What is a Digital Footprint?
A digital footprint is basically the trail of data you leave behind when you use the internet. This footprint can include quite a bit of information, including the websites you visit, the emails you send, and the information you share and submit online. This digital footprint can be used by others to track your online activities and connected devices.
Your digital footprint is created both actively and passively. You actively contribute to your digital footprint by either posting or replying to social media posts and online forum posts.
For most social and forum sites, you need to be logged in to participate. Since you’re logged in, any posts you make or reply to become a piece of your digital footprint. Subscribing to a newsletter, a YouTube channel, and other social media contributes to your digital footprint.
Passive additions to your digital footprint can include websites that add tracking cookies to your browsing sessions or apps that track and collate your data without disclosing that it is doing so. Once this data is collected, it becomes a part of your digital footprint. Unfortunately, many organizations sell or share your information with outside parties, and this means you run the risk of having your personal data exposed as part of an all too common data breach.
Your digital footprint can also include information about your online shopping, online banking, your visits to news websites, your use of fitness trackers, and subscriptions to blogs and newsletters.
Let’s face it, almost everything you do online has the potential for adding to your digital footprint.
Why Are Digital Footprints Important?
Your digital footprint is important, as the information stored online about much of your identity can be viewed by simply entering your name into Google or another search engine (use DuckDuckGo if you don’t want to leave behind footprints of your online searches).
This can be important, as potential or current employers can look you up online, viewing your overall online identity, including the sites you visit and/or participate on, what your interests are, and much more.
This can also affect the rates you pay for auto, life, and health insurance. (If you participate in drag races or burning donuts in the middle of intersections and post videos about it on YouTube or TikTok, your insurance providers may raise your rates for being a bad risk.)
You may also receive more spam communications, including emails, robocalls, and text messages. You’ll also see more targeted online ads, and you may run the risk of being stalked or doxxed. (You’d be surprised how easy it is to find a person’s home address with just a quick Google search.)
Perhaps the most worrisome possibility is that you could become the victim of identity theft. Bad actors can find out quite a bit of your personal information online, including your birthdate and even your Social Security number, which can be used to sign up for new credit cards, personal loans, and more.
What About Data Brokers?
Data brokers play a huge part in exposing a user’s digital footprint. In fact, data brokers make their money by collecting, collating, and selling your information to anyone that is willing to pay for that information. Data brokers collect your information from multiple sources, including from your online digital footprint.
This data is then sold to banks, credit card companies, law enforcement, advertisers, and other nosy parties. Banks and credit card companies can use your financial history to approve or deny credit applications. Law enforcement can use the info to get around the need for warrants or to follow proper procedures in criminal investigations. While advertisers can use your personal demographic information to target you with advertisements, including political ads.
When bad actors get ahold of your personal information, either by buying it or through data hacks, they can use the info to perform phishing and whaling attacks, use it to open accounts in your name, and perform other nefarious actions.
What Can I Do to Minimize and Protect My Digital Footprint?
There are several ways to minimize and protect your digital footprint, which we’ll take a look at in this section.
Solutions include using a content removal service, manually searching for and requesting to have your information removed from websites and content brokers, using private browsers, not using your Facebook or Google account to log in to a website or app, minimizing your use of social media, and more.
Use a Content Removal Service
Content removal services will get your information removed from data brokers without the need to visit each broker’s website one by one. There are a few caveats about using a content removal service.
First of all, these services do charge a fee. You can pay as much as $129 or more per year for the service.
Second, you will need to provide personal information to the service for it to properly do its job. The required information can include your full name, phone number, email address, mailing address, and possibly other information. Wait, you say, isn’t that the very information I’m trying to get off of the internet? Yes, but the service requires this information to be able to properly request the removal of your info. Just be certain that the content removal service doesn’t share your information with any third parties, as that sort of defeats the purpose of doing all of this.
Incogni
While there are several content removal services available on the internet, I’ve found one that provides comprehensive and easy-to-use removal services while also charging a reasonable price.
Incogni is a subscription service (most content removal services are subscription-based, charging either a monthly or annual subscription fee). Why a subscription service? Isn’t one-and-done enough to deal with data brokers? Nope. Just because a data removal service gets a data broker to remove your information from their servers, that doesn’t mean the broker will give up on collecting all of that data again.
