It’s a new year, and a worthy new year’s resolution (besides shedding those pesky 10 pounds) is to review your online footprint and look for ways to reduce it. One way to review your online footprint is to Google yourself to see what data brokers have compiled on you and what has been picked up by other web browser services. If you Google yourself, you will see that most of the time, the first hits will be these data brokers, including Whitepages, MyLife, Spokeo, and others.

One service, DeleteMe, [joindeleteme.com], has compiled a complete list of data brokers, and provides a free guide with instructions on how to opt-out of each data broker website. You can use the guide and do it yourself, or pay for the service to do it for you.

According to DeleteMe, the most requested data broker opt-outs include: Spokeo, MyLife, Radaris, Whitepages, Intelius and BeenVerified. Each one is listed and the instructions for removing your information from their websites is included. The type of information that these data brokers have include your name, address, age, telephone numbers, email addresses and photos of your home. All of this information can be compiled and used by criminals, which is why reducing your online footprint is an important privacy and security consideration for 2019.

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