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The increasing cases of data leaks, phishing schemes, and similar attacks have caused many individuals to rethink sharing their personal information online unwittingly. According to Pew Research Center:
“Individuals now think that their personal information is less secure and is introducing greater risks and it is almost impossible to go through daily life without being monitored.”
This feeling of being continuously monitored and a fear that personal information can be used for fraudulent purposes, makes people want to delete their personal information available online. If you are also one of those people, you’ve landed at the right place!
This blog post will introduce to you top 6 tools to delete your data from the Internet that are easier to use and get you the most satisfying results when it comes to securing your anonymity.
What is Personal Information? Why You Should Protect Your Personal Information?
Personal information is any data that can be used to identify an individual. This includes information like names, dates of birth, addresses, contact information, and more. It also covers biometric data such as fingerprints, voice recordings, and facial recognition.
Companies often collect this data when you’re registering for a service or purchasing anything online. However, companies must handle and store this information responsibly to protect customers from identity theft and fraud. It’s essential to stay informed about how your personal information is handled so you can ensure your safety when using online services.
Below are some reasons you should you protect your personal information:
To Protect from Identity Theft or Fraud
Maintaining the security of your financial identity or privately identifiable data is important to protect yourself from falling into phishing scams. Your personal information like credit card information, national insurance number, taxpayer identification information can be used to create false accounts in your name or reach your original account.
To Avoid Actual Crime
Sextortion cases are commonly linked to online stalking. The victims of these crimes are often minors who are forced to share their images. A stranger can get hold of all your private information easily when you make your information online.
According to the Brookings institute: “A great number of victims reported remote sexual assaults, sometimes from over some miles distances and sometimes even cross international borders dur to oversharing of personal information online”
Your personal information is like your most valuable possessions. It’s essential to take steps to protect it and keep it safe. You should never share your personal information with anyone whom you do not trust or know well.
It’s also essential to ensure that any websites or apps you use are secure so hackers cannot access your data by:
Always checking for encryption methods such as HTTPS when accessing a website
Looking for the padlock symbol in the URL field of the browser window – both are indicators of a secure website.
Also by ensuring to delete personal information from the internet.
What Are Data Brokers? How Hoes Data Brokers Work?
Businesses known as “data brokers” sell customers’ private information. Data brokers compile information about you from various sources to create a comprehensive profile that they subsequently sell.
Data brokers often compile information by sifting through what is freely accessible on the internet and purchasing it from other entities, including credit card firms. The most common data sources for data brokers are:
Public records
Credit cards
Retailers
Web browser cookies
Mobile apps
To acquire information, brokers draw from various sources, some of which are mentioned above. Other data sources include banks, insurance agencies, telecom providers, other data brokers, polls, and contests, although this list is only partial.
Estimates put the annual value of the data brokering industry at $200 billion, with as many as 4,000 firms operating in the sector throughout the world. Equifax, Experian, Acxiom, and Epsilon are four of the most prominent examples of data brokers.
The data broker sector has been attacked for its lack of transparency since data brokers have no real motivation to engage with the individuals whose data they gather, examine, share, and profit from.
6 Tools to Delete Personal Information from the Internet:
It’s becoming increasingly important to stay aware of what information is out there about you online. Fortunately, there are tools available that can help you identify and remove personal information from the internet. Here are 6 tools to remove data from Data Brokers:
Incogni
The creators of Surfshark also created Incogni, a data removal service that helps you remove personal information from the internet. Famous for its reliability and excellent security, this VPN service is a top choice for anyone concerned with online anonymity.
Anyone may sign up for their data removal service and quickly have their information scrubbed from the databases of dozens of data brokers. If data brokers do not comply with requests to delete customer information, this service will alert the appropriate local data protection authorities, which is a great feature.
Top Features
The top features of Incogni include:
It helps you cut down on the number of spam emails you receive, the number of telemarketing calls you get, and the number of targeted adverts you see online.
It can also prevent identity theft by preventing fraudsters from buying your personal information from public records.
Easy-to-use, organized, and simple UI
Tracks and reports data brokers responses for you
GetApp
Anyone who wants to remove personal information from the internet should use GetApp since it is the ideal tool for the job. GetApp provides a solution for everyone worried about their privacy when using the internet.