Incogni (and other data removal services) will send recurring data removal requests, so that any recent information the brokers collect will be removed. This keeps your information away from the brokers’ claws. Incogni also is continually on the lookout for new data brokers, and will contact each newly discovered broker to tell them to remove your information.
Okay, this sounds great, but how much is all of this going to cost you? Incogni is one of the more attractively priced content removal services, charging a mere $12.99 per month (plus tax) when you opt to pay monthly, or you can save 50% if you pay upfront for an annual subscription, paying only $6.49 per month ($77.88 per year, plus tax).
As I mentioned above, Incogni keeps an ever-growing list of data brokers, tracking what type of information the brokers collect about you, including your home address, phone number, email addresses, Social Security number, and much more.
This data can be used by marketers, recruiters, financial firms, insurance companies, and other interested parties to send you advertising, emails, text messages, and junk mail. The information can also be used by bad actors who will try to separate you from your hard-earned cash through phishing and whaling attempts, as well as creating fraudulent credit card accounts.
Once you subscribe to Incogni, authorize them to act on your behalf, and provide a limited amount of information so they know who you are, the company hits the ground running to begin wiping your digital footprint from these brokers.
Incogni’s proprietary algorithm then goes to work, using the information you’ve provided to determine which data brokers may have their grubby paws on your personal data. If a broker doesn’t collect information in your area, they’ll skip that broker. They only contact data brokers that can reasonably be expected to have your information.
When Incogni finds new data brokers, it will automatically contact them with a data removal request on your behalf. The service also repeats the removal requests periodically to ensure that your information doesn’t make its way back onto the brokers’ servers after it has been removed.
You may occasionally receive a request for additional information if a data broker requires it before removing your information. Some data brokers will ask for a copy of your government-issued ID before processing a removal request.
Just FYI, it may be 30 days or more before a data broker removes your info from its servers. They have 30 to 45 days to remove it (depending on where they do business), and many of them will wait until the last minute, just so they can milk the last dollar from selling your info.
You’ll be glad to know that Incogni does not sell your data to any third parties. You also have the right to view, correct, update, or delete any of the data Incogni has about you.
I would like to note that Incogni is only able to help you if you are a resident of a country that is covered by the following regulators:
- California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)
- General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
- Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA)
This means Incogni can only help residents of Europe, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Also, since privacy laws can vary from state to state in the U.S., your removal options may vary, depending on your place of residence.
One feature I personally love is the Incogni Dashboard, which allows users to monitor the data removal process. Information presented on the dashboard includes the number of data brokers that potentially have your information, the number of removal requests that have been sent, and the number of requests that have been completed. This allows you to monitor the process with just a quick glance at the stats. (A handy pie chart shows the progress at a glance.)
For more information, visit the Incogni website.
Manually Have Your Information Removed From Data Brokers
Yes, it is possible for you to have your data removed from a data broker’s servers, but you’ll have to do it one broker at a time. Be sure to bring your lunch, dinner, and possibly your breakfast for tomorrow, as the process is a prolonged one.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of data brokers out there, and you’ll need to find them, manually request them to remove your data, then keep an eye on them to ensure they haven’t added your information back to their database at a later date. VPN provider Surfshark recently estimated that if you contact one broker at a time, it will take close to 70 years to finalize each request. (Then you have to start all over again to ensure the data isn’t back out there. I hope the retirement home you choose has a good WiFi network.)
If that hasn’t discouraged you from doing it yourself, you can search for “list of data brokers” on Google. (Or DuckDuckGo. Because, we’re trying to reduce our digital footprint, right?) then manually work your way through the lists you’ll find on multiple websites. Yes, multiple websites, because no single site has all of the data brokers listed.
After you collect a list of data brokers, you’ll need to visit each broker’s website, determine their removal process, and request the removal of your data.
WHEW! Good luck!
Use a Privacy-Respecting Web Browser
If you’re using one of the most popular browsers ::COUGH!:: Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge ::COUGH!:: your online travels are being tracked. Both Google and Microsoft are in the data collection and advertising businesses. Both profit from tracking your online travels, collating the information, and then using it to provide targeted advertising. (That’s why when you search for information about a new video game you’ll begin seeing video gaming-related ads during your online travels.)
