What Is a Digital Footprint?

Updated on September 12, 2024.

A digital footprint refers to the collection of traceable data left behind by a person’s unique online activities. Everything from your social media posts to your browsing history to your voter registration leaves a trail of data that can be used by businesses and people for a variety of purposes—good or bad.

Continue reading to learn more about digital footprints and why you should care about yours.

Types of digital footprints

There are two main types of digital footprints, passive and active.

Passive digital footprint

Websites create a passive digital footprint for each user when they collect data about the user’s online activity. This includes website cookies, browsing history and shopping history. The user should know the data is being collected because they accepted the terms of using the website. However, it’s collected in the background, outside of the user’s visibility. There are varying levels of data collection that websites perform, so users should check the cookie policy before accepting.  

Active digital footprint

Active digital footprints include data that the user knowingly posted on the internet. The user creates their active footprint deliberately, although not all users may understand just how many people can see their posts or how their data can be used. This includes social media posts, online article publications and public reviews.

Digital footprint examples

Digital footprints are complex and multifaceted. Here are some examples of what’s a part of your footprint – whether it’s something that would be found if someone searched for your name online or if it’s data that has been collected about you.

• Cookies your browser has collected which track your movements online
• Information posted on your social media accounts – including status updates
• Photos which may include metadata such as geolocation, time of photo, etc.
• Data collected by social media platforms, such as follows, likes and views
• Data collected by mobile apps
• Voter registration which can include your birthday, address and political party
• Vehicle registration
• Homeownership and home renovation work can be public via government records
• Marriage license
• Birth announcements and obituaries
• Online fundraisers
• Signed petitions
• Browsing history
• Data leaked on the dark web – including credit card numbers, passwords and other information uploaded to accounts or used to shop online
• Account usernames and profile information

Why protecting your digital footprint is important

Protecting your digital footprint is important because it can affect many aspects of your life including your employability, reputation, personal safety and online privacy.

Your employability

Employers often look up job candidates to check if their online persona is professional. Hateful comments, inappropriate photos, political opinions and other information could affect an employer’s decision to hire someone. Different industries have different expectations for employees’ online presence, so get to know the norms in the industry you wish to work in. In some industries, a strong online presence where you post frequently about your perspective is preferred. In others, employers expect you to stay as private and neutral online as possible.

Your reputation among friends

Do you find yourself relying on others’ posts to determine what their personality is like? Keep in mind that anyone can Google us – if there’s anything on the internet that would embarrass you with a new friend or colleague, consider deleting it.

Your personal safety

Your personal safety can be affected by information posted online. For example, giving details about your location could help criminals find you. Posting about expensive items could motivate someone to rob your home. Accessing online servers without a Virtual Private Network (VPN) could allow people to pinpoint your location using your IP address. Writing or speaking about your opinions publicly is an important expression of speech for many, but doing so can also prompt people online to dox you, so it’s important to lock down your digital footprint to prevent this – especially if you have a large audience or you anticipate people will be angry about what you say. 

Your online privacy

Sharing personal details online could make it easier to be targeted. Some targeters have fairly harmless reasons – like personalized ads – but the data they’ve collected about you could make you vulnerable to cyber attacks if they ever experience a breach. Cybercriminals can use anything they find about you to help stage an attack – for example, if your phone number is listed publicly, they could target you with a SIM swapping attack. They might also try to guess your passwords to sensitive accounts if they know the names of your loved ones and pets, along with their birthdays. If you’ve accidentally allowed your digital footprint to be too detailed, it can help cybercriminals steal your identity.

How to check your digital footprint

Here’s how you can check your digital footprint:

1. Google yourself: Search your name in a search engine like Google to see what comes up about you online. You can even set a Google alert with your name to track when new information appears.
2. Conduct a reverse image search: You can conduct a reverse image search on Google with a photo of yourself to find any pictures of you on the internet.
3. Search yourself on people finder websites: See if your information is published on any popular people finder sites such as TruthFinder, BeenVerified, Spokeo, FamilyTreeNow, Intelius, PeopleFinders and FastPeopleSearch.
4. Use a free dark web scan: To see if any of your data has been published on the dark web, scan your email using a free dark web scanner.

Can I delete my digital footprint?

No, it’s challenging to completely delete your digital footprint. But you can take steps to clean it up and minimize it. There are also laws to protect people whose digital footprints make them extra vulnerable – for example, in some states, victims of domestic violence can ask to have their voter registration kept private.

We’ve written before about how to clean up your digital footprint. Here are some of the most important steps you can take:

1. Use a password manager to create and maintain unique passwords for all your online accounts and store sensitive information.
2. Restrict data access to any apps and services you use. If apps or websites ask for permission to track you or use optional cookies, decline.
3. Strip metadata, like location data, from photos before posting them online.
4. Adjust privacy settings on your online accounts to restrict access to only people you know.
5. Request that your information be removed from people finder sites.
6. Delete inactive accounts.
7. Use burner accounts when websites need your email for a temporary reason – for example, when online shopping you can use a burner account and delete it after you receive your order.
8. Delete old emails that you no longer need, especially those containing sensitive information. Instead, store your sensitive information in a secure password manager.
9. Regularly monitor the dark web for your personal information by subscribing to a dark web monitoring service like BreachWatch.
10. Once your information has been removed from the web, ask Google to delete the cache of these pages using Google Search Console.

Protect your digital footprint

Keeping your digital footprint clean can be difficult to do all on your own, so we recommend investing in tools that make keeping it clean easy. A password manager like Keeper® makes it easy to keep your digital footprint clean by aiding you in securing and managing your accounts. Paired with BreachWatch, Keeper also sends you real-time dark web alerts if your email or credentials are found on the dark web.

Ready to start reducing your digital footprint? Start a free 30-day trial of Keeper today.