Remove your personal information from the Internet – Image credit: Incogni

A key aspect of staying safe online is minimizing your digital footprint, and while tools like Surfshark VPN can help, take it a step further by taking the fight to data collectors. with Incognito.

Some companies exist for the sole purpose of purchasing personal data online in bulk. The data can be used for legitimate purposes, like targeting education ads, but it can also be used by bad actors looking to commit identity theft or target specific groups.

Worse yet, if bad actors can gather enough aggregate data about an individual, they can more easily steal their accounts or online identity. Although it may seem futile to try to fight these big companies, there are simple strategies that are very effective.

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Basic Internet Hygiene Goes a Long Way

Before we get into deleting data on the web, it’s important to understand how you can keep it off the Internet. Everything you do, like the websites you visit and the products you buy, is monitored online and offline.

First, protect yourself and your accounts by using unique passwords on each website. When a website like Home Depot is hacked and data is stolen, one of the things bad actors do is try username and password combinations on other accounts like email or bank accounts.

People search sites claim to have data on billions of people – Image credit: Incogni

Second, share as little personally identifiable information as possible, as it can be used for identity theft. This starts with social media accounts, but also applies to companies like Amazon.

For example, don’t just download your contact list because an app asks you to. And you can still use social media, just avoid sharing your personal details like your maiden name, home address, email address or phone number even in private chats.

If you’ve shared too much in the past, it might be a good idea to go back and delete old public social media posts or entire accounts. Although the website itself may keep an archive of the post, at least web crawlers and Google search results won’t bring up this old data.

If you want to go further, use something like Surfshark VPN to hide your IP address from your Internet service provider. This will hide the websites you visit and provide even less data to businesses.

Surfshark also offers other features such as Alternative ID, which allows users to provide generated email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and names to register sheets. By keeping your true identity secret, an account cannot be linked to you if this website is hacked.

It’s never too late to start taking control of your online data. Expose less personal information now and your footprint will shrink over time.

Bring the Fight to Data Brokers with Incogni

Okay, so you’ve started practicing good internet hygiene and it’s time to clean up what’s already there. Rather than calling hundreds of companies and hitting dead ends, wasting time and money, there is a service that will do the work for you.

Incogni can help you remove your personal information from the Internet – Image credit: Incogni

Unknown is a company specializing in contacting data broker websites and people search sites to request deletion of data on behalf of the client.

If you’ve ever wondered why your inbox fills up with endless spam, your phone is constantly full of spam calls, and your physical mail is full of credit card offers, it’s because of credit card databases. data brokers. Well, at least partly.

Some inconveniences come from the simple fact of existing, applying for a loan or purchasing a product. Unfortunately, there is no way to completely avoid them without hiding in a cave and disconnecting from the Internet.

However, you can regain some sense of sanity and stay home and online with Incogni. The company will scan the Internet for your personal information sold by data brokers and people search sites, send deletion requests, and continue to monitor more exposed data.

If requests are ignored, they are sent repeatedly. It’s a brute force method, but effective.

Incogni provides up-to-date information on all active requests – Image credit: Incogni

If you’ve ever looked at Google search results when searching for your name, you may find people search sites, websites offering to reveal your job, phone number, property records, or even websites promising to reveal your criminal history. These websites obtain their data from public data breach dumps or by purchasing the data from data brokers and optimizing that data for search engines.

Data brokers obtain the information from companies that sell the data freely to make additional profits. For example, many websites deliver coupons to your email inbox, but their terms of service also state that your collected emails may be sold to third parties.

Incogni can help you recover all your data and reduce your online digital footprint.

Here’s how the process works:

1. Create an Incogni account and authorize the company to act on your behalf.
2. Incogni scans people search and data broker sites for your data.
3. Deletion requests are sent, then resent until something is done.
4. Repeated scans prevent websites from re-adding data about you.
5. Lists of data brokers, people search sites, etc. are updated regularly so that Incogni can stay up to date.
6. If a data broker appeals a deletion request, Incogni handles the appeal for you.

Save 50% on Incogni

Save 50% on an annual plan from Incogni it’s priced at $89.88 for a limited time only. You can also purchase a monthly plan for $14.98.

Don’t miss this special offer on Incogni data removal tool, valid during this holiday season only.