How To Remove Personal Information From The Internet

If you want to know how to remove personal information from the Internet, there are a couple things you’ll need to be aware of first.

The first is that it’s not straightforward. There’s no button you can push that will get rid of all your details once and for all.

It requires a fundamental understanding of how content is found, collected, indexed and shared online. It’s also crucial that you’re familiar with the various methods and tactics you’ll need to use in order to remove your personal information from the Internet successfully.

The second thing you need to know is that a permanent fix isn’t guaranteed no matter how experienced you are. With more and more websites popping up each day that are devoted entirely to sharing details like addresses and phone numbers, you need to make an ongoing commitment to keeping tabs on your situation.

Despite that, it’s actually not as difficult as it may seem to get your information removed from the Internet. You simply need to know the moves to make and how to stay ahead of the problem.

First, let’s take a look at how info gets shared and what sites you should spend most of your time monitoring.

How your personal information travels online

One of the most commonly misunderstandings about the process of removing personal information from the Internet is that you only have to worry about one or two websites sharing your info.

Unfortunately, this is not the case at all. If personal info such as your name or address is on one site, there is a very strong chance that it’s on a handful of others as well.

To make things even more difficult it’s not always the same sites you have to look out for. There are definitely some that come up more often than others, but there’s no way of knowing for sure until you take a look yourself.

The reason for this comes from a simple principle that manifests itself in various technological practices.

What does that mean exactly?

More and more over the last 10 years websites in all industries have invested and committed to the idea of content as a source of growth. This could mean blog posts, videos, or even your personal details.

As a result of this the amount of content websites are expected to produce has increased exponentially. In order to keep up with this demand many have started to implement various types of software to help them achieve their goals.

So how does this relate to your personal information?

Sites that aggregate and share this info lean more heavily on these technological practices than almost any other kind of content sharing business right now. It would be impossible for them to find all this data manually, so they have software do it for them.

This means if you want to learn how to remove personal information from the Internet you need to be aware of these sites and how they feed off one another.

Let’s say your address is pulled from a public record and published somewhere online. Instead of starting from scratch and searching all over again, other sites will simply scrape this info and add it to their own database.

When you have hundreds and hundreds of popular sites that share personal details, you can see how this would get out of hand quickly. To make matters worse, many of them require that you opt out to delete your public information from their database.

This means that for the sites that make it easy for you (yes these are the easy ones) you need to go through the time-consuming process of opting out one by one.

If your details aren’t found on a run-of-the-mill “personal info” site then that will change your strategy a little bit. This is when tactics like outreach, suppression, and removal requests will be used more heavily.

In order to remove personal information from the Internet you need to be comfortable with these basics at the very least. There are many other ways that your info can get passed around online, and we will address more of them a bit further down. That being said, understanding this concept will help you deal with them as well.

If your personal information is on a directory or database

If you’re trying to remove your personal information from the Internet and you find it on a database like Whitepages, you are actually fairly lucky.

 

While dealing with these sites can be extremely tedious at times, it’s actually very easy to delete everything off of them. Legally they have to fulfill your request to opt out, so all it takes is for you to follow the steps correctly.

The process for each of these sites is slightly different, but essentially the same. Typically what you will do is find the page that has your info first, then using that to complete the process.

Because of the sheer number of these sites that helps you stay organized when working to remove your personal information from the Internet. To help with this, we have a running list of sites you will likely find yourself on within our reputation management software.

If the site in question is not on the list within our product you will have to dig through the site a bit in order to find the area where you can submit a request. Like we mentioned before, a lot of them operate in similar ways.

If you have trouble with a certain site you can always contact them directly and have them help you out. If you don’t hear anything back after a few days feel free to get in touch with us instead and we will help you figure it out!

In order to be absolutely sure that everything has been removed from these kinds of sites you should check to make sure you didn’t overlook any.

The easiest way to do this is with a combination of our free reputation management software and five minutes of searching your name in Google.

Our software will not only help you remove personal information from the Internet by scouring your search results for possible mentions of your name, but it also has a separate section completely dedicated to these kinds of sites. It also can help walk you through the process of suppression which is yet another way of protecting info like your name or address (we’ll get into that later).

Once you’ve put our tool to work you should also spend a few minutes conducting a Google search to look for any other personal information that you might want to remove from the Internet. This is a great way to cover your bases and double check that our software didn’t miss anything.

With so many new sites being created each day that aggregate and share your personal info, it’s entirely possible for one or two to slip through the cracks. You never want to bank on just one method of identifying details you’re not comfortable with other people seeing.

If your info is found somewhere else

This is where things can get a lot more complicated. With the kind of sites we mentioned above, they HAVE to fulfill your request to get your address or name off of their site.

