5 ways to get your personal information off the internet



Between Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, we share a lot of information about ourselves online. Here are a few ways to reclaim at least some of your privacy.

We knowingly give up a lot of information about ourselves on social networks. But even outside of Facebook and Twitter, there is a lot of personal information about us floating around online. I talked to Hayley Kaplan, who runs a site called What-Is-Privacy.com. She helps people “scrub” information about themselves off the internet. It could be their home address, personal phone number, photos or more. Here are some of the things you can do yourself to reclaim at least a little bit of your online privacy.

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1 – Know what’s floating around online about you.

Start at a site called pipl.com and search for yourself. This site mostly links to other sites on the internet that have information about you. It’s a good starting point to figure out what information people can see about you. It could be something as innocuous as an old Pinterest profile. I was surprised to find that every Amazon review I ever made was all on one page.

Next, go to Google and perform a search for your name and home address. This will reveal all of the sites that have your information available to anyone who wants to find it.



2 – Ask sites to take down your personal information

Go to the sites that have personal information of yours you’d like taken down and look for a way to opt out. Usually, it’s hidden or tough to find. Look at the bottom of the page for an “opt out” link or an FAQ. Sometimes, it’s buried in there. Go through the steps in the opt out process to ask them to delete your info. This might sometimes require an email or verification of some of your information.

You can also Google search the name of a site plus the terms “opt out” and see if anyone has written about the process and their experience. Kaplan has various how to’s on her website as well.



Hayley Kaplan, Privacy Expert