You may be surprised at the amount of your data that circulates online. Google collects your browsing, video watching, purchasing, location history, and much more. The tech giant can have the equivalent of 1.5 million word documents about each person. While it is preposterous to totally eliminate yourself from the Web, there are a few systems to limit your computerized impression and improve your security.
1. Deactivate inactive social media accounts
The more virtual entertainment or shopping accounts you have, the more noteworthy your computerized follow is. This likewise makes you powerless against information breaks and digital assaults. Most as of late, the email locations of 235 million Twitter clients were uncovered by means of a web-based information gathering, confirming how weak Web clients are.
Consider deactivating the social media and shopping accounts you rarely use. Simply click the account’s settings and look for an option to either deactivate or delete your account. You may find those options under “privacy” or “security” depending on the platform.
2. Unsubscribe from newsletters
The reason why you may be receiving so many marketing emails is that you’ve signed up to receive these communications. This is normal and typically happens after ticking off an “I want to be notified about special offers” check box or something similar when making a virtual purchase. Removing your email address from marketing lists is an excellent way to minimize junk email and dodge potential data leaks.
Start by opening your email account and typing “unsubscribe” on the search bar. You’ll see all these marketing messages and newsletters you can unsubscribe from. Then, open them one by one and scroll all the way down until you see the “unsubscribe” or “opt-out” link.
3. Get in touch with webmasters
There may be an embarrassing or outdated blog post or forum entry that you wrote back in the day on a certain website. Fortunately you can straightforwardly contact the’s website admin and demand for it to be eliminated.
Go to the site’s “about” or “contact us” section. Then, after getting a hold of the email address, write a message detailing why you’d like that blog or forum entry removed. Bear in mind that this might not be effective in most cases, as webmasters are under no obligation of deleting your content.
If the information you’d like to remove is your ID, Social Security number, or bank account number and the direct approach fails, you can send a removal request to Google.
4. Remove content from Google search
At times, regardless of whether the website admin has taken out your data from their webpage, an old rendition of the page might be reserved on Google’s servers. This implies that your name and other by and by recognizable data are as yet noticeable on Google Indexed lists.
You can make use of Google’s URL removal tool. By submitting the target URL to Google, there’s a chance that it will update its servers and delete the cached search result.
5. Remove yourself from data collection sites
There are organizations that gather data from what you do on the web and offer it to different gatherings that will involve it for promotion, foundation screening, or hazard moderation purposes. These organizations are classified “information intermediaries” or “data dealers”. As recently referenced, the more delicate data you have on the Web, its higher the possibilities being compromised.
Now, you can deal with data brokers by individually contacting them and manually filling out opt-out requests. This is, however, a time-consuming and ineffective process, as your data can be required by the same entities.
An easier way to regain control over your information is using a service like Incogni. Once subscribed, Incogni will take care of the process and actively remove your information held by thousands of data brokering companies, enhancing your digital privacy and safety.