What Information Is Online About You? Here's How to Find Out

A step-by-step guide to auditing your digital footprint: what's out there, where to find it, and what to do about it.

Most people assume they have a rough idea of what’s out there about them. A LinkedIn profile, maybe an old Facebook account, a few tagged photos.

Then they actually look, and it’s much more than that.

This guide walks you through exactly how to audit your own digital footprint: where to look, what you’ll find, and what to do about it.

Start With a Basic Search (but do it right)

The obvious first step is searching your own name in Google, DuckDuckGo, or Brave. But most people do this wrong and miss a lot.

Do these searches:

• Your full name in quotes: "Jane Smith"

• Your name plus your city: "Jane Smith" Chicago

• Your name plus your employer: "Jane Smith" Acme Corp

• Your name plus your phone number or email address

• Your username, if you use the same one across sites

Search on at least two engines. DuckDuckGo and Google surface different results, so start there first. What one buries, the other sometimes surfaces prominently.

Look past the first page. Most people stop at page one, but data brokers and people-search sites often rank lower and contain far more personal detail than anything on page one.

Data Brokers Are the Real Problem

Search engines show you what’s publicly indexed. Data brokers show you what’s been collected, aggregated, and sold.

Data brokers are companies that compile personal information from public records, purchase histories, loyalty programs, social media, voter registrations, property records, and dozens of other sources. They then package it into profiles they sell to marketers, landlords, employers, and anyone else willing to pay.

The profiles are detailed. A typical data broker entry might include your full name, current and past addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives’ names, estimated income, property ownership, court records, and social media handles — all on one page, available to anyone who searches.

The major people-search sites to check first:

• Spokeo

• WhitePages

• BeenVerified

• Intelius

• PeopleFinder

• FastPeopleSearch

• Radaris

• MyLife

Search your name on each one because what you find will vary. Some brokers have more complete records than others, and the data they hold updates at different rates.

This is uncomfortable for most people. The volume and specificity of what’s available is usually worse than expected.

Check What Google Knows Specifically

Beyond general search, Google maintains records of your activity across its own products. If you use Gmail, Google Maps, YouTube, or Android, there’s a detailed log of that activity attached to your account.

Go to myactivity.google.com and sign in. You’ll see a timeline of searches, sites visited, videos watched, locations visited, and more. This data often going back years.

Google also allows people to request removal of certain personal information from search results. If your phone number, home address, or other sensitive details appear in Google Search, you can submit a removal request at support.google.com/websearch/troubleshooter/9948276.

Look at What Social Media Exposes, Including Accounts You Forgot About

Social media platforms often expose more than people realize, especially when privacy settings drift from their defaults over time.

Facebook: Check your profile as a non-friend or logged-out user. Go to your profile, click the three dots, and select “View As.” What’s visible may surprise you, and can include tagged photos, check-ins, and older posts are often more public than expected.

LinkedIn: Your profile is typically fully public and indexed by search engines. Your connections list, employment history, education, and any posts or comments you’ve made are visible to anyone. LinkedIn is one of the most commonly harvested surfaces for scammers and data collectors because the information is both detailed and voluntarily provided.

Instagram and Twitter/X: Both default to public. Old posts, location tags on photos, and comments under other people’s content all appear in search results.

Also think about accounts you may have created years ago and forgotten: old forums, Tumblr, Reddit, Disqus, Quora, and gaming platforms. Search your username across these. A username you’ve used consistently is one of the most reliable ways for someone to build a comprehensive profile of your activity online.

Check Public Records

A surprising amount of information is publicly available through government records:

• Voter registration: In many US states, voter rolls are publicly accessible and include your name, address, date of birth, and party affiliation

• Property records: If you own property, your name, purchase price, and address are typically in public county records

• Court records: Civil and criminal court filings are often searchable online by name

• Business filings: If you’ve ever registered a business, LLC, or been listed as a registered agent, that information is typically in state records

Many data brokers pull directly from these sources, which is why opting out of the broker itself doesn’t always prevent the information from resurfacing. The reason? They just re-pull from the original public record that never changes.

What You’re Likely to Find

After going through this process, most people discover some combination of the following:

• Current and past home addresses, sometimes going back decades

• Phone numbers, including mobile numbers they never gave out publicly

• Names of family members and their addresses

• Estimated income and net worth ranges

• A list of “associated” people (neighbors, relatives, former roommates)

• Old email addresses

• Court records, even minor ones

• Photos pulled from social media, sometimes years old

• URLs that you registered

The goal of this audit isn’t to alarm you, rather it’s to give you an accurate picture of your actual exposure, rather than an assumed one.

What to do About It

Knowing what’s out there is step one. Step two is reducing it.

The highest-leverage moves, in order:

1. Opt out of the major data brokers. Most have opt-out processes, though they vary in difficulty and reliability. Some require ID verification, some require a written request, and some re-add your data after a period of time and need to be revisited.

2. Tighten your social media privacy settings. Review what’s visible to non-connections and to search engines. Most platforms have a “view as public” option that shows you exactly what a stranger sees.

3. Request Google removal for any personally identifying information that appears in search results.

4. Use separate email addresses for different purposes so a data breach on one service doesn’t expose activity across others.

5. Be selective with loyalty programs and apps that request location access. These are common data collection points.

The honest answer is that a full cleanup takes time. The data broker opt-out process alone involves dozens of individual sites, each with its own process. But each step meaningfully reduces your exposure, and the high-leverage ones (like the major people-search sites) make an immediate difference.

If you want a structured path through all of this, including a step-by-step audit process, a data broker opt-out tracker with 75+ sites pre-loaded, and guides covering email privacy, LinkedIn, Apple settings, and more, the Secrets of Privacy Library has everything in one place. “Excellent content, really helpful and clear” - James Adams

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Published by Secrets of Privacy — practical privacy guidance for people who want real protection without going off-grid.