How to delete 99 per cent of your digital footprint

“Today, many of the apps we use will ask for access to your location or contacts in your phone before allowing you to use the app. Yelp, for example, will ask for your location to source nearby restaurant selections; however, Yelp will continue to track your location so long as it is being allowed. One way to prevent this is by switching from ‘Always Allow’ to ‘While Using the App.’” —Muneeb Ali, CEO of Blockstack.

“Facebook has made it easier than ever to use the Internet and has conveniently set up ‘Log in with Facebook’ on other applications. If you have ever used this feature in lieu of creating an account, the information collected and stored on those sites is fed into Facebook. Considering that Facebook faces data breaches regularly, this means that your personal data may be leaked from more than one website. It is important to segregate these accounts and create unique passwords in order to make it harder for your personal information to be leaked.” —Ali.

These are the computer password mistakes hackers hope you’ll make.

“This is harder than it sounds. Ideally, you need to establish a CMA (commercial mail agency) address and change everything to this address and stop using your home address for ANY correspondence. This includes any bills, bank accounts, credit card accounts, and even your driver’s licence. Any of your financial accounts will report your address to the three main credit-reporting agencies, and after a couple of months, they should all be aware of your change of address. Then you need to dispute your old home address with all three agencies until they remove it from your record.” —Bobby Casey, founder of Global Wealth Protection

“Check the [digital archive] Wayback Machine for your online history. I actually did this, and when I saw dated and erroneous information, I emailed them to kindly remove it. You can connect at info@archive.org. They were prompt to respond – and complied.” —Scheff

“This will stop you from signing up for phishing schemes where they gather your details and can use them against you.” —Scott Krieger, Web developer and cybersecurity expert.

“While clearing your local Web-browsing history will ensure that nobody can look on your machine to see what you have been searching for (the same is true of searching using Google Incognito mode or Firefox Private Browsing mode), this will not stop your ISP from retaining a record of those Web visits. In order to access the Internet, everybody’s Web traffic must pass through their Internet Service Provider’s servers. This allows the ISP to know exactly what websites you have visited. Thus, deleting your Web history locally does not stop your ISP from having the entire list of Web-browsing habits. And depending on where you live, the ISP may be collecting that Web-browsing history and all your digital communications’ metadata in order to hand it to government authorities.

“Thus, in order to actually ensure that your online privacy is maintained, it is vital to use a Virtual Private Network (VPN) at all times. A VPN encrypts all the data coming and going from your devices so that it is scrambled as it passes through the ISP servers. This completely removes the ability of the ISP to know which websites you are visiting.” —O’Reilly.

“People should run anti-virus and other software to ensure their laptops, tablets and mobile phones have not been hacked (especially in the event of a breach). They should also take measures to change their passwords across their email, financial and social media accounts – and that they are using passwords which are extremely difficult with a variety of letters, numbers and special characters. They should also keep a close watch on their financial accounts and credit, and consider putting a block on credit requests or inbound requests for credit.” —Paul Lipman, CEO of consumer cybersecurity company BullGuard.

Read these 17 things cyber crooks don’t want you to know..

“Get to know the Account Settings sections for major providers like Google and Apple. Here, you can delete entire search histories, stored private data and any associated email accounts. Tread lightly, though, as these actions will be permanent and have potentially undesirable consequences. Deleting your entire email history and account could make it more difficult to communicate with family and friends. Deleting search histories could make it more cumbersome to do future Internet searches. The same goes for the major social media networks, though steps here might be a little more convoluted. Most major sites will give you the option to download this information before deleting, so you can keep any details you need here on your personal computer.” —Lisa Plaggemier, Chief Strategist at MediaPRO.

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Source: RD.com