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In today’s digital age, safeguarding our safety and privacy while browsing the internet is a growing concern. The alarming reality is that our personal information often finds its way onto ‘people-search’ sites, readily accessible by search engines like Google, even though we never knowingly provided our data to these services.

People-search sites facilitate over 300 million daily searches for personal names and information, with billions of people-search websites indexed by Google. This unsettling fact raises questions about our privacy and the extent to which our information is easily accessible online.

So, how does our private data end up on these ‘people-search’ platforms? Data brokers play a significant role in collecting, analyzing, and selling personal information gathered from various sources. These sources include public records, online activity, and offline activity.

Public records encompass publicly available information, such as census data, voter registration records, court documents, and property deeds. Data brokers compile these records into databases, accessible both online and offline.

Online activity encompasses the websites we visit, the searches we make, the ads we click on, the products we buy, and more. Data brokers track our online behavior using various technologies and may also purchase data from other websites or platforms we use.

Offline activity includes our purchases in physical stores, subscriptions, surveys we fill out, and events we attend. Data brokers obtain this data from retailers, marketers, and other sources with our consent to share it.

Data brokers connect data from different sources to create detailed profiles of individuals using personal identifiers like name, email address, phone number, or Social Security number.

These data brokers use our information in various ways, such as providing it for people search and background checks, marketing and advertising purposes, and risk mitigation and fraud prevention.

Unfortunately, few laws restrict the collection and use of personal data by data brokers. However, some data brokers offer opt-out options for individuals who wish to prevent their data from being collected or shared, though these options may be challenging to find or use and may not entirely remove all traces of data from their databases.

To protect our personal information from being easily accessible online, we can take certain measures. Investing in removal services is one effective option, as it constantly monitors and automates the process of deleting our information from multiple sites.

Google’s privacy tool also allows us to request the removal of our personal information from their search engine. Using alias email addresses is another way to safeguard our personal data from exposure on ‘people-search’ sites.

While no method guarantees complete removal of our data from the internet, taking these steps can significantly enhance our online privacy and security.

Sources:
– Original article

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