How to clean up your digital footprint: 3 tips to protect your privacy

Almost everything we do in our online world – like sending an email, shopping online, and posting on social media – leaves a data trail. Minimizing that data trail is an important part of protecting your digital privacy.

Ultimately, the internet is full of risks (even if they’re hidden between cute cat videos and all the websites we browse on a daily basis), so read on and I’ll explain why it’s so important to clean up your digital footprint, why you need to do it regularly, and why your online habits can be more revealing than you expect.

What is a digital footprint?

Your digital footprint is a digital record of all your activities on the Internet. It consists of two parts:

Active footprints: Things you intentionally share, such as social media posts, comments, or uploaded photos.
Passive footprints: Data collected without your direct intervention, such as your browsing history, location data, or cookies that track online activity.

A digital footprint paints a fairly detailed picture of a person’s online identity and therefore, if not maintained, can expose them to all sorts of risks.

Let’s start with your personal information. Think about all the accounts you’ve created over the years. Whether for social media platforms, streaming services, online stores, or pretty much anything else, those accounts can still contain information like your name, email address, and even your payment details.

If one of these accounts is hacked or involved in a data breach, your information could be exposed without you knowing until it’s too late.

Deleting accounts before this incident minimizes the risk. I recommend going through your accounts regularly and closing any that you no longer use, because if the account doesn’t exist, it can’t be exploited.

Most reputable websites and services also prevent previously activated accounts from being reactivated after you unplug them.

Deleting (or closing) unused accounts helps preserve your digital footprint

Remember that your online reputation is just as important as your offline reputation. Old posts, comments, or photos can resurface years later and damage your professional reputation.

Once this data is on the internet, it is difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. In addition, data that is particularly valuable to hackers and fraudsters (such as logins) can end up on the dark web.

Our online habits reveal as much about us as our posts – and sometimes more than we intend.

For example, if you log into social media at the same time every day or use the same password for multiple websites, these patterns can be detected and exploited.

Advertisers, data brokers, and even malicious actors exploit these habits to build a detailed profile of their victims that they can use for identity theft and other shady cybercrimes.

Advertisers, data brokers and fraudsters can track online habits to create detailed profiles

A poorly managed digital footprint is a treasure trove for cybercriminals. With enough personal information, a thief could open a bank account in your name and take out a huge loan, or even commit digital crimes under your identity. The more data you leave online, the easier it is for scammers to impersonate you.

Regularly cleaning up your digital footprints removes sensitive information that could be accessed by cybercriminals.

To increase your overall security, you should ideally change your passwords regularly and use two-factor authentication wherever possible.

One of the quickest and easiest ways to clean up your digital footprint is to use a password manager.

While password managers keep track of your logins for you, they also help you generate strong and unique passwords for each of your accounts – so you don’t have to use the same insecure password over and over again.

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Check out our ranking of the best password managers to see which tools we recommend.

This means that if one of your accounts is compromised, the others won’t be affected because they aren’t linked by the same password. It’s better to be proactive and change your passwords now than to react later if a site is affected by hackers or a leak.

If you regularly change your habits, update your passwords, and review which websites you allow to track you, it will be harder for others to predict and exploit your behavior.

How to clean up your digital footprint

Cleaning up your digital footprint isn’t a one-time task—it’s something that requires constant maintenance. With that in mind, here’s a step-by-step guide to get you started.

1. Evaluate data trace

First, search for your name on various search engines to see what information is available.

Then look at social media platforms, old blogs, and any other places where you may have left digital traces to get a clear picture of what is publicly available.

Tips:

When examining your data trail, use incognito mode to prevent your search history from influencing the results.
Don’t forget to look through the pictures – photos linked to your name and username may also be shown. (It’s also worth removing Exif data from photos to avoid accidentally revealing your approximate location.)
Set a reminder to review and clean up your accounts at least once a year.

2. Update your privacy settings

Next, take the time to go through your existing social media profiles and blogs and do some spring cleaning.

Delete or archive posts that no longer represent you, as well as anything that could be viewed as controversial, inappropriate, or generally unappreciated by current (or future) employers.

Tips:

Use tools like Facebook’s Manage Activity feature to bulk delete or archive old posts.
Set old posts to private if you want to keep them for personal reasons but do not want to make them publicly visible.
Check photo tags and remove tags from images you don’t want associated with your profile.

If you think that sounds like a lot of time-consuming work, remember that it’s worth it. Think about how many celebrities and aspiring politicians have been impacted by their digital footprints – and by the lack of management of existing accounts.

Paris Brown, for example, had just started a career in politics when questionable tweets from her teenage years ended that career. Unfortunately, this is just another compelling reason to take time for digital maintenance.

3. Don’t forget your local device

Digital cleanliness is just as important for your laptop or phone.

Clearing your browsing history at the end of the day is pretty straightforward—but it still leaves a lot of potentially sensitive information exposed. Think image caches, command line histories, and recently opened files.

Habits are key – it only takes a few minutes to clean up after you’re done browsing for the day

Luckily, there are tools that will clean up your browsing sessions – like Bleachbit. Bleachbit is available for Windows and Linux machines and does a great job of cleaning up your local digital activity trail. It even empties your recycle bin for you.

However, it is important to ensure that you take an active role in deleting documents that you no longer need and email folders that may contain a lot of confidential data.

Habits are key – it only takes a few minutes to clean up after you’re done browsing for the day. It helps keep your system clean and efficient and prevents you from leaving an identifiable data trail.

The conclusion

We’re constantly creating new posts, new accounts, and scrolling through the internet – which means we’re constantly leaving a trail of data crumbs behind. Unfortunately, companies and cybercriminals are eager to hoover them up.

The key to protecting your privacy, security, and reputation is consistency. Make it a habit to regularly review your online presence, update your privacy settings, and be careful about what you share.

Your online habits – such as when you log in, what you share, and how you manage your accounts – can reveal more about you than you may realize.

By consistently managing your digital footprint, you break patterns that others could use to predict your behavior and target you. This not only helps protect your privacy, but also strengthens your overall security.

In a world where your digital presence is often as important as your physical one, these steps aren’t just advisable—they’re essential.

topicnews · August 29, 2024

How to clean up your digital footprint: 3 tips to protect your privacy

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