Why do you need to Restrict Your Information Online?
When you use the internet for daily activities like shopping, banking, communication, or entertainment, you leave digital footprints across various platforms. During all these activities, you do not realize how much information you are giving to the internet. Cybercriminals set up fake websites, inquiry forms, and Trojan apps to collect your personal data. When you interact with them on the web, you unknowingly give away personal details to the scammers. It exposes your privacy and digital security, and you become exposed to a wide range of unseen threats. So, here are solid reasons why you need to restrict your information online:
Privacy Concerns
- Privacy is the first and foremost concern that you need to limit your information on the internet.
- Data brokers can steal your data and sell it to anyone for a small amount of money. If it falls into the wrong hands, then they can misuse it to do all types of malicious activities.
- If you really want to keep your privacy intact and secure from potential dangers, then it is highly necessary to stay anonymous online.
Safety & Security
- If you are a victim of cyberbullying, online harassment, or threats, and you want to prevent bad actors, then you need to disappear from the internet to prevent the danger.
- If you are someone who is going through an abusive relationship, then you need to cut digital ties to prevent the unwanted person from contacting you via online channels.
- If state authorities ask you to stay anonymous for legal reasons, then you must avoid using internet channels to comply with the authorities.
Career & Reputation Management
- If you are a professional, then you need to remove controversial or embarrassing content from digital platforms.
- You need to erase your online presence if you are switching careers. It prevents your future employers from knowing about your previous activities.
Social Safety
- Professionals like journalists, activists and state agents often need to keep their personal information undercover to maintain social safety in the public domains.
- If you are a citizen of a country where internet surveillance is tight to keep its citizens safe from hostilities, then you must comply with the rules and stay away from the internet.
Financial & Legal Reasons
- Financial fraud is widespread, and you can only stay safe if you share less information on the internet.
- Disappearing online can save you from online fraud. This way, you minimize your digital footprints, leaving no trace for the fraudsters.
- If you are going through legal disputes, then you must restrict your online information.
- Opponents can manipulate your personal information against you to win the case.
Planning a Fresh Start
- Disappearing from the internet for some time proved highly beneficial for you if you are looking to start over, fix your past errors, and end toxic relationships.
- Annoying people won’t be able to reach you and irritate you via social media or any online communication channel.
- Less online activity and presence also help you maintain a minimalist lifestyle and avoid distractions.
What the Internet Knows About You?
The Internet already knows a lot about you when you are using it for key activities like banking, business, shopping, social media, or entertainment. If you have been using the internet for a long time, it likely knows a lot about you. Every click you make and every transaction you do through online channels is recorded somewhere.
Take the example of social media, where you share your daily life experiences, social events, celebrations, food, and fun activities that offer a lot about your personal life. Your business profiles and websites all carry personal data that is secured somewhere on the online database. So, here are some more examples of what the internet knows about you:
1. Public Activities:
Your social media profiles, posts, comments, and mentions by others all give a hint about your personality, and these facts are saved on the internet database. Forum discussions, blog posts, and online reviews you’ve left provide complete information about your psychology and ideology. All of this data is saved on web servers to give complete knowledge about your background and thought process.
2. Public Records:
Homeownership details, address history, legal records, and demographics are all public records that are registered on digital portals these days. Anyone can know about you by accessing these portals via online channels. It allows anyone to know about where you live, your age, occupation, and estimated income.
3. Data Brokers
Private companies can record and sell data about your shopping habits, app usage, and browsing records to data brokers for small payments or business agreements. Data brokers can sell your information to advertisers, digital marketers, or any entity in exchange for higher payments. Marketing agencies can use this information to send you targeted ads, notifications, and promotions of goods and services. If the data broker happens to be a scammer, they will exploit your information for malicious activities.
4. Deep Web Information
The deep web consists of the majority of the internet, and it is not indexed by the internet. It contains all your banking details, medical records, and private accounts. You cannot search or access it using a normal browser. But they are still available online. Only the concerned organizations have the authority to access this data and can use it for useful projects and processes. Your personal details, like credit scores, healthcare history, and financial transactions, are all stored in a dedicated database of the concerned organization. All this information about you is available on the deep web.
5. Dark Web Risks
The dark web is a small part of the deep web that remains hidden and unindexed on normal search engines. Cybercriminals use this undercover web world for illegal activities like selling stolen data, hacking services, scam operations, and malware distributions. It increases your online presence, but also makes your privacy and online security more vulnerable. Hackers can use this data to defraud you and steal your identity to do all types of malicious activities. Attackers collect personal data of users after hacking companies, data breaches, or they get it from data brokers.
How to Delete Yourself from the Web?
If you are already using the internet for different activities like business, banking, social media, communication, or entertainment, then it is really hard to disappear online to preserve privacy. You already have a robust presence across different platforms, and each one has some information about you. It will take a lot of effort to delete yourself from the web to protect your privacy and digital security. You have to follow a step-by-step process to delete yourself from the internet to decrease your digital footprint and prevent attackers from exploiting your personal data. So, here is a step-by-step guide to delete yourself from the web for privacy and security reasons:
1. Delete or Deactivate Social Media Accounts
Social media accounts are one of the major gateways through which anyone can see you online. Deactivating or deleting them can restrict your online exposure and unwanted digressions. This move will reduce your online presence to a great extent and prevent others from knowing about you at a personal level. Cybercriminals won’t be able to know about your personal details and daily life activities. It will prevent them from knowing about you at a personal level and exploiting this information to do any harm to you.
