There is a very thin line between our physical and digital identities.
When you apply for a new job, many employers will evaluate your social media presence to ascertain if you are a suitable candidate. Advertisers will scrape publicly available information on you, your public profiles, and your search history for targeted marketing.
A misjudged tweet from years ago or an inappropriate Facebook photo can destroy future job prospects or ruin a career.
There's the idea that once something is online, it is immortal, immutable, and almost impossible to contain. The golden rule is simple -- you should not put anything online you wouldn't want your grandmother to see, although, sometimes you aren't in control of what gets published.
The Google search engine, among others, is a double-edged sword: It provides links and website addresses to users in response to search queries, but unless the right controls are in place, your search queries can be cataloged for marketing purposes. Google can also be used to uncover exactly what information about you is in the public domain.
Not every search engine will reveal the same results. For a more comprehensive look, try out other search engines such as Bing.
Once you know what is online, you can start tackling the problem. Run a quick search for your full name and note any website domains that flag you, social media account links, YouTube videos, and anything else of interest.
In the E.U., citizens can request the removal of information from Google search results. After filling in this form, requests are reviewed by Google employees on a case-by-case basis. You must provide the specific URLs you want to be delisted, and search queries related to these URLs, and you must explain why the tech giant should agree to your request.
"Broadly, the reviewer will consider whether and how the information may be in the public interest and weigh this against your rights under the applicable data protection law," Google says. "There are several reasons why information may be in the public interest. As part of the balancing exercise, Google looks to a number of different sources, such as the guidelines developed by European data protection regulators."
Google may not accept every request to remove links relating to you. Reasons given for refusal include technical reasons, duplicate URLs, information deemed "strongly in the public interest," and whether or not the content on a web page relates to professional lives, past convictions, work positions, or self-authored content.
At the time of writing, Google has received a total of just under 1.4 million delisting requests and around 5.4 million URL delisting requests.
If you are a resident of the U.S., or elsewhere, you may be able to request for limited information to be removed from search results, such as phone numbers or home addresses that could be used for identity theft and may have been leaked through doxxing.
You can't control your digital footprint without knowing where and what information concerning you is stored.
More importantly, you should know if your information has been leaked online, and when we have data breaches occurring daily, it's more a question of what, not if.
If you find an email address or telephone number of yours has been "pwned," check to see what data breaches you have become embroiled in, and make sure to change any vulnerable passwords as quickly as possible. You won't be able to do much about the data leak itself, but this also could serve as a reminder of where you have opened online accounts.
Thankfully, many companies have now become aware of the issue and services including credit monitors and password vaults will often run periodic checks online for any compromised passwords. If they have been found, you should change them immediately.
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