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How to Remove Your Personal Information From the Internet in 5 Easy Steps
Have you ever wondered how to get your personal information removed from the internet?
If yes, then this is DeleteMyInfo’s five easy steps to get your personal information removed from the internet.
Remove your personal information off the internet to help lessen your risks of identity theft.
You probably have more personal information online than you realize.
As stated by the U.S. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), consumers reported 1.4 million cases of identity theft in 2021, which was part of a year in which they claimed to have lost $5.8 billion to fraud in total, an increase of 70% from the year before.
What motivates all of this fraud and theft? access to one’s personal data.
Personal information can be obtained by scammers and criminals in a variety of ways, including phishing scams that trick you into giving it to them, malware that steals it from your devices, buying your information on dark web marketplaces, and information exposed in data breaches, to mention a few.
However, data broker websites, where personal information is exposed online for nearly everyone to access, provide scammers and thieves with more tools to help them perpetrate theft and fraud. Therefore, it is crucial to remove your information from them in order to protect your identity and privacy.
What are websites for data brokers?
Consider the websites of data brokers as enormous databases of personal data. You may find out by doing a name and address search online. You’ll probably come across dozens of websites that reveal information on you, some of which provide a small amount for free and others that provide far more for a fee.
Data brokers gather and then combine personal data from many sources, such as:
- Your online public records are available.
- Data from social media profiles you keep open.
- The websites you access and the mobile applications you utilize.
- Along with merchants who exchange data related to your loyalty cards.
Additionally, data brokers purchase personal data from other data brokers. A byproduct of this is that some data brokers have thousands of data points for billions of people worldwide.
What would that appear to be? A broker may be aware of your political leanings, the price you bought for your property, your level of education, the places and people you’ve lived in the past as well as how long you’ve been driving. Thanks to information from loyalty cards, a broker might also be aware of your preferred over-the-counter allergy medication and favorite ice cream flavor. Additionally, they might gain access to health-related data via fitness apps. The depth and breadth of personal information is limitless.
Given the potential amount of detail in the information, it is understandable why data brokers earn an estimated $200 billion USD worldwide annually.
Who makes use of the personal data found on websites for data brokers?
On the good side, advertisers use it to develop niche ad campaigns. They can produce lists based on extremely detailed criteria, like shopping preferences, individual interests, and even political leanings as indicated above, using data sold by data brokers. Without your knowledge, most likely, and most likely without any means of challenging the accuracy of the information.
These websites can also be used for background checks, which is another acceptable usage. Data brokers are a good place for law enforcement, journalists, and employers to start their research because most of the hard work has already been done. In other words, data brokers have already compiled an individual’s data, saving time in the process.
It’s still legal even if it seems a little sketchy. There are currently no federal laws in the United States that govern data brokers or require companies to delete personal information upon request. A few states have laws in place geared at safeguarding consumers, including Nevada, Vermont, and California. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union, meantime, has tougher guidelines on the data that can be gathered and the uses that can be made of it. Even so, the data broker industry is thriving.
On the darker side, fraud and identity theft are committed using personal information by con artists and crooks. They can build a high-fidelity profile of their victims if they have enough personally identifiable information from enough sources. one that provides them with sufficient details to create new accounts in their names.
So clearing up your personal information online makes a lot of sense from the perspectives of identity and privacy.
Information about how to delete personal data from the internet
Let’s go over several methods for deleting your personal data from data brokers and other online sources.
1. Demand for data removal from data broker websites
Finding the websites with your information is the first step in the procedure. You can then ask to have it taken down. However, as was already indicated, there are countless numbers of these sites. Once you have found the websites that post and sell information about you, manually sending the requests can be difficult in and of itself.
You can get the job done thanks to our Personal Data Cleanup. The riskiest data broker websites are scanned by Personal Data Cleanup, and it displays which ones are selling your personal information. Additionally, it offers instructions on how to erase your data from such sites and, depending on your subscription, may even handle the removal for you. It also keeps an eye on such sites, so you may ask for your information to be taken down again if it appears there again.
2. Limit the information Google gathers
Google holds just over 92% of the global search engine market share as of September 2022. Google provides a wide range of additional services and apps in addition to being a search engine, like Gmail and Google Maps. Even while Google provides many free tools for productivity, travel, business, and leisure, obtaining and analyzing your personal information is still a cost associated with using these resources.
By requesting to have your name removed from Google search results, you can reduce the amount of information that the search engine associates with you. This will prevent anyone conducting a name search online from receiving any results. Additionally, Google continuously gathers all of your browsing information (keep in mind that this won’t remove your information from the original sites and sources where it was posted). To make sure that the data is regularly deleted and to lessen the amount of time that your sensitive data is exposed, you can enable “Auto Delete” in your privacy settings.
To stop websites from linking you to them, you can also occasionally remove your cookies or utilize the incognito mode on your browser. To erase your browser’s and cookies’ histories, go to your Google Chrome settings.
3. Make your current social media accounts private and delete any older ones.
Data brokers can gather information from open social media profiles, as was previously mentioned. You can keep as little of a presence on social media as possible. List the ones you currently use or have used in the past. You might wish to deactivate or think about removing old accounts that you no longer use or websites like Myspace or Tumblr that have fallen by the wayside.
Consider adjusting your privacy settings for social media sites like Facebook and Instagram, which you might still use frequently, to make sure that the bare minimum of your personal information is posted there. For instance, you can lock your profile on Facebook, but you can stay private on Instagram.
4. Personal data should not be posted on other websites or blogs.
If you’ve ever authored blogs, articles, or other online content, now might be a good time to think about removing it if it is no longer needed. You might have disclosed intimate information about your life, depending on what you posted. You might also appear in other people’s posts, blogs, or articles on different social media platforms. It is worthwhile to get in touch with these individuals and ask them to remove any posts that contain sensitive information.
When companies or hackers conduct “internet scrapes” to discover better methods to use your specific information, they frequently employ social media and online articles that store your personal information. You may assist safeguard your privacy by asking your friends or third-party websites to remove that information.
5. Restrict the settings for the apps you use by deleting those you don’t use.
Delete all the unneeded phone apps that you no longer use or require as another technique to clean up your online digital footprint. Apps may be able to track personal information like your real-time location and even your financial information if you have a paid subscription to the app, even while they are closed or not in use.
Some apps even make money by selling this data to other businesses that use it to advertise to certain consumer profiles and segments. If you want to reduce your online footprint, try to share as little information with apps as you can. Give them access to your contacts, location, and photographs only when necessary and only when the app is being used. You can accomplish this by using the location services and app settings on your phone.
What are the companies that remove your personal information from the internet?
DeleteMyInfo is one of the Data Removal Services in the USA that is willing to help all US citizens. We offer affordable plans starting from $8.33. DeleteMyInfo is the fastest way to remove your information from Google and ALL Major Data Brokers.
“We will remove you from the internet” is our main goal. If you want to know more about DeleteMyInfo’s plans and packages, contact us now, and we will remove you from the internet.