2. Remove Yourself from Search Engines
Removing yourself from search engines is nearly impossible, but you can reduce your footprints if you are concerned about your privacy. In this regard, you need to audit your online footprint using search engines like Google and Bing. To do so, you can search for your name in quotation marks (e.g., “Jane Doe”), email addresses, phone numbers, and residential addresses. Note down the links that show your information.
You must use search engine removal tools to delete your information from the source. Google’s “Results about you” tool to find and remove personal information from its search results. Similarly, you can use Google Removal Request to remove outdated or personal information from its search results. Similarly, there is Bing`s content removal tool that you can use to delete sensitive content online.
3. Delete Old Accounts
You must have signed in or subscribed using your email account on different platforms, such as social media, public forums, newsletters, Etc. After some time, you stop using these accounts, but they still contain your personal details. You must delete your old accounts and subscriptions to reduce your digital footprint. Erasing old accounts reduces your web presence and unwanted online exposure.
4. Remove Yourself from Data Brokers
Data broker companies collect, buy, and sell your data to other organizations, such as banks, digital marketing agencies, and insurance companies, for marketing and other business purposes. They collect information about you from different platforms, such as public records, social media, online activities, and purchases. Popular data brokers are Acxiom, Experian & Equifax, Spokeo, Whitepages, PeopleFinder, and Oracle Data Cloud & Nielsen. These are the sites that collect personal information of the users. You can search yourself on these platforms to know whether your information is available online. You can opt out of data brokers to restrict your online information. You can also request them to remove your details from their database.
5. Request Website Owners to Remove Your Data
There are some websites, such as company pages, news articles, public directories, or forums, that possess your personal information. You have to identify such sites and request that they remove your information. In this process, you need to:
- Search for your name on Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo.
- Note which websites contain your personal information
- Contact the Website’s Owner or Admin
- Go to the “Contact Us” or “Privacy Policy” page to request data removal.
If you can’t find the contact details, then you can use WHOIS Lookup to find the domain owner’s email. You can send them a polite request to remove your data using this email. You can file a legal or DMCA Takedown Request if someone posts your personal information or visuals without your consent. In addition to this, you can also file a privacy complaint with the concerned search engines to remove your content if it is defamatory, harmful, or malicious.
6. Delete Unused Email Accounts
Unused email accounts can expose your digital security. Hackers can take over your vulnerable and unused accounts and misuse them for illegal activities. You must get rid of spare and unused accounts to restrict your digital footprints and protect your online privacy.
How to Protect Future Data Privacy on the Internet?
The Internet has become daily bread and butter in our lives. Disappearing from it completely is not a practical thing. So this is an impossible task for someone who is living in the twenty-first century. However, some safety practices and measures help you protect your privacy and data on the internet from misuse. So here are some important steps that help you protect your data and privacy in the future:
Share Less on Digital Platforms
To limit your online presence and avoid security breaches, you have to avoid sharing everything on the internet. People are more active on social media and online platforms than in real life. They share about every event and activity on the digital platforms to get attention and limelight. But they do not know that they are exposing themselves to cyber threats. Hackers track this information and exploit it to launch social engineering attacks to manipulate and defraud users. So, it would be wise to choose what information you can share online and what not. Sharing less on digital platforms protects you from stalkers, hackers, and data trackers. It can help you keep your privacy intact and unspoiled.
Use Strong & Unique Passwords
Protecting your apps and accounts is the first line of defence against data breaches and privacy spoils. Hence, make sure to use strong and unique passwords to protect your critical access controls. While doing so, always remember to never reuse passwords across multiple accounts. It can make your other accounts vulnerable if you by chance lose passwords for one account. Most importantly, always enable two-factor authentication (2FA) to double down on the security of your access controls. Even if cyberpunks got your primary login credentials, they still won’t be able to access your accounts until they do not have authentication permission.
Use Privacy-Focused Browsers
There is a wide variety of browsers and search engines available online that offer robust security and privacy to users. In this regard, you can go for DuckDuckGo or Startpage instead of Google. Similarly, you can use more privacy-focused browsers like Rave, Firefox, or Tor to load web pages via URLs. If you want more secure email services, then you can use ProtonMail or Tutanota. They encrypt your emails and keep your online communications secure and protected. These are some tools that can help you sustain privacy and protect you from malicious actors lurking in the shadows.
Secure Your Devices
You have to secure your devices and online connections from cyber threats, such as malware, spyware, ransomware, phishing, trojans, keyloggers, rootkits, worms, Etc. Cybercriminals use these malicious programs to get inside your device and steal your personal data. Using this same information, they hack your accounts and create fake profiles to do illegal activities in your name. To prevent malware attacks, you must secure your digital device using security tools like antivirus software and a firewall. These security software detect and block malicious threats at the very inception and protect your privacy and data from getting compromised.
Use VPNs & Privacy Tools to Stay Hidden
VPN is a useful tool that can safeguard your privacy by maintaining anonymity on the internet. It encrypts your internet connection and masks your device IP from websites, third-party agencies, and unsecured networks. It prevents hackers from tracking your online activities and finding your geo location. You can securely connect to different servers without exposing your location and device IP address. All your data and connections remain hidden from unsafe elements.