Instead of using Chrome or Edge, give a more privacy-respecting browser a try. There are plenty of browsers that do little or no tracking while you’re online.
Firefox has evolved into a privacy-respecting browser, allowing you to lock down on online tracking, while also providing a privacy report that shows which trackers, cookies, fingerprints, and other tracking methods websites have used to track your online escapades.
If you’re a Mac user, give Safari a try. Once upon a time, it was said that the only time you should use Safari was to download Chrome. Those days are long gone. In addition to being much better at handling all of the various web technologies out there, Safari also has numerous privacy-protecting features that help keep your online travels private.
One of my favorite privacy-respecting browsers is Brave. Brave, while using the same Chromium browsing engine as Google Chrome, protects your privacy with ad blockers, incognito browsing, private search, and more. Heck, it even has a built-in VPN.
Use a Privacy-Respecting Search Engine
Stay away from Google and Bing. Both search providers use your search information to target ads and otherwise collect usage information. Instead, use a private search provider, these include Surfshark Search, Startpage, Brave Search, or (my personal favorite) DuckDuckGo. While these providers may use Google for results, they do not monitor your searches, nor do they forward info about your searches to Google.
Avoid Social Media
This one is a no-brainer. If you want to keep your digital footprint to a minimum, stay off social media! Meta’s Facebook, Instagram, and new Twitter competitor Threads are all designed to glean information from their users. Speaking of Twitter, while it doesn’t appear to glean quite as much info as Meta’s apps, it still increases your digital footprint.
If you must use social media, check the provider’s privacy settings and privacy policy. Lock down your information as much as you can. Otherwise, you may find yourself back at privacy square one.
Be careful on Twitch and Kick also, especially if you’re a streamer. Be very careful about what you reveal about yourself while streaming.
Don’t Use “Free” Email Providers
While there are free email providers that do not scan your mail, both sent and received, for information they can use to target you for advertising, the two most popular free providers (Gmail and Hotmail) both scan your mailbox for advertising fodder.
Instead, use a truly private email service, like Proton. Proton offers a one-user email account for free, which includes encrypting your emails from end-to-end, not scanning your mailbox, and other privacy features. Proton is based in Switzerland, so you’ll benefit from strict Swiss privacy laws.
Don’t Log In to Sites or Apps Using Your Facebook or Google Account
When you log in to a website with your Facebook or Google credentials, you are allowing the website to make a request for data about you. Facebook alone has plenty of information websites would love to have, including your birthday, your email address, your friends list, your employment information, photos and videos of you and your friends, and so much more.
If you have an Apple ID, use the “Sign In With Apple” option to log in if it’s available. You’ll have the option to hide your real email address, and instead use a random, unique email that will forward any emails from the site to your real email inbox. Sign-in With Apple also doesn’t track or profile you, and it uses two-factor authentication.
Use a VPN When Going Online
We previously discussed using a privacy-friendly browser. Well, no matter how much you lock your browser down, your ISP can still track your online travels. Guess what, ISPs also make a nice bit of change by selling information about their users’ online activities.
Use a VPN whenever and wherever you go online. A VPN encrypts your internet connection, acting like a highway tunnel. Just like a highway tunnel hides the traffic that passes through it, an encrypted VPN tunnel hides your online travels, so your ISP cannot log your activity.
An encrypted VPN connection also protects you when you’re using a public WiFi hotspot, such as those found in airports, coffee shops, stores, libraries, and basically every public location. These hotspots are not encrypted, making them easier to connect to. However, that also means your online activities are exposed, which the shifty-looking gentleman at the next table greatly appreciates.
Avoid Store Loyalty Cards
What does using a store loyalty card have to do with your digital footprint? Well, Kroger, Target, and other stores all use your loyalty membership card or number to track your purchases. The merchant then uses that information to print out coupons at checkout, while also sharing the info with its vendors and other partners.
Think about it. If Krogers is willing to discount ground beef by 20% just because you’re a loyalty member, they’re making that money up somewhere else.
You can usually use your loyalty card for any purchase at the store, even if you make an online purchase. This contributes to your digital footprint.
In Conclusion
As you can see, there are several ways to take control of your digital footprint, some easier than others. By taking the steps I’ve outlined in this article, you can reduce your digital footprint and take control of your privacy, both online and off.