Top Features
The top features include:
It can remove your personal information from search engine results, including your name, email address, and phone number.
It makes it simple to monitor your internet presence to ensure that you are aware of any new information that may emerge about you without your knowledge.
It helps you to recover all long-forgotten inactive online accounts and allow you to archive them manually.
MyDataRemoval
MyDataRemoval is a powerful tool that may assist you in regaining control of the information that pertains to you personally. You may have peace of mind knowing that no one will be able to access and make inappropriate use of your sensitive information if you make use of this effective tool.
Top Features
The features include:
It helps you to quickly and easily discover large data brokers collecting your information without your agreement
It helps you erase any of that information the brokers have in just a few clicks
Takes only 6 to 10 hours to remove all your personal data available online
Offers multi-factor authentication for data security
Give MyDataRemoval a try now if you’re serious about regaining control of your data and want to start immediately.
DeleteMe
DeleteMe by Abine is the fourth-best solution for permanently erasing your digital footprint. It’s a business headquartered in the United States that can help you get your information removed from 38 different popular US data brokers and people search engines.
Although this may seem like a very modest number of data brokers compared to our other recommendations, we can guarantee that it is effective for removing data from all of the most intrusive US data brokers.
Top Features
Below are some top features that DeleteMe has to offer:
Its live chat feature helps you get in touch with the company’s staff and answer any questions you may have.
It removes names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, relatives, family statuses, social media profiles, and bank account details deleted from the databases of the most popular US data brokers.
By removing this data, your online footprints are reduced and Google search results are removed.
Discounts for multi-user accounts
Rescans every three months
PrivacyBee
Privacy Bee is another well-known data removal service that allows customers to eradicate any traces of their digital activities. It is among the most all-encompassing services now offered on the market. It claims to delete user information from over 200 different data broker websites.
Privacy Bee greatly enhances your privacy since it deletes your information from all public people-search databases as the information from these databases could be used in a phishing or identity theft scheme.
Top Features
Below are some features that make this
PrivacyBee helps you delete all your personal information that you’ve saved online intentionally or unintentionally.
It performs repeated checks to make sure that the data that was previously deleted are not re-added at a later time.
It claims to scour the internet for any data leakage or breach that might harm you personally.
Global coverage
When people think of internet data security, Google is usually the first company that comes to mind. While it may be true that search engines contain the most comprehensive database of websites, they are frequently only the courier.
Remember that even if you remove anything from search results, it may still exist on the site hosting it until you persuade them to take it down. You should make a request to these sites so they might take your information down.
Top Features
Google has just included a form that allows users to ask the search engine to remove specific results or material, including explicit photographs, if they are fraudulent, posted without the user’s knowledge, or show up randomly for the user’s name but do not reflect the user.
There is an option to remove information that might be used to harm you (such as identification numbers, financial information, medical data, street address, or other contact information. This could include social security numbers, medical records, and banking data.)
Allows you to submit 12 active requests for each property at one time.
It allows you to get a preview of the deletion effects in your Explorations and reports during the first 7 days.
Bottom Line
Social networking, online stores, instant messaging, GPS, and other technologies have resulted in an almost complete online encapsulation of an individual’s identity. If you’re ready to take steps to protect your privacy, start with these six tools. They can help you clean up your internet presence and give you peace of mind.
You’ll have to be very careful if you don’t want your details to fall into the threat actors active on the internet. We encourage you to do everything you have to do to ensure your safety!
We hope this post will help you understand what is personal information and what essential steps you can take to protect personal information online. Thanks for reading this post. Please share this post and help to secure the digital world. Visit our social media page on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Telegram, Tumblr, Medium & Instagram, and subscribe to receive updates like this.
Arun KL
Arun KL is a cybersecurity professional with 15+ years of experience in IT infrastructure, cloud security, vulnerability management, Penetration Testing, security operations, and incident response. He is adept at designing and implementing robust security solutions to safeguard systems and data. Arun holds multiple industry certifications including CCNA, CCNA Security, RHCE, CEH, and AWS Security.
- April 18, 2024
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- April 18, 2024
