. It essentially acts like a worm on social networking websites, by using the intention of people to delete their data as a guise to gain access to their connections’ data.

    This website is thoroughly immoral and I have complained to the Data Protection Supervisor of the EU (edps edps.europa.eu). I suggest you do the same!

    Regards
    Kris

    Reply ↓

  11. Hello all,

    I’m also trying to remove my account from Yatedo, but i’m not keen giving them my linked-in password when I have to give up ‘reason for leaving’ and then they need ‘to verify authenticity’.
    I never signed up for ‘Yatedo’!! I fully agree with Kris this is completely immoral.

    Would it possible removing your Yatedo account without giving them your linked in password?!

    Shame on Yatedo,

    Thanks and Greetings,
    Joris

    Reply ↓

  12. I sent a polite email to Yatedo a year ago asking them to delete my profile created from a linkedin account that I had in the meantime set to private. I got a reply saying the profile would delete itself after a few months. A year later, it’s still there. They also suggested I log into the Yatedo account and update/delete information myself, which I refuse to do because 1.see Kris’s comment here above and 2. that would legitimize an account created without my knowledge or consent.
    Anyway, I filed a complaint with the CNIL (French organism in charge of privacy on the internet). It was deemed admissible. So obviously I am not the only person who thinks Yatedo is not respecting my privacy. I am hoping Yatedo will be shut down sooner than later…. until the next search engine trampling our privacy comes along…

    Reply ↓

  13. This Samya Ihammouine lady did not tell the truth.

    As the poster above me mentioned, they don’t just gather what is available to any other regular search engine.
    Instead, they will get information from your private profile on Linkedin.

    This is nowhere near legal.
    And when you try to delete the Yatedo account, they require access to your Linkedin account and probably steal info from your contacts (the same way they got your info in the beginning).

    They ARE evil, something must be done about them.

    Reply ↓

  14. Hey guys, I am happy not to be the only one with the problem, but sad since the problem is so upsetting.

    Samya Ihammouine: You have no idea what you are doing, really!!

    Question: Is there a way to cancel the Yatedo profile (not claimed) without giving them my LinkedIn login information and without claiming for the account and then deleting it?!

    I will also complain to latin american organizations! Happy to see people officially complaining.

    Reply ↓

  15. Hi,

    Wow I am glad to see I am not the only one “concerned” / Pissed off about my privacy over this copy paste BS.

    Yes Yatedo is a worm like website, crawls all the profiles and creates its own profile. Yatedo is a french based company. Unfortunately French don’t even know what is privacy. You might ask why am I generalizing, well if you read todays newspaper you willl see an article about British Prince Harry and his wife were exposed by a French Paparazzi and the French just shrugged their shoulders, as it was not against their law.

    Since you already have known about yatedo, ladies & gentlemen let me inform you there are several other websites who do that.

    http://labs.mirror.me/googleplus/ is another one. It replicates your Google Plus profile.

    Just thought I should share. If Yatedo does not remove my profile. Well I will remove it myself. All I have to do is reboot my computer to backtrack.

    Duh!

    Reply ↓

    • Hi Deedee, you mentioned rebooting your computer to backtrack. Has it worked for you to delete your Yatedo info online? If yes, can you tell me if I can do the same? I guess it’s not possible for me because I am not using the computer I used to create my LinkedIn account. Many thanks.

      Reply ↓

  16. Hi Aron,

    I am following your instructions from he top of this page to delete my Yatedo profile but it keeps asking me to login to LinkedIn to verify my identity and I do not want to do that for obvious reasons described by other people above.
    Is it a new trick they have come up with and how do I delete my profile without logging in? Its really annoying, I have learnt a lesson not to use social networking sites as internet is soo unsafe for that with people like Yatedo on board to make money by playing with people’s privacy. Thanks in advance.

    Reply ↓

    • Hi Jolly,

      This is a new feature Yatedo has added, so that only genuine verified people can delete information about themselves.

      Yatedo’s usage of LinkedIn is subject to a ‘Terms Of Service‘ agreement, in that agreement it explicitly contains the phrase ‘Don’t Harm or Trick Members‘. So this should be reported to LinkedIn. I do not know how to report the App, so I have written to LinkedIn and will report back on what they have to say.

      Reply ↓

  17. I ask how to delete profile in yatedo via several polite emails, including emails to the founders but never received a response. I was finally able to delete the profile but a year later the link still appears in a google search.,,,,strange. I think the yatedo and the 2 founders I emailed are immoral. I suspect anything for a dollar is their motto. Hopefully no one legitimate does any business with the company

    Reply ↓

  18. Hi Aron,
    Im trying diff things to get rid of my Yatedo profile that I never created. Worst thing is its incorrect and outdated and never intended to be public. Since Yatedo use the cached data, updating LinkedIn does not update Yatedo profile nor I can edit it on Yatedo itself. Is there another way to amend info on Yatedo profile as I’m unable to delete it? Thanks

    Reply ↓

    • Hi Jo,

      Since you are unable to delete your profile and updating LinkedIn makes no difference, you are stuck.
      However if Yatedo is a service witch does not update Information, It is useless! Yatedo need to have up to date information, or no one will want to use it – and they will not be around for much longer.

