Monday, April 1, 2013

Online Privacy and Deleting Your Digital Footprint

First, you're going to want to 'stop the bleeding' as it were. You need to lock down any potential information leaks like insecure social networking profiles before attempting to actually delete anything, otherwise you'll just hemorrhage more information to replace that which you've removed. I'd recommend using PrivacyFix to accomplish that initial goal: http://privacyfix.com/start

At this point you'll also want to secure whichever browser you're using. Companies use trackers to generate a profile on you that can compromise your security. A list of add-ons that will aid you to that end can be found here: http://fixtracking.com/

Having patched any leaks, you'll want to set about removing your information from any aggregator websites that have posted it. A list of these sites and the proper removal technique can be found here: http://unlistmy.info/

It would also be prudent to examine your past behavior to see if any remnants linger from years before such as defunct MySpace profiles created before you came to understand the important of information security. Sites like Pipl: https://pipl.com/ are extraordinarily useful in this capacity, as they aggregate results from a variety of sites that are not necessarily indexed by Google with any depth.

Finally, if you're especially concerned about something showing up that has yet to arise, you can use Blekko: http://blekko.com/ to generate an RSS feed consisting of any search terms you choose, alerting you upon discovery of anything new. It's not especially broad, but given that Google Alerts have ceased to function properly these last few months, it's the best you're really able to do. There are powerful paid alternatives like Mention if you ultimately choose to go down that route.

There are other techniques that can certainly be of use, but the rest of these approaches tend to be narrow in scope.

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