Today we are going to discuss Mugshots that will appear in search results whenever someone is looking out for your name. Let’s be honest about this thing, if you have been arrested, one of the first things that happen in this booking process is mugshots and filling your arrest records. The Erase Mugshots price guide can help you make informed decisions.
States have different laws when it comes to the public records availability of criminal records, however, many of them make mug shots available in public almost instantly. This means that your mug shot will be uploaded on the internet in less than 24 hours.
When we look at this it seems like placing the mug shots or online arrest records on the internet should be considered as a valuable community service. However, an arrest isn’t equal to a conviction.
You may be in the situation when you get arrested and have an arrest record but never charged with a crime or your case can be dropped. Nevertheless, your published mugshot online will remain circling on the internet, it will bring a negative effect in many areas of your life, possibly break your online reputation, and make you use mugshot removal services.
First of all, having a mugshot on the internet will surely bring you a lot of embarrassment and will damage your reputation. Whenever someone is searching for your name on the internet, the first thing that will show up is the public record and picture that you don’t want anyone to see.
This will affect your personal relationships and employment opportunities because it indicates that you have been involved in criminal activities. As we already mentioned, this may happen even if you didn’t commit the crime or the criminal defense attorney eventually proved that you are not guilty.
Before we offer you some solutions to remove your mug shots from the internet space let’s talk about the business of Mugshots that is happening a lot recently.
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The Mug Shots Business
Nowadays, many different states added laws to restrict or limit mugshots that are posted online. These measures prohibit publishing criminal record information, arrest information, or mugshots online, and also prohibit charging for taking the pictures down (blackmailing).
The problem occurs in the states that still don’t have such a law when it comes to this. Once your Mugshot is uploaded and accessible on the internet a lot of websites will take over those photos and will upload them on their servers and make them public. Even the local newspapers are generating traffic when publishing photos on their websites.
Just a simple Google search will bring you a link to these mugshot sites and you will be able to see the images appearing at the top of the results. As we already mentioned, even if that person was not found guilty those pictures will remain in the search results and you will feel the consequences.
This problem can become even bigger when you figure out that these images are uploaded to a searchable database which means there isn’t a limit on how many websites can publish those photos. This situation gave courage to certain websites to start their shady business with these pictures.
We would not suggest you write on every website separately for them to remove those pictures and even if you try there are low chances that you will come out with positive results.
However, you shouldn’t stress a lot because there is an option for you. There are mugshot removal companies that offer their mugshot removal services and remove mug shots from the internet space.
The prices for these services are going from a few hundred dollars to thousands of dollars (depending on how many websites have published your mug shots).
There are a lot of known websites that are dealing with problems like this and they claim their service will be 100% effective and they will remove all your mug shots in mostly 72 hours.
In continuation of this article, we will try to explain to you which services you can use in case you decide to pay for Mugshot removal.
Paying To Erase Your Mug Shots From The Internet Space
Once you understand that is possible to remove your mug shots from the internet, you are going to ask yourself “should I pay for my mugshots to be removed from the internet?”
This question will answer itself because if you have some urgent need to remove your mug shots from the internet, you will have to pay for that before someone you don’t want can see them.
Once you make your mind you should be aware that you need to carefully pick the company that offers mugshot removal service and will go through this process of deleting your mugshot images from the internet or you should simply contact those websites on your own and ask them about the cost for your pictures to be removed.
Third-party services and other solutions
You need to know that most third-party websites will have a hard time when trying to delete the images.
This will happen because they will send letters to other mugshot websites and maybe they will follow up with some of the requests. However, the final word in all the process is having the webmaster of those websites that posted pictures and they will decide if they will have mugshots removed or not.
That means those third-party companies can try but they cannot guarantee that your images will be removed.
The most reliable way to get your mugshot removed will be if you contact the actual site instead of wasting your time and finances on third-party agencies.
Removing mugshots from Mugshots.com
Mugshots.com is offering now free removal for any person who can provide paperwork proving they have never been charged with a criminal offense or expungement documents showing their crimes are sealed. Just go on their website where you will be able to find a contact form in order to contact them and sort that out.
You will need to fill out the form with your personal information like name, address, phone number, and email address together with info about your issue.
Please note that you shouldn’t be aggressive because they don’t have any legal obligation to remove your images and it all depends on their goodwill.
You should send an email to their legal address which is [email protected] and attach your documentation proving the dismissal of charges. Just check again after 7-10 days and your pictures should be removed until then.
Steps to remove mugshots on your own
As we already mentioned there are third-party websites that are offering their services to contact the sites that uploaded your mugshots and try to remove them. We said that those websites send requests to the sites but they don’t always follow those requests and chances for the images to be taken off are very low.
On the other side, there are mugshot removal companies and official sites that will be able to help you with this kind of issue but they have some big rates that are going from 1000$-5000$ depending on how many different sites your mugshots have been uploaded.
If you don’t have enough money to pay for this process there is always an option for you (as we mentioned before) to contact these websites on your own.
You will need to contact the webmasters of each site separately explain the situation and provide to them (if you can) documentation that you have never been charged for the crime. The webmasters may request from you a certain fee to be paid for images to be removed, it’s up to you to decide if you are going to pay them or not.
Remove mugshots for free
In order to do this properly, you will need a lot of your pictures so you can upload them on various trendy websites.
You need to be sure that you will capture all of the pictures that you will upload with the same name (as it appears on your mugshot) so you can “replace” the old content with a new and fresh one.
In case you are using a WordPress site to post them, do not forget to use alt tags. If you keep the tempo for a few months it will bring you some good results and you will push your mugshots deep down in Google search.
Another interesting tip is to start a WordPress blog and post there a couple of times per week, using your photos and your name. Like this, the internet space will be flooded with new information and you will push your old mugshots down further and they will be hard to find with search engines.
Some of the trendy photo-based websites that you can “spam” with your pictures are:
- YouTube
- Tumblr
- WordPress
Other ways to remove Mugshots
The Erase Mugshots price guide is not the only tool at your disposal. If you are searching for additional options, there are some other ways for you to remove your Mugshots from the internet.
You can try to hire a legal company (mugshot removal lawyer) in order to sort this out. Some lawyers specialize in reputation repair and content removal. Most of these legal representatives will be able to send threatening letters to the websites that upload your images and get them removed.
Final Words
Many people in order to describe this kind of website are using terms like “Extortion” or I will say it’s a kind of blackmailing. You should know that this practice isn’t illegal in many countries and since your images are uploaded on the internet people can take them and use the situation to possibly make money.
It’s up to you to decide if you are going to remove them on your own (for free), or you will pay to legal companies or directly to the webmasters in order to remove those images.
You should know that if you decide to pay for this service, the chances that your mugshots will be removed are greater.