      Reply ↓

  19. Thanks a lot Aron,
    Some success here! I have been able to close my Yatedo profile this time using the same instructions given by you on top. It still appears in the Google search and gives away my name and professione etc but does not open further if you click on it. I used to Google tool provided by you to get rid of ‘MeSearcher’ showing my details altough it took some days. With ‘mirror.me’, it does not show my details any more since I have set my LinkedIn to make my public profile visible to noone. I think I am good for now : ) Cheers!

    Reply ↓

  20. Hey Aron,

    On Sep 26th you mentioned that you wrote to LinkedIn about Yatedo needing LinkedIn credentials to delete an account. Was wondering if you heard back anything from LinkedIn?

    Reply ↓

    • Hi, thanks for your comment, I did indeed receive a reply form LinkedIn and this is what they had to say:

      We certainly understand how the discovery of this information would be alarming. Please know that we have no affiliation with this outside website. We want to maintain your privacy and trust, so we adhere to the following principles to protect your privacy:

      1. We will never rent or sell your personally identifiable information to third parties for marketing purposes
      2. We will never share your contact information with another user without your consent.
      3. Any sensitive information that you provide will be secured with all industry standard protocols and technology.

      There are some elements of a LinkedIn profile that are made public, and are searchable on the Internet. Your LinkedIn public profile helps others find you on the Internet. It can be turned off after signing in to your account by moving your cursor over your name in the upper right area of your home page and clicking “Settings.” If you would like to disable your public profile, please follow the steps in the link below:

      Showing or Hiding My Public Profile
      http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/83

      Reply ↓

  21. who the hell are you guys to grab some info and put it online and everyone has to deal with deleting their Identiry. you guys suck.

    Reply ↓

  22. Hi Aron,

    Thanks for the article! I just tried to delete my Yatedo profile and it’s asking me to confirm I’m the owner of the profile by entering my LinkedIn login details, just wondering if it’s safe?

    Thanks

    Reply ↓

  23. Yatedo Sucks Ass! I’ve been trying to delete the profile they amalgamated for the past year and unfortunately their process for deleting your profile leads you in a complete circle and then as you near the end it says you have to confirm your profile before you delete it and then it just does nothing. WTF?! How can this be legal?

    Reply ↓

  24. Hi all,

    Yatedo is a people search engine, not a social networks. It helps you to find any information about people thanks to its semantic technology. Everything you find on Yatedo is available on any classical search engine such as Google and Yahoo!. The difference is in the display of the search results: Yatedo’s search results are exposed as digital ID cards where public references regarding a person are displayed on a single page, the simplest way to read information.

    We show only information that is available on the web. If your name appears on the web, it appears on search engines like Yatedo or Google, Yahoo, Yandex, Bing etc. This is how the internet works :) If you don’t want to be on Internet, why being on Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter with publicly available profiles? The next web is 3.0 : semantic web understanding data. That motivated Yatedo’s founders: create a digital efficient way to be on Internet.

    If you dont want to be on Yatedo, read this page, it explanes clearly how to delete your profile : http://about.yatedo.com/en/manage-your-digital-id/how-to-delete-your-profile/

    Today we are working closely with CNIL on the legal aspect of our activities, we also legally proved that all the “letters we never replied to” had been sent to the wrong address, so we were unable to know about these letters.
    More important, the CNIL recognized our activity as legal and as a people search engine, not a social networks.

    Kind regards
    Samya from Yatedo

    Reply ↓

    • nevertheless I think your are fogging up the issue on purpose. my linkedin account has always been private and never been publicly available. by publishing details about me, including my picture, you have breached my privacy and my copyright. the only way you could have obtained my details is by stealth, subterfuge, and dishonest representation.

      Reply ↓

      • Hello James,
        our technology’s purpose is to display public information. Technically, it’s impossible, we can’t find any private information, an information that had always been private can’t be on Yatedo. Your information might be publicly available.

        Best regards,
        Samya from Yatedo

        Reply ↓

        • Yeah, well then why in the last month did a Yatedo page appear for me with info that has not been online for over a year? And why do you want me to claim my account with LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, etc…. all services I DO NOT USE (LinkedIn account deleted in 2010)…. P*** off you French B******.

          Reply ↓

    • You are obviously lying. My linkedin profile has always been private. Yet you seem to have tricked one of my connections into giving you his login details and from there you scraped all information from all the connections this person had, including me. Therefore, the information was not public, and yet you simply stole it.

      Reply ↓

  26. my linkedin profile has always been private and now my details are splashed all over the internet. damn those buffoons. we live in times where we become the products to be sold to ourselves.

