Google search offers help to users trying to wipe their digital footprint

Last Updated on: 3rd October 2022, 08:03 pm

Google is helping people prevent their personal information from being leaked. Considering the risks from identity theft to doxxing, the amount of damage a single revealing search result can do is a significant risk to ignore otherwise.

There are several reasons why someone would put their personal information online. It could be related to our attempts to connect with other people, such as using social media like Facebook. It could be related to a business we are trying to promote by staking our name to it.

The question is if you did something you now regret, how do you get rid of your personal information, such as a phone number or address from Google search results?

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Google lets you request the removal of personal information

Anyone with access to the internet can go to Google and search for your personal information, such as your phone number and address, just using your full name. Most people don’t need the internet to get your full name. With all the convenience brought by search engines, this is one of the potentially most severe side effects.

However, Google is making it convenient for everyone who may want to clean up their internet presence a bit. The world’s current most popular search engine allows users to complete a form that they can review to remove your personal information from Google results.

“Important: Google Search shows information gathered from websites across the web. Even if we remove content from Google Search, it may still exist on the web. This means someone might still find the content on the page that hosts it, through social media, on other search engines, or other ways. This is why you may wish to contact the site’s webmaster and ask them to remove the content. Learn how to contact a webmaster.“

Google Support

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Preventing identity theft and financial fraud

According to Insurance Information Institute “The Identity Theft Research Center (ITRC) reports a record number of data compromises in the U.S. in 2021, amounting to a 68 percent increase over 2020.” These numbers continued to rise further this year. The challenge now is to make sure that people are able to prevent this happening to themselves by being proactive in securing their own personal information.

“Even though removing these results doesn’t scrub your contact information from the web overall, we’re doing everything we can to safeguard your information on Google Search,” Danny Sullivan, the public liaison for Google mentioned in a Washington Post article.

The removal of personal information done by Google does not end in just a phone number and physical address, they can also take down non-consensual explicit or intimate personal images from their own search results. These include a number of pictures that may qualify as fake or posted by another party without your approval.

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Doxxing, the cousin of identity theft

According to an article from US News on the legalities of doxxing: “It depends. Releasing personal information that’s publicly available and obtained legally is generally not a crime. But doxxers can run afoul of laws against harassment, stalking, or intimidation, and authorities have prosecuted people for doxxing based on illegally obtained documents.”

The laws directly related to crimes committed in the virtual world are still mostly in the works or otherwise stuck in the political pipeline. The only truly reliable shield that we have is our ability to discern when or when not to post any personal information to the public domain. With the legalities of the matter still a blur, the only thing clear is that anyone can be a victim if they’re not careful with their personal data.

If you’ve never done it before, maybe now is the time to try – Google yourself. You might be shocked by the sheer volume of information people can get from the internet about you.