Your digital footprint is likely much larger than you realize. Every social media post, account signup, and online purchase adds to the trail of personal information scattered across the internet. While completely disappearing from the digital world is nearly impossible, you can significantly reduce your online presence with a few targeted strategies.
Whether you’re concerned about privacy, trying to minimize targeted advertising, or simply want a fresh start, these methods will help you take back control of your personal information.
1. Discover what information is already available
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Before you can remove personal information, you need to know what’s out there and where it’s located. Run a thorough search of your full name in multiple search engines, including Google and Bing. Don’t forget to check image results as well.
Note every website where your information appears, including social media profiles, news articles, public records, and people finder sites.
For a more comprehensive approach, try searching combinations of your name with your location, job title, or other identifying information. This will reveal listings that might not appear in a basic name search but still connect to you.
2. Use data removal services
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Data brokers collect and sell your personal information to marketers and other companies. Fortunately though, data removal services like Incogni and DeleteMe automate the process of getting this data taken down by sending requests to hundreds of data brokers on your behalf.
These services scan databases to locate your information, then use privacy laws to legally compel companies to delete your data. They also provide ongoing monitoring to prevent your information from reappearing, saving you the time-consuming process of contacting each broker individually.
While they can’t remove information from public records or social media, these subscription services effectively reduce your digital footprint across most commercial databases with minimal effort on your part.
3. Use Google’s Results About You tool
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Sign into your Google account and navigate to your Google Account settings (by clicking your profile icon). Go to Data & Privacy, My Activity, Other activity, Results about you, and Manage results about you. Then click Get started and enter your full name and any variations you commonly use.
Add sensitive personal information you want monitored, such as your home address, phone number, and email addresses. Google will then proactively scan search results for your information and alert you when it appears, allowing you to quickly request removal directly through their interface.
Google’s Results about you service is particularly valuable for monitoring ongoing privacy issues, as new information about you can appear in search results at any time, even after initial cleanup efforts.
4. Lock down your social media accounts
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Social media platforms contain vast amounts of personal information that can be scraped and collected.
For accounts you want to keep, adjust privacy settings to their most restrictive options. Limit who can see your posts, prevent search engines from indexing your profile, and disable location tracking. On Facebook, restrict past posts to friends only and disable lookup by email or phone number.
For platforms you no longer use, complete deletion is better than abandonment. Deactivated accounts still store your data, while deleted accounts eventually have their information purged. Before deletion, download your data archives if you want to preserve any content.
5. Clean up and secure your Google account
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Run Google’s Privacy Checkup to stop the company from saving your search history, location data, and YouTube activity. Use the Security Checkup to review which devices and apps have access to your account and revoke unnecessary permissions.
For a more comprehensive approach, use Google Takeout to download all your data, and then consider deleting services you no longer need. You can choose to delete individual Google products or your entire Google account if you want a complete break.
While these steps won’t completely erase your digital existence, they will significantly reduce your online footprint and make your personal information much harder to find. The key is persistence. Online privacy isn’t a one-time effort but an ongoing process of monitoring and maintaining control over your digital presence.
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