To remove a Muck Rack profile without claiming it, email hello@muckrack.com with a link to the profile. Muck Rack's help center says a profile can only be removed at the request of the person it is about, and that it does not accept removal requests from third parties. If you claim the profile instead, you can hide it entirely, or hide parts of it such as your articles, your email and your phone number.
Muck Rack is a media database of journalists. Its help center says it ingests millions of articles a day, automatically identifies the author of each one, and assigns the article to an existing profile or creates a new one. Its editorial team then fills in selected profiles with publicly available information. It lists the personal information it may hold as your name, title, biography, employment information, work address, telephone numbers, email address, social media profiles and pictures, website or blog address, RSS feed, contact form address, pitch preferences, topics covered, and location information derived from social media. It says its customers may browse the profiles, create lists of journalists, send journalists targeted news and export journalist data for their own use. Inside the platform, a profile's contact section shows a journalist's default email and phone number and any active social media accounts. The help center adds that these profiles are searchable in Google.
Checked against Muck Rack's help-center articles "Privacy in Muck Rack for Journalists" (April 9, 2026), "Claim or Create A Journalist Profile" (February 13, 2026), "Manage A Journalist Profile" (May 7, 2026), "Introduction to Journalist Profiles" (April 13, 2026), "Managing Articles in Muck Rack" (September 23, 2026) and "An Overview of Data in Muck Rack" (April 18, 2025); Google's help page on refreshing outdated content and California's data broker registry, on October 31, 2026. Muck Rack's own site showed a scheduled-maintenance page all day, so we could not read its privacy policy or Journalist Privacy Notice live. We read the pages; we did not search for anyone, sign in or submit anything.
How to remove your Muck Rack profile without claiming it
- Find the Muck Rack profile that shows you and copy its link. The help center says profiles are searchable in Google; searching for site:muckrack.com and your name in quotes is one way to find yours. Profile addresses take the form muckrack.com/ followed by a handle.
- Email hello@muckrack.com. Muck Rack's help center names this address for removing the profile it maintains for you without claiming it.
- Write as yourself, ask plainly for removal, and include the link.
A suggested wording:
To: hello@muckrack.com
Subject: Please remove my journalist profile
I have not claimed this profile. Please remove the profile Muck Rack maintains for me from your platform: [link]
Name as shown on the profile: [name]
Please confirm when it has been removed.
The help center gives no timeframe for a removal, and doesn't say how Muck Rack checks that a request comes from the person on the profile.
No one else can file it for you. The help center says third-party requests for profile removal are not accepted under any circumstances. If a third party asks, it says Muck Rack will contact you directly to confirm your preferences, and will take no action unless you ask for the removal yourself. So a removal service, an employer or a relative can't do this step for you.
If you claim the profile (or already have)
Muck Rack says creating or claiming a journalist profile is free. To claim one:
- Sign up for a free Muck Rack account and identify yourself as a journalist.
- In the confirmation email, select Verify my email address.
- If a matching profile exists, Muck Rack asks "Is this you?" Answering Yes merges the profile into your account; answering No opens the platform chat so its team can help.
You can also claim a profile that has a matching X (Twitter) account, through Connect to Twitter on the profile create page. The help center says you don't need an X account to claim a profile, but that it is working on a known issue with claiming without X, and to use the chat widget if you want help with that.
Once the profile is yours:
- Hide the whole profile. Go to the Privacy section of your profile (muckrack.com/profile/privacy), check Hide my profile entirely and select Save changes. Muck Rack says your public profile will be hidden and you can still log in and use Muck Rack.
- Hide your articles or posts. In the same section, Hide articles on my profile hides the articles Muck Rack finds and adds for you, and Hide tweets on my profile hides the X Feed section.
- Hide your email and phone. In the Contact Information options for your profile, the help center says you can hide your email, and hide the phone number shown to registered Muck Rack users.
- Remove your photo. In Profile > Edit Profile, check Remove image and select Save changes.
- Take articles off the profile. In Your profile > Edit Profile > Review Articles, check an article, select Remove, then Not my work (you didn't write it) or Don't show my work (you did, but don't want it shown), and Confirm. Muck Rack says removing an article ends its connection to you but does not delete the article from its database, and that hiding keeps the connection in the system. If you don't see Review Articles, an older help article says to email hello@muckrack.com with the URLs of the articles you want removed.
