Contents
How to Delete Your Personal Information from the Internet?. 1
Understanding Our Digital Footprint. 1
What Kind of Personal Information Is Misused Online?. 1
How is This Information Used?. 2
Ways to Remove Your Personal Information from the Internet. 2
1. Request Google to Remove Your PII 2
2. Delete Old and Unused Email Addresses. 3
3. Delete Old Social Media Accounts. 3
4. Remove Your Information from Data Brokers. 3
5. Delete E-commerce Accounts and Apps You Do Not Use. 4
Tips to Prevent Leaving Personal Data Online. 4
The Internet is not just a source of entertainment and information. It has a dark side, which means you should be careful about what you share on the internet. Sick-minded individuals and hackers access your data to sell it off on the dark web.
Moreover, cases like the recent National Public Data Breach reiterate how your personal data like social security numbers, addresses, etc. are unsafe. On top of that, the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandalshows us how companies can collect and use your personal data from your online accounts, without your consent.
These data-related incidentsforce us to worry about data privacy. Therefore, it is natural to want to take matters into our hands.
If you are such an individual and want to delete your personal information from the internet, then get your ducks in a row, because we are here to help.
Understanding Your Digital Footprint
If you want to delete your data from the internet, then you should understand how it gets there in the first place. For this, let us explore the concept of digital footprint as it plays an important role in this scenario.
A digital footprint is the data trail you leave on the internet whenever you are on it. This includes every activity you do on the internet, ranging from searching on Google to clicking on an image. This information helps in tracing you in real life or determining your interests. Your digital footprint continues to grow bigger as you keep using the internet.
Social media accounts are your most obvious digital footprint as you deliberately share information about yourself, from where you live and work, to where you hang out with your friends. Additionally, digital footprint also includes the website cookies you sometimes allow mindlessly. These cookies track your activity on browsers.
There are two kinds of digital footprints:
- Active digital footprints: This is the information that you willingly share about yourself, for example, things shared on our social media or the forms youfillout online.
- Passive digital footprint: this is when our information is collected without our knowledge, like y
- our IP addresses or how many times you visit certain websites.
What Kind of Personal Information Is Misused Online?
Now that you have a fair idea ofyour digital footprints, let’s look at all kinds of personal information that is used to harm you.
- Location-Based Information: This kind of information includes check-ins, online reviews, and pictures in specific locations.It is used to determine your vacation preferences or even your whereabouts.
- Search Histories: Google uses this to feed its Google Ads algorithms. Have you ever noticed how Google starts showing you ads for the random things you search online. It is because Google tracks your search histories.
- Personally Identifiable Information (PII):This is all kinds of information that can be used to identify you like your name, pictures, DOBs (Date of Birth), phone number, family members, health information, etc.
- Professional Information: This includes your past and current employers, designation, and employment histories.Platforms like LinkedIn have your entire professional information available including where you work currently.
- Political, Lifestyle, and Other Interests: Your online activities can can be used to determine your interests as well. For example political affiliations can be gauged by the political personalities you follow online whereas lifestyle inclinations can be determined by the kind of influencers you follow.
- Financial Information: This means your credit card or your bank information, which hackers can access through a data breach. This can be used to drain your bank accounts or commit credit card fraud.
How is This Information Used?
Your publically available information is used in many ways.
- Hackers can use this information to attempt cybercrimes like phishing or financial scams.
- Data brokers can acquire this information and sell it to ad agencies or scammers without your consent.
- Organizations use your personal data for various purposes and give it to their sister organizations for further use. This is called Commingling.
This is why the presence of your data online is dangerous. Let us get into ways to remove it from the internet.
Ways to Remove Your Personal Information from the Internet
Nobody wants their personal information on the internet. Thanks to data privacy regulations, there are ways to remove your data from the internet.
1. Request Google to Remove Your PII
You can start by searching your name on Google to see what information is public. If that information contains your address, emails, phone numbers, or pictures then you can request Google to delete it. You can do so by filling out Google’s information removal form(PII) and submitting it.
A disclaimer though, this action will only remove your information from Google’s search results. This means Google won’t show your information on its search engine result pages.However, the websites containing that information will still have your information.
2. Delete Old and Unused Email Addresses
Email addresses hold a sea of information about you, from your phone number, and addresses, to your financial information. Therefore, your old email accounts are a treasure trove for hackers. If you don’t use an old email account, you should delete it immediately before it gets into the wrong hands.
You can start by saving your important data through backup. After that, you can delete your email by following instructions from your email provider.
3. Delete Old Social Media Accounts
If you have multiple accounts on social media platforms, you should consider deleting the old ones. These accounts contain information about you and are a perfect target for hackers to take over and pretend to be you.
Apart from social media accounts, you should also delete any past blogs, YouTube channels, and Tumblr pages. All you need to do is search these up, delete them, and then request Google to remove that information from the search results.
4. Remove Your Information from Data Brokers
The good news is that most data brokers allow you to remove your data from their sites. It is not easy to remove the information. Here are the most probable data brokers that will have your information:
- Radaris
- People Finder
- Spokeo
- Acxicom
- Equifax
- Oracle
- Experian
- Eplison
- Whitepages
However, these are just some of the data broker sites. We recommend you find more data broker sites before you begin removingyour data from them. Each of these sites uses personal information for different purposes. So the chances of your data being present on other sites are always there.
For removing information you will have to make an account with each site and search your information before putting in a formal request to remove that information. Remember, each instance requires a separate request. So make sure you have time on your hands before you get into this.
You can also pay to remove your information from these websites. Platforms like DeleteMe, OneRep, and Kanary allow yearly subscriptions to repeatedly remove your data. However, these websites cannot possibly cover all the broker sites.
5. Delete E-commerce Accounts and Apps You Do Not Use
To shop online, people make an account with the e-commerce website to avail discounts. These accounts hold your PII, like phone number, address, and credit card information. In case of a breach this information can leak, causing it to fall into the wrong hands. You will have to log into each of these websites and delete your information manually.
You should also consider deleting the information in unused apps on your phone. It might take some time to figure it out, but remember everything is a Google search away.
Tips to Prevent Leaving Personal Data Online
Sadly, the fight for removing data privacy doesn’t end at just removing your information. You should take steps to minimize your digital footprint as much as possible. Since you cannot stop using the internet, you can take measures to prevent your personal information from being left online.
- You can use anti-tracking browser extensions to mitigate online data collection, like AVG AntiTrack or AvastAntiTrack.
- It is smart to use a separate email for signing up for newsletters and services. Do not use your personal email.
- You should set all your social media accounts to be private and delete everyone you do not know personally.
- Invest in a paid VPN (Virtual Private Network) like Proton VPN or Nord VPN.
- Subscribe to an ISP that provides internet security like Xfinity. You can choose any of the XfinityInternet plans to get complimentary internet security.
- Do not fall for Incognito Modes or private browsing. They cannot protect your online data.
