Getting Your Online Presence Under Control

Your online presence is bigger than you think. It's not just your social media profiles, it's old forum posts, business directory listings, forgotten accounts, and scraps of personal information sitting on data broker sites you've never heard of. Most people have never actually looked at what's out there under their name, and once you do, it's usually more than expected. I help people get a proper handle on it, not by disappearing off the internet entirely, but by taking back control of what's visible and locking down what needs to be private. It's rarely anything dramatic, just years of digital clutter that quietly add up to more than you'd expect.

Start By Googling Yourself

The simplest first step costs nothing and takes five minutes. Search your own name, your email address, and your phone number, and see what turns up. You might find an old MySpace-era profile, a business listing with your home address on it, or a comment you left on a forum a decade ago that you completely forgot existed. This is exactly the kind of scattered personal information that scammers piece together to make phishing attempts feel personal and convincing, so it's worth knowing what's actually out there before you decide what to do about it. It's worth doing a quick image search on your name and main profile photo too, since that often surfaces old accounts and tagged photos a plain text search misses entirely.

The Kind of Things That Turn Up

Alongside the obvious social profiles, you'll often find old employer bios, community group listings, marketplace ads you posted years ago, and review site profiles with your full name attached. None of it is dramatic on its own, but pieced together it builds a surprisingly detailed picture of who you are, where you've worked, and what you're interested in, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes a scam message feel personal rather than generic.

Lock Down Your Social Media Privacy Settings

Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok all default to sharing more than most people realise. Go through your privacy settings properly rather than trusting whatever was set when you signed up years ago. Check who can see your posts, whether your friends list is public, if your location is being tagged automatically, and who can find your profile through a phone number or email search. None of this stops you using the platforms normally, it just means a stranger scrolling through can't build a picture of your daily routine, your family, or your address from a few minutes of clicking around. It's worth doing this on every platform you actually use, not just the one you check most often, since the ones you've half-abandoned are usually left on their loosest default settings.

Old Accounts Are a Bigger Risk Than You Think

The accounts you've forgotten about are often the ones causing the most damage. An old shopping site with saved card details, a forum you joined once and never returned to, a fitness app you tried for a month three years ago, they're all sitting there holding your personal information with security standards you have no way of checking. I'd recommend running your email through Have I Been Pwned to see which accounts have already been caught up in a data breach, then either delete what you don't use or properly secure what you're keeping with a password manager and two factor authentication. NordPass is what I use myself, and it makes tidying up old accounts far less painful than doing it from memory. Even accounts you're sure you closed years ago are worth double checking, since some services keep your data on file long after the account itself stops being active.

Getting Old Listings Actually Taken Down

Finding something is only half the job, getting it removed is the other half. Most sites have a contact or webmaster email buried in the footer, and a polite request asking them to take your listing down usually works, though it can take a few weeks. For search results specifically, Google has a "Results about you" tool that lets you request certain personal information be removed from search even when the underlying page stays up. Data broker sites tend to be the slowest to respond, so don't expect an instant result, just keep a note of what you've requested and follow up if nothing's changed after a month.

Building the Habit of Staying On Top of It

This isn't a one-off job you tick off and forget about. New accounts get created, old ones get abandoned, and your online presence keeps quietly growing whether you're paying attention or not. I'd suggest setting a reminder every few months to search your own name again and glance through your privacy settings, the same way you'd check your bank statement. If you want a proper starting point, my Safety Toolkit page has the tools I actually recommend for this, and if you're not sure where your own online presence stands, get in touch and I'll help you figure out what needs sorting first. It sounds tedious written down, but in practice it's a five minute check every few months, not an ongoing project.