Limiting the exhibition of your personal data can be an easy task or too complex depending of the person. Besides, according to the cybersecurity expertes from the International cybernetic Security Institute, people cannot completly avoid that some digital platform gathers their information, so getting back all of the user’s privacy is nearly impossible.
How can i control the exhibition of my information?
Internet Archive
Have you heard sometime about Internet Archive? It is a digital library without comercial purposes established in California that gives free access to a large colection of digitized material like websites, applications, videos, moving images and millions of public domain books.
preserve a record of our history in the digital era. Although it was initially developed by academics, Internet Archive continued growing until reaching to contain like 25 pentabytes of total data.
Every personal information that had been publicly avaiable is on the Internet Archive, including the information from websites and services that are actually closed. This means that all of the information that has been publicly shared can be found there. You can use the advanced search from the Internet Archive, and you can also contact with the people in charge via info@arichive.org to ask for the elimination of your information.
Have i been Pwned?
This is a project initiated by the expert in cybersecurity Troy Hunt. This site allow the online users to verify if their personal data have been compromised by a data breach. The users have the option to look for their own information typing their user names or emails, besides they can use the site’s automated functions. Have i Been Pwned also allows to create an account to receive notifications in case of cyberattacks against the email.
If your online privacy os a serious topic for you, Have i Been Pwned is the best option to check if your account has been attacked in any platform.
Besides supporting yourself with tools like Have i Been Pwned? And internet Archive, users must execute some actions to soften the risks for their privacy and information. Taking care of their social networks is a good starting point. Our accounts in social networks contain a large amount of personal information that any malicious user could use for multiple scams.
The worst part is that to eliminate a profile from the social networks is harder than expected, besides the process varies depending of the platform. It can be recommended to execute a backup copy if this information before deleting it. Experts in cybersecurity recommend:
– To make a backup copy of your data depending of the service.
– Read the terms of service to know how to manage and delete the information; keep in mind that some platforms could retain certain information due legal terms.
– Keep control of your deleted accounts to make sure that all the information is permanently deleted
– Delete the email adresses that have been used to register in the platforms that you wish to delete.
After deleteing all of your accounts, you could verify if your data is still in sight through a searching engine. If that’s the case, you can use the option “Delete obsolete content” of Google, you can also use the tool of Bing called “Content Deleting”.
In conclusion, experts in cybersecurity also recommend the use of VPN as a meassure to avoid overexpossure of our personal information on the internet.