Delete data traces on the Internet: how it works
In the age of the Internet, we leave all of our data traces. In this practical tip, we explain how to delete it.
Data traces on the network: what is stored?
You leave numerous small and large traces in the digital world every day. This usually happens unnoticed. However, deleting them is a difficult task:
- Social networks: Use social networks such as Facebook or Google Plus, forums, communities or other web services, leave personal information. Much of this information is public and accessible to everyone.
- Search engines: Search engines like Google also collect your data. Your usage behavior is carefully analyzed and evaluated. Google knows which pages you have visited via the browser cache and thus uses the right advertising for you.
- Online services: Every other service on the Internet also stores data about your behavior and your person as long as you are registered with him.
- In the next paragraph we explain how you can delete your data from the Internet.
Step 1: Search for your own name on the Internet
The data that is accessible to everyone is of course the most sensitive. Therefore, you should first look at what information you can find about yourself on the net:
- Find your name. You should not only use the Google search engine, but also Bing, Yahoo and the Yasni people search engine.
- Collect all websites where your personal information is publicly available.
- Also search for your email address, as this can also be used to connect you. A search for your address or telephone number cannot hurt either.
Step 2: delete data traces on the Internet
Deleting your personal data from the network is your right. The operators of a website are obliged to remove your data on request. In practice, however, this is still quite difficult: search engine operators like Google cannot ask you to delete your data, since they only display information that can already be found on websites. You must contact the relevant service:
- If you still have access to the service or the website, log in there and delete your traces yourself. If necessary, you can alienate your data if it cannot be deleted.
- In networks where you are still active, you can change the visibility of your data in the settings from "public" to "private" (see picture). This is possible in any social network like Facebook and also in forums. One is often discovered through Google through his Amazon wish list. You can also switch it to "private".
- If you cannot delete content yourself, contact the operator of the respective website by email or phone. Ask him to delete your data. If this is not possible - as in some forums for example - insist on anonymizing your posts.
- If there is still no response to your request after a few days, please try again. Many services are reluctant to work and hope for customer negligence. Do not threaten legal steps until the second or third request. Most of the services will then become active at the latest.
- Above all, foreign services such as Facebook take the topic of data protection quite loosely and hardly respond to user requests.
- However, you have the right to have your data deleted. If a website still does not respond and you want to delete the entries, you must consult a lawyer if necessary. In most cases, however, this does not have to happen.
- If the content on a website is deleted, it can no longer be found via search engines after a few days or weeks.
Conclusion
If you want to remove your data traces from the Internet as best as possible, you have to invest some time depending on the amount. Be persistent and insist on your right. In the future, however, make sure to treat your data as confidential as possible and only disclose on the Internet what everyone really is allowed to know. Almost no data falls into this category.
You can easily delete local data such as the traces in your browser. In the following practical tips, we will show you how it works for Google Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.