In today’s digital age, where almost everything is connected online, it is crucial to protect your personal information from unauthorized access. Your personal information includes data such as your name, address, social security number, email account, and more. Protecting your personal information is essential to prevent identity theft, data breaches, and online scams. In this article, we will discuss why it is important to protect your personal information and provide tips on how you can remove your personal information online and keep it private and secure.
Why is it important to protect your personal information?
Protecting your personal information is vital due to several reasons. One of the main reasons is to prevent identity theft. Identity theft occurs when someone steals and uses your personal information without your consent, leading to various financial and personal consequences. Another reason is the increasing number of data breaches, where hackers gain unauthorized access to databases containing personal information, compromising your privacy and security. Additionally, sharing personal information online without caution can make you vulnerable to online scams, where scammers exploit your personal details for fraudulent activities.
Identity theft
Identity theft refers to the fraudulent acquisition and use of another person’s personal information, typically for financial gain. It can lead to significant financial losses and damage to your credit score. To protect yourself from identity theft, it is crucial to remove your personal information from online platforms and be cautious when sharing sensitive information.
Data breaches
Data breaches occur when hackers gain unauthorized access to databases containing personal information. These breaches can happen to individuals, organizations, or even government agencies. When your personal information is exposed in a data breach, you become vulnerable to identity theft and other fraudulent activities. Taking steps to remove your personal information from the internet can minimize the risk of being affected by data breaches.
Online scams
Online scams are prevalent in today’s digital world. Scammers use various tactics to trick individuals into providing their personal information, such as phishing emails and fake websites. By removing your personal information from online platforms and being cautious when sharing information online, you can protect yourself from falling victim to online scams.
Icky Spam
I don’t think anyone enjoys getting junk mail, spam email, stupid fake Whatsapp messages, or suspect SMS texts. Spam is a disease. And unfortunately, once your personal info is out there, you’re likely to get a lot more of it. While spam may not be scam like above, and it may not be nefarious in nature, it can be hugely annoying, and time consuming to manage.
Is your info freely available online?
Well, let’s find out. Enter your name and residential details into a search engine and see what it spits out. Your search results will most likely reveal numerous websites that contain your personal information. Certain websites may provide limited data for free while others offer more comprehensive details for a fee.
So, how can this be? The answer lies with “Data brokers.” They are a part of a worldwide data market valued at approximately $200 billion in the United States annually. This industry thrives on collecting numerous data points of billions of individuals from public records, social media platforms, third-party sources, and occasionally even other data broker websites.
Feeling uneasy? You should. In fact, law enforcement officers frequently use data brokers to pull profiles and background information for individuals. And it’s also obviously accessible to scammers, spammers and thieves too!
So the question now is, can you do anything about it? And the answer yes, you can. It might not be 100%, but you are able to limit what’s out there on the internet about you in various ways. Some are simple, others a bit more involved. We will run through them…
How can you remove your personal information online?
There are several ways you can remove your personal information from the internet to safeguard your privacy and security. Here are a few methods:
Delete your online accounts
Deleting your online accounts, especially those you no longer use, is a simple and effective way to remove personal information from online platforms. Start by identifying the accounts you no longer need and follow the account deletion process provided by the respective platforms. This can help prevent your personal information from being accessible to others. Go through your mobile device too and delete apps you don’t use.
Delete your personal details from data broker sites
Data broker sites collect and compile personal information from various sources to create detailed profiles. These profiles can include your name, address, contact details, and even financial information. Removing your personal information from data broker sites can be a challenging task, but it is worth the effort to protect your privacy. Start by searching for your information on data broker sites and follow their specific removal instructions. Be prepared to provide necessary documentation to verify your identity.
Request removal from search engines
Search engines like Google index and display information from various websites. If you find personal information online that you want to remove, you can request removal from search engine results. Contact the search engine directly and provide details of the specific URLs where your personal information appears. Keep in mind that search engines may have specific policies and guidelines for removal, so familiarize yourself with their requirements. Here’s how to submit a removal request with Google:
Submit a removal request to Google
If you find personal information in Google search results that you want to remove, you can submit a removal request directly to Google. Visit the Google Removals Tool and follow the instructions to request removal of specific URLs containing your personal information. Google has specific policies and guidelines on how to get your personal information removed from search results. Make sure to familiarize yourself with these policies and guidelines to ensure your removal request is properly addressed.
10 tips to keep your personal information private and secure from data brokers?
In addition to removing your personal information from the internet, there are other measures you can take to protect your personal information and maintain your privacy and security online. Here are a few tips to consider:
1. Be cautious with sharing personal information online
This may be obvious, but it’s often overlooked. Be aware about what you share. When sharing personal information online, whether through social media or other platforms, be cautious about what you share and who you share it with. Avoid posting sensitive information such as your full address or social security number publicly, as it can be accessed by scammers and identity thieves.
