PEOPLE-SEARCH INQUIRY

Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) are teaming up to pressure regulators to protect survivors of domestic abuse by addressing how their private information is publicized on people-search sites.

In a letter sent to acting Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Rebecca Kelly Slaughter on Thursday, the two senators said sites that compile personal data about individuals — phone numbers, emails and physical addresses — can make it more difficult for victims to escape dangerous situations.

Victims “often are forced to relocate to a relative’s house to find safety,” Klobuchar and Murkowski wrote in the letter first shared with The Hill. “The availability of this data makes it difficult or impossible for victims to safely relocate with relatives.”

People-search sites, such as WhitePages, MyLife or Spokeo, scrape publicly available information from records and the web, compile profiles using that data and then sell them. They can often aggregate a large amount of data, including criminal records, financial records and family member addresses, that would otherwise be difficult for an individual to find.