How to Remove Your Personal Information From the Internet
Last Updated on September 7, 2025 by Editorial
Your personal information online can feel like loose papers scattered in the wind: easy for anyone to grab. That’s why learning how to remove your personal information from the internet matters.
Details like your home address, phone number, or even email can be misused for identity theft, scams, harassment, doxxing, and endless junk mail. However, keep in mind that completely wiping yourself from the internet isn’t realistic.
Still, with consistent effort, you can cut down a large portion of your digital footprint. In this guide, we’ll walk you through clear steps to clean up your online presence. Continue reading to discover more.
Discovering Your Exposure
Before you figure out how to remove your personal information from the internet, it helps to first measure your exposure. The process isn’t about fear; it’s about awareness.
By seeing where your details are out in the open, you’ll know exactly what needs cleaning up.
Self-Assessment
The first step is to do a manual check.
Type your full name, phone number, or email into Google and see what shows up. Pay attention to links from people-search sites, old forums, or even old social media accounts you forgot about.
It’s also worth checking multiple search engines since results can vary. This simple search often reveals just how visible your personal data really is.
Automated Scanning Tools
Manual searches can only go so far, and that’s where scanning tools can save you time. Google’s “Results About You” tool helps identify places where your personal info, like phone numbers or addresses, appear publicly.
Beyond that, services like DeleteMe, Optery, Aura, Incogni, and HelloPrivacy can scan dozens of data broker sites and generate detailed exposure reports.
While some of these tools require a subscription, they give you a clearer picture of where your information is stored and how often it resurfaces.
Would you like me to also write the actionable steps section that explains how to use these findings to start the removal process?
Steps on How to Remove Your Personal Information From the Internet
Below are key ways to start cleaning up your information and keeping it under your control.
Search Engines
Search engines are often the first place your personal information shows up. They don’t actually host your data, but they make it easy for others to find it.
Google offers a few tools you can use:
- Results About You: This lets you request the removal of things like your phone number, address, or email if they appear in search results.
- Remove Outdated Content: If you find a page with your details that has since been removed but still appears in search, you can use this tool to update or clear the cached version.
- My Activity: Google tracks your searches, locations, and browsing history. You can log in, delete specific data or wipe entire categories, and even set auto-delete for the future.
Bing and Others
If you live in the EU, Bing and other search engines give you a Right to Be Forgotten option. This means you can ask them to delist certain results about you that are outdated, sensitive, or irrelevant.
While it doesn’t erase the page itself, it does stop it from being searchable through those engines.
Data Broker and People-Search Sites
Data brokers and people-search sites collect your information from public records and sell it. These include sites like Whitepages, Spokeo, and BeenVerified.
They thrive on making your details easy to find, which is why removing your info from them is so important.
The manual way is to go site by site, find their opt-out form, and follow the process. It usually means verifying your identity and asking them to delete your profile.
It’s a bit of work, but effective if you want control over what’s removed.
If you don’t have the time or patience, there are services like DeleteMe, Incogni, or Optery that handle this for you. They submit requests on your behalf and keep monitoring for new listings.
While these services cost money, they save you from repeating the same process across dozens of sites.
Direct Requests and Legal Rights
Sometimes your information is hosted directly on a website or forum. In these cases, the best step is to contact the site owner or webmaster and ask for removal. Most sites have a contact or privacy page with instructions.
If you’re in the EU, you can also use the GDPR Right to Be Forgotten that we mentioned earlier. This allows you to formally request that both search engines and websites remove your data if there’s no good reason for it to stay public.
For Californians, a new law called the California Delete Act is coming in August 2026.
It will let you send a single request that requires all registered data brokers in the state to remove your information.
Cleaning Up Your Online Presence
Besides cleaning your online footprints on search engines, you also need to do something about your social media and other places.
Social Media and Accounts
Social media holds a huge chunk of personal information. Start by reviewing your profiles and switching them to private. If you see posts that share too much, delete them or hide them from public view.
In some cases, the best option might be deleting the account entirely, especially if you don’t use it anymore.
Unused accounts are another weak point. They can still hold personal data even if you’ve forgotten about them. Go through old email inboxes and search for sign-up confirmations to track these accounts down.
Once you find them, either deactivate or close them. If a site doesn’t allow direct deletion, sanitize the account by changing your name, email, and other details before walking away.
Browser and Device Hygiene
Your browser stores a surprising amount of information about you. Clearing cookies, cache, and browsing history regularly helps limit how much websites and advertisers know.
It’s also smart to check your extensions and remove any you don’t use. Some extensions collect data quietly in the background.
You can also switch to browsers that focus on privacy, such as Firefox or Brave. Adding a virtual private network gives you another layer of protection by hiding your IP address.
On top of that, make sure you’re using unique passwords for every account. A password manager makes this easier, and combining it with two-factor authentication adds another safety net.
