News Americas, NY, NY, Weds. Nov. 11, 2020: Have you ever gone on your favorite search engine, typed in your full name, and waited to see what came up on the internet about you? If you’re like a lot of people, you probably have, and you might have been quite surprised by the personal information that is out there about you.
If you don’t like the idea of people being able to look up information about you, such as your location, birthday, family members, and contact information, there are ways that you can find and remove that data. It does take a bit of time and effort, and it is something that you might need to do more than once to be sure you find all of the sites that have your info, but it’ll be worth it for your peace of mind.
To get started, check out the tips below.
Search for Websites That Are Displaying Your Information
The first step involves simply finding the websites that are currently hosting information about you. A basic search, such as on Google, will yield the results that you need.
What you’ll find is that there are quite a few websites known as data brokers. How did these sites get your information? Well, they basically look through public records, grab the info that they can get, and then put it into their own database that users can then search online. Some sites provide the information at no cost, while others charge money for it.
Contact the Websites to Tell Them to Remove Your Information
Once you have compiled a list of websites that are showcasing your personal information, it is a matter of finding their contact info so you can tell them that you want your data removed from their site.
Nuwber makes it easy to do this, as you can simply click their link for “Remove My Info” and then move through the steps that are required to get your information off of the site. Other databases, though, may not be so straightforward, so you might need to read through their FAQs to learn about how to have your information removed, or you might need to contact them directly to access more details about the steps involved.
Delete Your Social Media Pages, or Make Them Private
When you want to remove your personal info from the internet, consider what you have shared on your social media accounts, such as on your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages. If your profiles are not set to private, that information might be displayed in search engine results when people search for your name. Therefore, you might want to change your settings so that your accounts are private and only visible to those individuals that you allow to follow you.
It is also a good idea to go ahead and remove any personal information, such as your phone number or even your place of work, if you don’t want that information to be available online. Or, you might decide that you want to deactivate and delete all of your social media accounts completely for even more privacy.
As you can see, it is surprisingly easy to remove your information from the internet whenever you are ready to do so. It might take some time, and it’s a good idea to be careful so you don’t miss any websites, but before long, you’ll have more privacy.
