How to Find Information About Yourself on the Internet

The internet is the engine of today’s data economy. As individuals and organizations feed countless pieces of content to cyberspace, it has become a source of incalculable amounts of information. And it is growing at an extraordinary pace, with the total data generation slated to reach 180 zettabytes by 2025.

If you’re wondering how much of this sea of data belongs to you, you are certainly not alone. There are precise techniques to find your data footprint on the internet. But before that, let’s discuss why it matters.

Why Track Your Online Data Footprint?

Keeping track of personal information available in cyberspace is essential for several reasons.

The most critical of these is personal safety. Hackers and criminals often rely on freely accessible personal information to identify and target victims. With a substantial data footprint, you could easily become the subject of identity theft, financial fraud, and countless other cybercrime.

What you share online could also affect your career prospects. According to research, more than 75% of employers conduct online research when recruiting candidates. So, inappropriate or inaccurate content posted online, either by you or someone else unknown to you, could severely dwindle your chances of getting hired.

Above all, tracking personal data is important for privacy. Ultimately, you’ll want to maintain control over what information is shared and kept private. But privacy boundaries have become blurred in recent times as the ease of digital data mining, tracking, storing, and sharing reaches new levels.

However, having a data footprint is not without benefits. For instance, it could be a useful tool for reputation management. By correcting inaccurate or contradicting details, removing damaging ones, and feeding data that adds value, you can effectively build your digital reputation. But first, you must understand the extent of your online data footprint.

How to Find Your Information on the Internet 

There are primarily two types of personal data that enter cyberspace. The first is data fed by you. It can include your profile on LinkedIn, blog posts on Medium, contact details on your personal website, or comments you have added to Quora.

The second category of information includes those added by others. For example, a friend could upload a photo taken with you to Facebook. Your employer could publish your name, job title, and contact number on the company website. Or a third-party publisher could share one of your articles with a link back.

Some of these could be done with your consent and awareness. But what you are unaware of is likely more. So, how can you identify each of these content pieces on the internet? Here are three simple methods to find information related to you:

1. Search engines

Google, Bing, and Yahoo! are the most accessible sources to uncover online content. These search engines have bots crawling the internet to identify new content added by sites each day. And within seconds, they can scour the indexed web pages and display the results relevant to your search in the form of search engine result pages (SERPs).

So, what’s the best way to search for your information on these platforms? There is no hard and fast rule. However, by typing your first and last names with quotation marks, it is easier to narrow down results to exact matches. Try different combinations with and without initials. For example, if your name is Andrew Thomas Williams, try “Andrew Williams”, “A Thomas Williams”, “A T Williams”, “Andrew Thomas Williams”, and similar combinations.

To narrow the results further, search for two or more pieces of personal information. For instance, search for your name and address, name and city, or name and email address separated by a comma.

2. Data aggregator sites

Some sites aggregate publicly available information to provide critical services. For instance, PhoneHistory collates individual data to enable reverse number lookups. Experian compiles information to help lenders assess credit risks before approving a loan.

Depending on the service they provide, these businesses can collect various types of data, ranging from your home address and contact details to professional background, financial information, and even criminal history.

Using a data aggregator site has several advantages. They can, for instance, prepare comprehensive reports that contain personal details retrieved from various public sources, digital and otherwise. Search engines, however, can only find what is available online.

Even then, there is no assurance that Google or Bing could display all relevant online data. For example, if a search engine is unable to crawl a particular web page, you will not find it in its search results. Moreover, certain pages could have access controls, so even when they appear on SERPs, the site will prevent you from viewing them.

Data aggregator sites help minimize these challenges by collecting and organizing individual data points into meaningful reports.

3. Social media

With 4.9 billion users, social media platforms host an incomprehensible amount of user data. The average user spends 2 hours and 31 minutes daily on these sites. During that time, you can post updates, photos, videos, and comments and engage with others in countless ways. All these add to your data footprint.

So, searching for your details on popular social media sites is imperative. But wouldn’t a search engine capture them? Not always. For instance, if you have not granted permission to display your profile and activities on third-party sites, Google or Bing will likely be unable to index those pages.

Take Control of Your Digital Data Legacy

It is important to find and understand the type of personal information available on the internet. Once you do that, you can then determine which data to keep, remove, or correct.

Start by assessing what you have published. With third-party sites, however, you will need to contact the site owner and request content edits. In addition, seek help from search engines to get pages removed from their search results. Google, for instance, will consider deleting pages with personally identifiable data and those explicit or intimate in nature. Finally, adopt a cautious approach to data sharing to minimize your data footprint in the future.