    Reply ↓

  27. I had the opposite thing happen. I searched for myself an Yatedo, and check out the name that came closest: “Aloysius Cardinal Ambrozic”

    Haha! That’s nowhere in the neighborhood. And I have a website that is my name!! What a lousy search engine.

    Reply ↓

  28. I would have been okay with it if all of my information weren’t somehow COMPLETELY outdated!!!! The photo (no idea where they pulled it from) was from almost 10 years ago, and my current employment was listed as a company I haven’t worked for for almost 6 years!! WTH??! deleted.

    Reply ↓

  29. I have tried EVERYTHING to delete this #$%^&* profile. l hate these people! Yatedo is the scum of the earth! I have contacted them a dozen times and receive no reply! How do all you other folks get into Yatedo to delete the profile???

    Reply ↓

  30. My Yatedo “profile” contains the following:

    YATEDO ARE OBNOXIOUS TROLLS. I WAS FORCED TO SET UP AN ACCOUNT WITH THEIR “SERVICE” AS THE ONLY WAY TO REMOVE INACCURATE AND DAMAGING INFORMATION FROM THEIR SITE. (NO, YOU CAN’T JUST ASK THEM TO DELETE YOUR “ACCOUNT”, THEY WON’T DO IT). STAY CLASSY, YATEDO!

    Reply ↓

  31. I’d like to thank Aron for the instructions how to remove this account!
    I discovered it by Googling myself and then also looking at the pictures that Google found (I do this regularly).
    The instructions Aron published here are perfectly comprehensive.
    Deletion worked immediately, and I’m hugely relieved!
    Thank you Aron!!!
    You are a Star!!!

    Reply ↓

  32. Aron,
    Give yourself a gold Community Service star, other than some of your links to the social networks to edit profiles being dead, everything else worked and I was able to delete my account. They even had my Dad’s obit and his picture, another classless example of making money via scrounging and data mining, unfortunately this issue will only get worse before it gets better. Be thankful that sites like LinkedIn give you the options to protect your identity.

    Reply ↓

  33. Aron, you are awesome. Didn’t even know my so-called private info was out there even though I had Linkedin not to show, it must have grabbed it before I went private. I followed your directions, easy to follow. I totally appreciate your write up and will share.

    Reply ↓

  34. I am so sick of this disgusting spammy company scraping people’s private information. The French govt should shut this company and the scum of the earth people who work for it down!

    I tried removing my profile and got a message saying “Cannot remove famous profile”!! and I promise you I am far from famous.

    These people should be put in jail and locked behind bars!

    Yatedo sucks!!!!!

    Reply ↓

  35. I’ve been dealing with this Yatedo BD for a while. Up until this point, I’ve kept my account open so that I could actually see what they were gathering on me and make sure that they weren’t scraping anything new from any additional sites (they haven’t in a while). So I decided to finally bite the bullet and use your instructions to delete my account, not so easy. Every possible way to get to my privacy settings is blocked by Yatedo’s requests to fill in the blanks – give us just ONE education/experience example, or ONE professional history, etc. Come on! So now I can’t even get to the right place to cancel my account? Please. Any suggestions? Anyone?

    Reply ↓

  36. I am just wondering how can i remove it without link it back to my Facebook? Apparently Yatedo asked for permission for log into my Facebook, which will be the last thing that I want to happen after everything.

    Reply ↓

  37. Apparently, the instructions on Yatedo’s website seem to work now. Or, Yatedo has finally made a new option that DOES NOT require you to log in to your old FB or LinkedIn acct in order to delete the Yatedo profile. I had this same problem as all of you guys, I had a really old LinkedIn profile for job searching and have long since deleted that LinkedIn profile so of course I can’t just “log into LinkedIn in order to confirm” !!

    So anyway Yatedo now has that option that doesn’t require you to do that. Scary thing is, I closed that LinkedIn acct several years ago and yet Yatedo still had it … so … when exactly did this criminal website begin gathering all this data on people?

    Final thought: it’s possible that my job-searching contacts on my ancient LinkedIn acct are what betrayed me. I never really actually did any activity on LinkedIn, I maybe joined 4 job-searching groups and what I believe happened is that the members of those groups just shared me as a contact to all kinds of people/sites/whatever and this type of activity is what kept perpetuating my profile, regardless if I deleted that LinkedIn account or not.

    Thanks to the guy who figured all this out!! And, I hope this is a lesson to people to S T O P making *social networking* profiles with their real information! Social networking’s popularity is already going down because people are beginning to understand the huge downsides.

    Reply ↓

  39. No Jack, unfortunately it did work for me. The following keeps coming back:

    Oops! It seems like this url is not valid. Please make sure to use a valid url

    I copied the profile URL as instructed but it didn’t work :(

    Anyone else facing the same issue?

    Reply ↓

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