However, there are so many other ways that sensitive details you don’t want seen can be shared and found online. Some common possibilities here are:

• News sites
• Private blogs
• Videos
• Private forums

Unfortunately with these you don’t have the luxury of simply clicking a few buttons and removing your personal information from the Internet. The most successful strategy for these situations can vary on a case-by-case basis.

This is based on factors such as the volatility of the source, its position in search results, the nature of the content, and more. You will need to exercise some good judgment when deciding what path you want to take.

The nice thing is that you really only have two major options and when you use both together it can be extremely effective. The complexity of what you should do doesn’t necessarily increase for these situations, only the time you’ll have to spend.

Let’s break down the two options you have and how to utilize them in the most effective way possible. Understanding these will give you the knowledge you need to make a decision on how best to proceed for your specific situation.

Option 1: reaching out

This is the most direct way to accomplish your goal, but it’s also not nearly as simple as it might seem. Many people make the mistake of jumping into this option without thinking about the potential downsides.

Although you might think that the worst case scenario is simply a “no” from whoever posted it in the first place, it’s quite common for that to actually make matters worse.

If someone has posted your details out of spite this could rile them up even more and encourage them to take it to the next level. Posting even more on other sites or on the original source is the most common route they might take, but you would be surprised at how creative people can get.

We have heard from clients in this situation who have had to do ten times the work to minimize the damage after a failed outreach attempt. If you aren’t confident in your ability to get a positive response it is best to move on to option two.

However, if you think the location where your personal information is being housed will be receptive then you want to do it tactfully.

The first thing you want to do is come up with your pitch you will use in order to get them to remove your personal information from the Internet. This might seem obvious, but you want to have it thought out and communicate it clearly in order to have the best chance of a favorable response.

If it’s something like a credit card or Social Security number that the webmaster was simply unaware of you will likely have a good chance of getting it removed. Other kinds of details like a name or even an address might not be met with the same sense of urgency.

Another thing that you have to be aware of when reaching out to remove personal information from the Internet is a potential lack of response. Many websites don’t have up-to-date contact information or simply never check their generic “contact us” email address.

Even if your information is extremely sensitive, if they never see your request it’s not going anywhere. This is when you would do a combination of option two and a request to have your information removed from Google search results. This would make it so that even though your info might still be on the site, no one would ever find it.

As you can see the situations where you would use and find success with option one can vary significantly. It can definitely work out and we see this happen periodically, but unfortunately it’s never as easy as you would hope.

This is why we are big advocates for option two even if you have a good chance of getting your personal information removed from the Internet directly.

Option two: suppression

The reason why we love this option for almost anyone who wants to learn how to remove personal information from the Internet is simple, it allows you to take matters into your own hands.

No matter what kind of info you’re concerned about or what type of site it can be found on, you can implement a suppression campaign regardless. This works especially well for situations where you have multiple sites you’re concerned about or if or if someone is trying to harm you by sharing details about you online.

This can work well to combat sites like Spokeo as we mentioned earlier or even Ripoff Report if you have a faulty claim there as well. It’s extremely versatile and will open up a lot of options when it comes to removing personal information from the Internet as well as dictating what gets seen in the future.

This is how it works:

The vast majority personal information that’s found on online is done so through search engines, with Google being the dominant one. If you want to prevent other people from easily finding it then you need to control what they see when they look you up online.

It might sound a little far-fetched at first, but it’s actually relatively simple as long as you know what to do. As a matter of fact businesses use these techniques all the time to help potential customers find their content online.

In order to accomplish this you will need to create a handful of web properties that you can optimize to rank for your name. This means signing up for the major social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Google plus. It would also be extremely beneficial if you registered your own personal domain name and set up a website.

To some this might seem like a way to share more information about them, not less. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

You can share as much or as little information on these web properties as you want. Heck, you could even make someone up!

All that matters is you optimize and interlink them together to send clear signals to Google in order to have them rank for your name. If you want to truly understand how to remove personal information from the Internet, you NEED to be using this tactic.

The great thing is that you don’t need to start from scratch or learn everything about suppression in order to get started. As a matter of fact, you could get up and running today without investing very much time on your end whatsoever.

This is because we have products and services designed specifically to help people in your situation remove information from the Internet. We know the process can be difficult, intimidating, or just downright frustrating.

But it doesn’t have to be.

Finding out how to remove personal information from the Internet doesn’t have to be hard. With a few tips, some helpful tools, and a little time you can protect what you don’t want to be seen by others.

If you have some sensitive details floating around that you haven’t been able to deal with or just want to get your address off the Internet, we can help you sort it all out.

If you want to get started for free you can sign up for our online reputation management software and get the ball rolling. It will guide you through the entire process step-by-step no matter how familiar you are with the process.

If you think you might need a little extra help or simply don’t have the time to do it yourself, you should get in touch with a Reputation Advisor who can help you find which one of our services is a good fit.

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