How do you deal with unwanted personal information that appears online?

Questions
1

What are the best privacy-focused steps when personal information, photos, videos, or other unwanted content about you has been published online?

I’m particularly interested in situations where contacting the website owner isn’t practical or where the original page has already been removed but the URL or information is still appearing in search results.

So far, the sensible approach seems to be:

  • Identify exactly what personal information is exposed
  • Save the relevant URLs and screenshots
  • Contact the original website where possible
  • Use the platform’s privacy/removal process when applicable
  • Check whether search engines provide a relevant removal request
  • Avoid giving personal information to questionable removal services

I’m interested in hearing how others here approach this from a privacy and data-minimisation perspective, especially when the content is already indexed by search engines.

What has worked for you?

2

This is a general approach that may be useful for scrubbing your personal information from data brokers on the internet. Essentially, you work through each of these lists, finding your personal information with each data broker, then opting out of each one. These two lists may have data brokers in common.

Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List

IntelTechniques Data Removal Guide

3

I have lots of unwanted personal information online :^(

But it stopped affecting me when I started wanting it :^D

/j

4

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