Claiming means creating an account with your name and email address. The help center says what you add to your account, such as the email you log in with, is never provided to other Muck Rack users without your explicit permission. If you only want the profile gone, the email route above doesn't need an account.
Hiding is not the same as removal
The help center describes Hide my profile entirely as hiding your public profile, while the email route asks Muck Rack to remove the profile it maintains for you from its platform. One help article also calls the privacy settings the way to remove your profile, so the wording isn't consistent.
None of the articles we read say whether a hidden profile is still visible to customers inside Muck Rack. The help article on managing articles shows the public profile and the media database can differ: it says articles from certain licensed or print publishers may not appear on your public profile, yet customers using the media database can still find them. If you want the profile removed from Muck Rack's platform, not just hidden from the public, ask for removal by email. If you have already claimed it, leave out the suggested email's first line ("I have not claimed this profile"); the help center names the email route for profiles you haven't claimed and doesn't say whether it also applies once a profile is claimed.
What a removal covers
- The profile Muck Rack maintains for you. That is what the email route is for.
- Maybe not customers' own copies. The help center says customers can export journalist data for their own use, and add their own data to profiles, such as contact information, notes and email history, which only their own team can see. It doesn't say whether a removal reaches any of that.
- Not search results right away. The profiles are searchable in Google, so an old result can linger after the page goes. See the Google step below.
How long does it take?
None of the help-center articles we read give a timeframe for removing a profile by email. For changes you make to your articles on a claimed profile, Muck Rack says most may take up to a few minutes to appear on your public profile.
Why a profile can come back
Muck Rack's help center says it automatically creates new journalist profiles every day as it identifies bylines. It doesn't say whether a removed profile is kept from being rebuilt when new articles under your byline come in. If you still publish, search Google now and then for a Muck Rack page with your name, and email again with the new link if one appears.
If it doesn't work
- Email the privacy address. The help center says to write to privacy@muckrack.com with privacy questions or concerns. Include the profile link and the date of your first email.
- Use the chat. The help center says to choose the chat icon in the bottom right-hand corner, then Messages > Send us a message.
- Clear the old search result. Once the profile is gone, Google may still show it. Google's Refresh outdated content page is for content that was deleted from a site but still comes up in Google Search: select Request refresh, enter the page's address on the Page tab and select Submit. See how to remove your home address from Google search results for the wider picture.
Muck Rack's help center links a separate Journalist Privacy Notice at muckrack.com/journalist-privacy. That page, like the rest of muckrack.com, showed a scheduled-maintenance notice when we checked.
Muck Rack isn't one of the sites in Defynta's free scan, and Defynta doesn't file requests with it: this one is do-it-yourself. Muck Rack says it doesn't accept removal requests from third parties anyway.
Who runs Muck Rack. The help-center articles we read don't name the company behind it, and its privacy policy was behind the maintenance page. Its help center says Muck Rack got its start in 2009 to connect journalists on social media. We did not find Muck Rack on California's data broker registry (searched October 31, 2026), so a registry-based request is not a route here. File directly.
Related pages
- The Org, an org-chart site that builds position pages from public sources
- ZoomInfo, a business-contact database with a one-email opt-out
- RocketReach, another business-contact database with a one-email opt-out
- Apollo.io, another business-contact database with a one-email opt-out
- ContactOut, an email and phone finder sold to recruiters and sales teams
Full list: the master opt-out guide.
Frequently asked questions
Can I remove my Muck Rack profile without claiming it?
Yes. Muck Rack's help center says to email hello@muckrack.com with a link to your profile.
I never signed up. Why do I have a Muck Rack profile?
Muck Rack says it ingests millions of articles a day, identifies each author automatically, and assigns the article to an existing profile or creates a new one. Its editorial team then fills in selected profiles with publicly available information.
Can someone else ask Muck Rack to remove my profile?
No. Muck Rack says only the person whose profile is listed can ask, and that third-party requests are not accepted. If a third party asks, it says it will contact you to confirm your preferences.
Does hiding my profile delete it?
Muck Rack says Hide my profile entirely hides your public profile and that you can still log in and use Muck Rack. To have the profile removed from its platform, email hello@muckrack.com.
Does it cost anything?
Muck Rack says creating or claiming a journalist profile is free. None of the pages we read mention a fee for removal.
A journalist profile is one place your work email and phone number turn up; people-search sites are another. See which of the sites we track list you with a free Defynta scan.
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