The websites you visit on a daily basis—as well as innumerable data brokers you’ve never heard of—purchase, sell, and share your personal information. Unsurprisingly, a GetApp survey revealed that 72% of Americans believe online advertisements know too much about them. Unfortunately, removing all traces of personal information from websites is practically impossible. However, there are numerous actions you can take to lessen your digital footprint and make it more challenging for others to make money off of your personal information, especially those businesses that don’t provide any sort of convenience in exchange and merely collect your data for targeted advertising.
Do a fast online search for your name. You might need to give a middle initial or the place where you’ve lived, depending on how common your name is. You’ll undoubtedly find your personal information on websites like Mylife, Pipl, Spokeo, and Whitepages as you read through the search results. Welcome to the world of intrusive websites that do intrusive personal searches and act as data brokers to sell personal data. Your name, present and previous addresses, date of birth, information about your family, phone numbers, email address, and a variety of other private data points are frequently published on these sites.
Many websites that conduct people searches have an opt-out page, while others require an email request. Keep track of the websites you’ve emailed, and if required, follow up with a more direct email. You may need to register for an account on some data broker websites, including WhitePages, in order to submit a deletion request. Use a disposable email address for any correspondence with these businesses.
These websites frequently provide crooks with more than enough personal information to utilize in identity theft and social engineering scams. You should thus take all necessary steps to remove personal information from online data brokers. These websites are listed in a directory by the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, along with links to pages where users can opt out. Here, Vice has also compiled a brief list of data brokers and opt-out guidelines.
Last but not least, spend some time reading the privacy policies related to your bank accounts. Although they frequently offer the option to decline specific sorts of data sharing, financial institutions are a major source of information for the data broker sector. Here is the Bank of America opt-out page as an illustration.
The best data aggregator on the internet is Google. Therefore, you should become familiar with Google’s activity controls, which allow you to regulate your browser and app activity, YouTube history, and ad personalization. Visit this page to submit a request to have your personally identifiable information (PII) deleted from Google if you’ve been doxxed or simply need it gone. You can go here to ask for the cache to be emptied and the data to be removed from the search engine if you remove personal information from Google, but it still appears in cached Google search results. Finally, use this link to submit a removal request if you need to report abuse or otherwise delete personal information from Google for legal reasons.
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