Apps and Devices
Apps are one of the biggest collectors of personal information. Go through your phone and remove any apps you haven’t used in months.
For the ones you keep, check the permissions and revoke anything that doesn’t make sense, like a calculator app asking for location access.
Old devices are another weak spot. If you’re selling or recycling a phone or computer, always factory reset it first. This clears personal files, accounts, and stored passwords so nobody else can access them later.
Even if you plan to keep a device in a drawer, wiping it ensures your information isn’t sitting there waiting to be misused.
Prevention: Minimizing Future Exposure
Knowing how to remove your personal information from the internet is half the journey; keeping it that way is just as important. This is how you achieve it.
Practice Cautious Sharing
The easiest way to control your footprint is to stop oversharing. Every time you give away your phone number, birthday, or location online, it’s another piece that can be collected.
Before posting on social media or filling out a form, ask yourself if it’s necessary. If not, skip it.
When you’re asked for details on forms, provide only what’s required. For casual platforms or non-essential services, consider using nicknames, initials, or even slightly altered data that doesn’t reveal too much about you.
Small choices like this reduce the amount of personal information floating around in the first place.
Use Burner Emails or Aliases
One effective trick is separating your real email from the one you use for sign-ups. Services like SimpleLogin let you create disposable email addresses that forward to your main inbox.
If one address gets spammed or leaked, you can shut it down without affecting your actual email.
This also helps protect your identity if a site gets hacked or sold to a data broker. Instead of your personal email being tied to every account, you’ll have layers of separation that make you harder to track.
Device-Level Safeguards
Learning how to remove your information from the internet and keeping your online identity safe often starts with your devices. Avoid using the same email for work, banking, and casual accounts.
Mixing them makes it easy for data leaks in one area to spill into another. By separating your identities, you lower the risk of everything being tied together.
It’s also wise to limit the number of devices that hold sensitive accounts. Stick to using secure and updated phones or computers for banking or official communication, while casual browsing can happen elsewhere.
That way, one compromised device doesn’t put all your accounts at risk
Stay Informed
Privacy threats aren’t static. New risks and scams appear constantly, and laws around data rights change over time. Make it a habit to review privacy settings on your accounts every few months.
Most platforms often introduce new options that give you more control, but they rarely announce them loudly.
You don’t have to obsess over every headline, but keeping an eye on big changes in privacy laws can benefit you.
For example, knowing about the GDPR in Europe or the upcoming California Delete Act helps you understand your rights and gives you new tools for removing personal data.
Set Up Alerts
Another way to catch issues early is by monitoring mentions of your name. Google Alerts is a simple tool where you enter your name, email, or other identifiers, and get notified when they show up online.
This doesn’t stop your information from appearing, but it gives you the chance to act quickly. If you spot sensitive details in a new listing, you can request removal before it spreads further.
Routine Checks
Even after a big cleanup, your data can reappear. Data brokers often rebuild profiles over time, so it’s smart to rescan their sites regularly. Doing this quarterly or twice a year helps you stay ahead of the problem.
Don’t forget to keep an eye on social media too. Platforms change their rules often, and something you once thought was private could become visible again.
Periodically review old posts, photos, and account settings to make sure nothing slips through.
Go Dark Online
Learning how to remove personal information from internet is more than one big cleanup. It starts with discovering where your details appear, then moves into the actual action of requesting removals.
You also need to tighten your social media privacy by deleting old accounts, clearing browser history, and using privacy-focused tools like VPNs. Furthermore, you can use password managers, remove unused apps, and factory reset old devices.
Try any of the steps described in this article to remove everything that can be tied back to you.
FAQ
Can you completely remove your personal information from the internet?
It’s nearly impossible to erase yourself completely since some records are permanent, like court filings or government databases. What you can do is shrink your footprint by removing outdated accounts, requesting removals from search engines, and opting out of data broker sites.
How do I find out what personal information is already online?
Start by typing your name, email, and phone number into search engines to see what comes up. You can also check people-search sites like Whitepages or Spokeo, since they often hold detailed profiles. For a faster approach, try scanning tools or removal services that pull this data together for you.
What’s the best way to remove my details from search engines like Google?
Google has tools like Results About You, where you can ask for contact information removals, and Remove Outdated Content for clearing cached data. You can also review and delete what’s saved in your My Activity account. If you’re in the EU, Bing and other search engines also let you request delisting through the Right to Be Forgotten.
Do data broker removal services actually work?
Yes, but they come at a cost. You could manually opt out from each data broker yourself, which takes time and effort, or pay services like DeleteMe or Incogni to do it for you. These services keep checking back since data brokers often rebuild profiles after some time.
How do I keep my information from coming back once I remove it?
Prevention is key. Share less online, use burner emails for sign-ups, and separate personal accounts from public ones. Set up Google Alerts for your name to spot new leaks and schedule routine checks on data broker sites and social platforms to catch reappearances quickly.
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