2. Update your OS and antivirus software
Keeping your operating system and antivirus software up to date is important for protecting your personal information from malware and other digital threats. Regularly installing updates and patches can help strengthen your security defenses and prevent unauthorized access to your device.
3. Keep your social media profile private
Data brokers have a treasure trove of personal data at their disposal through public social media profiles. If you have shared information such as your workplace, educational institution, or marital status, data brokers will snatch it up. They may also extract additional profiling information from your interests, preferences, and group memberships. While we have always advised making your profile private and accessible only to friends and family, the intrusive actions of data brokers make it even more crucial to prioritize privacy settings.
4. Use a Virtual Private Network (VPN)
A Virtual Private Network (VPN) safeguards your online data and privacy by establishing an encrypted passage, rendering your actions significantly harder to trace compared to when not using one. Employing a VPN is an excellent method to shield your sensitive information while engaging in activities like banking, shopping, or handling confidential data on the internet. Additionally, it offers notable privacy advantages as it diminishes the amount of personal information that can be gathered and monitored by others, including data brokers, thereby ensuring a more private online experience.
5. Limit location services on your smartphone
Disable the location services for the apps on your smartphone. Similar to property agents, data brokers heavily rely on the importance of location. By knowing not only what you’re doing but also where you’re doing it, they gain more insight into your actions and travels. Advertisers find location data particularly valuable and will use it to create highly targeted advertisement campaigns based on your movement and whereabouts. Your apps are one of the sources for this location data. Depending on the app and the agreement with the user, certain apps may collect and share information about your location. Go to your phone’s settings and turn off the location services for each app individually, leaving it enabled only for the apps that are absolutely necessary and only when you are using them.
6. Use loyalty cards with caution
Regardless of whether you’re at your local pharmacy, grocery store, or any other store, the cost savings you receive from using a loyalty card may have a downside: the sharing of your personal information. These data brokers purchase and sell your purchasing habits to complete their detailed profiles on individuals. If you prefer to keep your buying preferences and patterns private, it is recommended to make your purchases without using your loyalty card. Ultimately, it boils down to a compromise. Which is the more valuable: the discount or your privacy?
7. Watch those cookies
Due to the extensive influence of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union, numerous websites currently display choices for tracking cookies to their visitors. Upon tapping them, you can opt to choose solely the essential and operational cookies—and if desired, activate additional cookies for convenience and maybe even promotional reasons. In this situation, the most cautious approach is to enable only the bare minimum, thereby averting the transmission of additional data to data intermediaries.
8. Use secure websites
Make sure you use secure websites, especially when submitting forms and other sensitive information. Look for the “https” in the url. That “s” at the end means it is a secured connection. While there are still vulnerabilities, it is a lot more secure than “http” alone. And, check the website address, especially if you click on links. There are many ways scammers create fake lookalike sites that appear real, but may have an extra digit in the url, and then just wait for someone to submit their form containing all manner of information whether financial, personal, passwords, social security numbers,… all of it can be used to gain valuable information!
9. Limit bluetooth and WiFi use on your devices
Certain retailers utilize “passive tracking” technologies when you are inside or near their stores. These technologies involve accessing your Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connections in order to search for compatible networks and devices. The retailers have sensors that they can connect to, enabling them to gather data. This data allows them to determine various things, such as the peak time periods of store traffic, the most popular items and displays, or even if you simply pass by the storefront without entering. Additionally, because each smartphone has a distinct identifier called a MAC number (Media Access Control), there is a potential for them to link your identity to your phone. There is a straightforward solution to this issue – disable your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth when they are not in use to prevent tracking.
10. Use identity protection tools
When you protect your devices, you are safeguarding the contents on them. That can include your personal data and information. There are tools you can use, like that from Mcafee that safeguard your identity. These tools can include antivirus software, password managers, dark web monitoring and even document shredders that permanently dispose of confidential documents (merely deleting them is not sufficient.).
The Final Score – How to reduce your personal info online
It’s incredible just how much personal information can eb obtained on the internet. There’s a huge multi-billion dollar industry that has developed around it. Data brokers store, release and sell personal information. And your personal info might be sitting out, ready to be shared or sold and then used by nefarious actors such as scammers, spammers and thieves. If you find personal information about you or your family online that you would prefer was not, then you can submit a removal request to the search company, like Google. And to avoid your information becoming available online, we identify several ways you can reduce the risk. It can take an investment in time, and perhaps some money, but your privacy and security are a valuable commodity worth protecting! Be smart and stay safe.