Suppression: how an opt-out is applied, everywhere.
When somebody asks not to be contacted, the answer has to hold in every place the data is read — including the ones nobody thinks about, like a count on a public page or a file that went out last week and will be refreshed next week.
One list, for everyone
There is a single suppression list, and it applies to every customer and every internal user of the platform. An opt-out that one team honours and another does not is not an opt-out, so the question of whose list it is never arises.
It is consulted where the data is read rather than applied in a batch afterwards. That is what makes it hold in the awkward places: search results, a provider page, a list page's counts, a reveal, an export, an append, and every API response.
Three grains, because requests are not all the same
A request is rarely “remove everything”, so suppression is not one switch.
| Grain | What it does |
|---|---|
| A value | This email address, this phone number, this postal address — suppressed wherever it appears, on whoever's record it appears on. Useful when the same shared number reaches several people. |
| One field of one record | This provider's work email, or practice phone, or home address, or cell phone. The rest of the record — who they are, what they practise, where they practise — stays, because that part is the public record. |
| A whole record | The provider is gone from search, from public pages, from counts and from every file. Not hidden from one surface: absent from all of them. |
How somebody gets removed
A healthcare professional, or somebody who leads a healthcare organization, asks through remove my information. No account is needed and nothing is charged.
We send a one-time link to the contact address on the request to check it belongs to the person asking. The link opens a page with a button rather than confirming by itself, because mail scanners and link previewers fetch every URL they are sent and a request must not be confirmed by a robot.
A confirmed request is read by a person, not by a rule. Approval writes the suppressions the request calls for, at whichever grain fits it. A request whose contact address was never proved cannot simply be approved: the reviewer has to record how they verified the person instead.
Our response target is stated on the removal page itself, along with what we can and cannot undo — we can stop showing the details from now on, and we cannot recall a copy a customer downloaded before the request.
Nothing is deleted, and that is the point
Records are rebuilt from public filings every week. If a suppressed record were simply deleted, the next refresh would read the same filing and recreate it — so the mark is held against the identifier rather than against the row, and the refresh finds it there waiting. That is why a removal survives a rebuild instead of being undone by one.
Lifting a suppression is itself recorded, with who lifted it and when. The row stays, so there is always an answer to what was suppressed, when, and by whom.
Withheld, not silently blank
Where a value is suppressed, the platform says so. A reveal names the kinds of detail it withheld, and the app shows the field as asked-not-to-be-contacted rather than as an empty box. A quiet blank reads as “nothing on file”, which sends somebody looking for the number somewhere else — the opposite of what was asked for.
In an export the suppressed value is left out of the file and counted in the job's result, so the difference between what you asked for and what you got is a number you can see rather than a silent gap. Suppressed records are not credited back against your plan.
If you hold your own do-not-contact list
Send it to us and it is applied for everyone, on the same list as every other suppression. A suppression you apply only inside your own export is one your next export undoes; one on the platform's list is applied before any file is written.
Questions
How do I get my own details removed?
Use the remove my information page. You will get a one-time link to confirm the address, and the confirmed request is reviewed by a person before it is applied. No account is needed and nothing is charged.
Does a removal apply everywhere or only to search?
Everywhere: search, public pages, the counts on list pages, reveals, exports, appends and the API. There is one suppression list and every reader consults it.
Can I have just my phone number removed?
Yes. A request can name a single field — work email, practice phone, home address or cell phone — or a single value wherever it appears, or the whole record. The rest of the public record stays as it is.
Will my details come back after the next refresh?
No. The mark is held against the identifier rather than the row, precisely so that rebuilding the record from a fresh filing cannot resurrect the value. That is also why the record is marked rather than deleted.
Why is my record still visible after I asked?
Either the confirmation link has not been followed yet, or the request is with a reviewer. The removal page states our response target and what happens at each step.
Can you recall a file a customer already downloaded?
No, and no data company that says otherwise is telling you the truth. Removal stops the details appearing from then on. Our terms prohibit resale and redistribution, and every export is traceable to the account that took it.
Other help pages
- Reveals
- What a reveal is, what it costs, when it is free, and why a refused reveal is never counted.
- Plans and limits
- The four things every plan meters, how to see what you have left, and what happens when one runs out.
- Search and filters
- How the filters combine, and the difference between a classification and a specialisation.
- Email trust tiers
- What trusted, probable, doubtful and rejected mean, and what an unscored address counts as.
- API keys
- Scopes, the per-minute pace, the monthly quota, the headers that report both, and where the reference is.
- Exports and append
- What lands in a file, how rows are counted, how your own file is matched, and how files are marked.
- Accounts and sign-in
- Seats and invitations, two-step sign-in, signing other sessions out, and who can change billing.
- Home address and cell
- The contracted product: how it is matched, what the confidence score means, and where it never appears.