Can You Erase Your Digital Footprint?

No, you cannot erase your digital footprint, but you can reduce it by deleting inactive accounts, opting out of people search sites and adjusting your privacy settings. Your digital footprint is a collection of data left behind by your unique online activity, ranging from what you post on social media to what you browse on the internet. Because individuals and businesses rely on your digital footprint to learn more about you, not managing your digital footprint can impact your reputation, future job opportunities and privacy. Even though you cannot delete it entirely, you can clean up your digital footprint in a variety of ways that we will discuss in more detail below.

Continue reading to learn how you can find your digital footprint and the ways you can clean it up to protect your character, privacy and overall identity online.

How to find your digital footprint

There are several ways you can find your digital footprint, including searching your name, reverse searching an image of yourself or conducting a free dark web scan.

Look up your name on search engines

By searching your name on popular search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo, you can see the kind of information that appears about you online. If you have a common name, you should type in your full name when you search yourself to get more accurate search results. The information you find about yourself online can be easily found by individuals and businesses seeking more information about you, so it’s important to know what people can see about you.

Reverse search an image of yourself

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, a reverse image search uses an image instead of words to search the internet. For example, if you have a picture of a famous painting but don’t know what it’s called or who painted it, you can upload the image to a search engine to find information associated with it. While this can be helpful for learning more information about other objects or places, it can also help you discover what information people can find out about you based on a simple picture. Upload an image of yourself to learn what kinds of information are associated with your image.

Conduct a free dark web scan

If searching for yourself in both words and images on search engines doesn’t give you conclusive results, you can check your digital footprint by conducting a free dark web scan. A dark web scan notifies you if your personal information, like your email address or phone number, is found on the dark web. This can help you learn how sensitive the information available for anyone to buy off the dark web is, which could be used to commit fraud or even identity theft. In most free dark web scans, all you need to do is enter your name and email address, and the online tool will scan the dark web, searching for any matches between your information and what’s available on the dark web. If it finds a match, you’ll be provided with a list of companies you have accounts with, that experienced breaches, so you can take the necessary next steps to protect your identity.

5 tips to help reduce your digital footprint

Although it’s not possible to delete your digital footprint from the internet completely, there are a few things you can do to significantly reduce it.

1. Delete and deactivate accounts you no longer use

Think of how many accounts you created that you either stopped using immediately or haven’t logged in to for years. Those accounts still have information about you that may now be outdated and incorrect, but someone could still find that information online if those accounts exist and are technically active. Erasing and deactivating accounts that you no longer use is a crucial step in reducing your digital footprint because that data can be collected by individuals with malicious intentions. Your unused accounts can be valuable targets for cybercriminals who could hack into them and steal any personal information that’s on them, including credit card information or your phone number.

An easy way to manage your online accounts and determine which ones you no longer use is by investing in a password manager like Keeper^®. Using a password manager, you can go through your login credentials for online accounts and determine which accounts can be deleted or deactivated. Once you’ve done so on the account’s website, you can return to your password manager and delete the account’s record.

2. Opt out of people search sites

People search sites are websites that find, post and sell your personal information. The data they collect is usually from public records, like forums or social media, but some of these sites buy information that may be more sensitive from private companies. You can opt out of people search sites and remove your information from them by going to popular people search sites’ opt-out pages. These pages can typically be found on a site’s FAQs, where they will describe the steps for submitting an opt-out request.

Once your request is processed, the people search site must delete information about you from its website. It’s important to opt out of these sites to clean your digital footprint and to prevent cybercriminals from using this data to target you with scams and other cyber attacks.

3. Ask Google to remove your information from search results

You can request that your information be removed from Google’s search results by filling out this form. Another way to ensure your Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is removed from Google’s search results is by starting a removal request. Asking Google to remove all of your personal information from its search results will reduce the chances of you becoming a victim of doxxing. Doxxing occurs when a cybercriminal posts PII about someone online, so if your home address or phone number appears in a Google search result, a cybercriminal could publish that information to make it more accessible to others. This is why it’s important to request that your information be removed from Google’s search results – not only to clean your digital footprint, but also to ensure your privacy.

4. Avoid oversharing on social media

Cybercriminals gravitate toward checking their target’s social media profiles when searching for valuable information because people tend to overshare on social media. It’s important to refrain from oversharing on your social media accounts, especially if your account is public, because anyone with malicious intentions can use sensitive information to harm your privacy and security.

For example, if you have a public Instagram account and post a selfie with your childhood best friend at a popular tourist attraction, a cybercriminal can learn your friend’s name and your current location. This type of information in the wrong hands makes you more vulnerable to scams and other cyber attacks. Keeping as little personal information on social media as possible or making your accounts private can reduce your digital footprint and keep your identity more secure.

5. Adjust your privacy settings

Whether it’s in your apps, online accounts, web browsers or devices, adjust your privacy settings to be as strict as possible to protect your data. Take your social media accounts, for example. You could be sharing information about your interests, family, friends, location and more without even realizing it. If your privacy settings aren’t updated, that information could be collected and shared with people who might target you with phishing attacks and other scams. 

Go through all your privacy settings to ensure certain data does not get shared, or at least minimize the amount of information that will be shared, to clean up your digital footprint as much as possible.

Take steps to reduce your digital footprint today

Imagine your digital footprint as a clear trail showing what you’ve been doing and who you are, allowing anyone to learn information about you that you may have thought was private. To tidy up the information people can access, you should delete any inactive accounts, avoid oversharing on social media and update your privacy settings. A convenient way to manage which accounts have been deactivated is to use Keeper Password Manager, which allows you to create, update and delete login credentials with ease.

Start your free 30-day trial of Keeper Password Manager to get one step closer to a cleaner digital footprint by deleting any unnecessary records for deactivated accounts today.