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Right now, you’re leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind you.
With every new technology, device, and app, comes new possibilities for privacy violations.
It’s no longer difficult to track people down, merely by what they post on social media.
Locations can be picked up from digital data stored in photos uploaded to the internet.
And a growing number of people are learning to reverse-engineer who people are and where they live even if starting with a single social media account that isn’t linked out to other social media accounts.
There is a fine line between living in fear, and taking the right precautions to ensure that your digital identity is protected and kept private.
It’s the latter that these tips are designed to help you with.
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to go to extreme lengths to protect yourself from identity theft or other forms of harassment online, but it is important to know that the more you put online, the easier it will be for a skilled person with bad intentions to discover who you are.
Connecting the crumbs isn’t that hard.
Some of the most common ways that sometimes ill-intentioned people dig up private details about people who publicly post things on line include the following:
- Reverse Image Search: A reverse-image-search feature on several search engines makes it possible to upload a photo and be shown photos that are similar. If a person’s face is shown, that single search may lead the ill-intentioned person to discovering who you are within a few minutes.
- Scenery Check, Geolocation: Every digital photograph comes with a large packet of information that says something about the photo, from camera settings to location. These digital identifiers can be used by some people to find out where and when the photo was taken. In most cases, that’s not normally a problem. But, given enough of these photographs, your identity and even location can be compromised.
- Linked Social Media Accounts: Cross-linking your social media accounts only seems natural. “Follow me on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.” Pretty simple, right? Well, with enough of that happening, narrowing down who you are and what your interests (and even location) are, becomes easier and easier. (To avoid this, create separate profiles for any business endeavors you’re starting, and carefully consider whether it’s worth it to pass on so much personal data.)
- G-Mail Addresses: You may think you’re protecting your privacy by only ever giving out a G-Mail email address. Unfortunately, that is a false idea. If you have ever rated a local business, or used your email address to sign up for some services, it is often not difficult to discover a trail of locations you’ve been to. In some cases, people may even be able to discover exactly who you are with just one GMail address. Again, the more breadcrumbs you leave behind you on the Internet, the easier it is to find out who you are.
Rule #1 is to put as little personal information online as you possibly can.
Reasons to remove your personal information from the internet.
Removing your data from the internet reduces your chances of becoming a victim of identity theft.
The more information available about you online and the faster it is discoverable, the more likely you are to fall prey to identity theft—assuming all other factors are the same.
If I’ve used Info Remover to delete personal information about me online and you haven’t, and we were then to both lose our wallets, an ill-intentioned person would have an easier time stealing your identity than they would mine.
That may not always be the case, but it is at least a logical assumption. The more you can do to safeguard your identity and reduce the amount of information you put online in the first place, the better protected your identity will be.
Removing your data from the internet helps protect your privacy.
You have the right to privacy. Privacy isn’t guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, but it is basically guaranteed by several of the Amendments, which the Supreme Court has ruled essentially protect your right to it.
Publicity for a business and someone selling products is a great thing.
For private individuals, not so much.
If you want to lead a more private and protected life, you’ll want to remove your data from online data brokers.
Right now, they’re selling your information to the highest bidder—or anyone willing to pay about $20 for a complete report on all publicly available data related to who you are, and where you’ve been. This report typically includes all of your past addresses, your places of work or employment, who your relatives are, where you went to school, and much more.
In fact, using these reports alone, it is often possible to work out the answers to the security questions that are typically used when creating an account.
Mother’s Maiden Name? Yes, that usually shows on reports from data brokers.
Have You Ever Lived at an Address on “Beverly Blvd” or “Waverly Way”? Yes, that, too, is usually answerable from data broker reports alone.
When ill-intentioned people collect enough of this information from enough sources, they can effectively compromise the security settings on many accounts, and create at least some havoc on your personal life.
Your current address is probably another thing you’d prefer to remain somewhat private. That, too, is available on data broker reports.
Removing your data from the internet can help protect your family.
The safety and privacy of your family is important to you.
Data brokers publish data that can compromise their safety, such as their past addresses—and their past and present phone numbers.
Worse, these reports link family members together, even if they’re not actually related.
If it’s a reasonable assumption that two or more people might be related, data brokers will likely make that connection.
That means if the safety of one of your family members is compromised, the rest of your family may also be adversely affected.
Worse, if Jim Jones has a grudge against someone completely unrelated to you but who shares your last name, after buying a $20-30 report, Jim Jones may think one of your family members is the right person to target or attack about a grudge that is completely disrelated.
Removing your data from the internet can help you reduce the damage from a publicity nightmare.
With TikTok and other social media platforms, saying the wrong thing can sometimes land you in serious trouble.
Someone, somewhere may disagree with you, enough to “call you out” or “cancel you.”
At InfoRemover, we’ve seen numerous instances of this and the devastating damage it can cause.
If an employee of your small business is involved in a social media PR disaster—which are usually always unintentional and unexpected—then some of the people who were offended may go after you and your personal life.
Poor Google reviews can be the least of your concerns in these cases.
Granted, not everyone will experience this, but those who do always wish one thing when the air clears and the dust settles: That they were more careful about putting their personal information online.
Removing your data from the internet can help you put your past behind you.
We’ve all done things that we’re not entirely proud of.
For some of us, that includes breaking the law, even if we thought our accusers or trial wasn’t completely fair.
Some of us agreed to plea bargains without fully understanding what we were signing away.
These records can come back and haunt us, even if we’ve completely turned our lives around and changed our ways.
Deleting personal information off the internet may help you put that past behind you, whether it’s moving into a new neighborhood, starting a new job, entering into a new career path, or getting married.
While we agree that there are times for full disclosure and total honesty—like dating and marriage—we don’t agree that that has to mean the world needs to know about something you did 20-30 years ago which you’ve since taken responsibility for.
Data removal doens’t work for everyone in all cases, but for those whom it does, the new-start is usually welcome and appreciated.
Removing your data from the internet puts you back in control of it.
It’s your data and you should call the shots about what happens to it.
Removing your personal data from the internet helps you start over in more ways that one.
Growing up, you may not have ever been told that the Internet lives forever.
If we’d known then what we do know, many of us would be more careful about what we put online.
Removing your personal data from the data brokers helps you to regain control over your online identity and personal privacy.
Removing your data from the internet prevents others from profiting off of it.
Believe it or not, there are people and companies currently profiting from the sale of your personal data.
Even if you’re not a particularly notable personality.
Whether someone has paid for your data specifically is often hard to detect, but payments can vary from individuals buying the data of a single person, such as yourself, to much larger companies buying the personal data of numerous individuals.
In either case, after you have it removed, it’s no longer available for sale to anyone, during the covered period.
This is why subscription data removal is important: Data brokers are constantly looking for more data they can aggregate and make available for sale. But, legally, they also have to have opt-out choices for people to remove their data.
A subscription data removal company fulfills their removal requirements for each of the months that the service is active and paid for.
The company you pay will constantly monitor anywhere from 50 to 300 separate data broker websites to ensure that your data is not again put up for sale.
