Embarrassing old posts, data brokers selling your information, a desire for more privacy; there’s any number of reasons for wanting to erase yourself from the internet. But is it actually possible to delete yourself entirely? The short answer is probably not — but you can make yourself a much smaller target.

Why Remove Yourself From The Internet?

Maybe you’ve heard about online privacy risks but shrugged it off because the internet is such a part of our lives that selling your data is basically unavoidable. That’s true to a degree, but you don’t have to let any and everything about you exist online, and you don’t always have to let your data be used without your consent.

Shady information brokers count on how overwhelming it can seem to remove yourself from the internet. It’s a lot of work, and most people don’t want to make the effort. But there are smaller steps you can take to make it just a little bit harder to get a hold of and sell data on you to third parties.

There’s also the ever-present possibility of getting, well, milkshake-ducked. If you’re a Millennial or Gen Z-er, you grew up either mostly or entirely online. Those posts from 15 years ago (hopefully) aren’t the person you are any more, but can be low-hanging fruit for someone trying to instigate a dogpile. Scrubbing old stuff from the web is a good way to preempt that, not to mention cathartic.

Leaving sensitive information online makes it an easy target for hackers. If, for example, you have your debit or credit card saved in your Amazon account to make checking out easier, all that information is available if a malicious hacker gets your password. They wouldn’t even need your banking login credentials.

How to Scrub Yourself From The Internet

Now that we’ve covered the “why,” let’s examine the “how” of scrubbing yourself from the internet.

Given how pervasive our online presences all are, and how some degree of internet use is pretty much mandatory to live your life in today’s society, it’s very difficult to totally get rid of your online footprint. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take steps.

Apps, certain services, and good digital hygiene all play a role in how easy it is for a bad actor to get at your information — and how much data is available for them to steal in the first place.

1. Opt Out Of Data Collection

The data brokerage industry is huge — there are over 300 companies in the U.S. alone, according to PrivacyRights.org. Not all of them will let you opt out of data collection, and they certainly don’t go out of their way to tell you it’s possible, but you can opt out of some of the largest companies hoovering up your info.

If you live in California or Europe, you can request your data be deleted. Europe’s GDPR laws and California’s Consumer Privacy Act provide that option. If not, you still have recourse. DataBrokersWatch.org has pre-made forms you can fill out and send to the ten biggest data brokers on their site. If you’ve tried to do this before and the sheer number of data brokers got overwhelming, start here.

2. Google Yourself

The biggest search engine is where most people are going to find information on you, so it pays to see what comes up when you do a Google search of your name. The first results that come up should be things like your LinkedIn page, your website if you have one, or social media profiles.

Look for personal information like email addresses, personal addresses, and phone numbers. If you see that information popping up on shady websites or places you didn’t share, it’s time to take action.

Since Google has to abide by GDPR law, you can send them a request to remove your data from search results. Bear in mind, however, that this won’t remove your name from the actual website it’s been published on — it just won’t turn up on Google.

You can also use Google’s Remove Outdated Content tool to update Google search results so they won’t display any old, outdated information about you. Keep in mind that the page in question has to be significantly different from current data or no longer exist. For more details on how to remove specific information from Google results, such as non-consensual explicit images and videos, read Google's documentation on taking down pages you own or removing personal content.

3. Do Some Digital Spring Cleaning

Still have a MySpace account? Haven’t emptied the trash folder in your email account since the dawn of time? Cleaning up old accounts and messages is a great way to reduce the amount of information floating around the internet.

Delete old social media accounts you no longer use. If you’re still on Facebook or don’t quite feel like deleting your Twitter, you can bulk delete your posts and clean up your timeline. Facebook doesn’t make it simple, but you can archive all your old posts, download them, then delete them from your wall and make a clean slate.

You can also tailor your privacy settings pretty finely on Facebook. Just go to Settings & Privacy > Settings > Privacy and work your way down the list, adjusting every setting to your liking. You can tweak everything from who can see your posts to who can search for you.

Go into the privacy settings on your browser of choice and crank them up, if you haven’t already. Many browsers offer options to delete cookies and history whenever you close the browser, to not store cookies in the first place, and to not send any information on your browsing activity back to the company that made the browser, e.g. Google or Mozilla.

Do a privacy check on every social media account you have. Update old passwords. Go to the privacy tab in the Settings menu and make it as strict as possible. You can delete old posts on Twitter in bulk using a third-party app or if you don’t use it anymore, delete your account entirely.

In Gmail, you can quickly bring up batches of old emails and delete them using the search tag “older_than:” and adding a time period like 6m (six months) or 2y (two years). It’s also a good idea to empty the trash folder if you haven’t done it in a while.

Unless it’s a professional account, don’t list any contact info like emails or phone numbers in any of your social media bios. Use unique passwords for every website — writing them all down in a physical notebook is one way to guard against malicious hacking since it’s not connected to the internet. You can also try a password manager program as long as you’re sure it’s legitimate and secure — check the reviews and research the company before committing. Here at How-To Geek, we've reviewed Password1 and found it very trustworthy.

4. Fight Tech With Tech

Getting rid of the old stuff is good, but we all leave data behind every day, with every online action we take. Luckily, there are ways to erase or reduce those digital footprints.

Since Google search is where a lot of your online footprint comes from — data on your preferences, what items you’re thinking about buying, location data, and more — a good place to start is a private search engine. DuckDuckGo is a popular option.

Privacy browsers often use private search by default. The better ones offer Tor routing to obscure your location and anonymize your browser fingerprint so it’s harder to pick you out from other people online. Brave browser and Tor are popular examples of this, but there are a ton of others.

If you don’t want to switch browsers, browsing in Private or Incognito mode will offer some measure of anonymity. It isn’t bulletproof since your internet service provider (ISP) still logs the pages you visit, but it’s better than nothing.

You can also take steps to anonymize your messaging with encrypted services. Signal end-to-end encrypts your messages, making them very hard to crack. ProtonMail is another widely used app to encrypt your email messages. PreVeil is another good option.

Using an app like Burner to protect your real phone number can help reduce robocalls and make it harder for malicious hackers to get a hold of your real personal number.

Virtual private networks (VPNs) can help hide your real location by using fake internet protocol (IP) addresses to make it appear as though you’re using a device in another location. Some browsers offer them built-in, while others are dedicated apps or services. If you want to hide your location as well as your browsing data, consider using a good one.

5. Use Common Sense Best Practices

Being wary of malware, viruses, and spam is the best way to avoid phishing attempts that can result in you accidentally divulging your personal information. Be careful what you click on and which emails you open.

Don’t put anything online you wouldn’t want other people to see. Don’t share your precise location if you don’t have to. Limit apps’ access and permissions on your phone to when you’re actually using them, especially if they use things like your location data.

Talk to your friend and family as well. Let them know you don’t want to be online and ask them not to post photos of you, or at least not tag you in any photos they do share. Also, explain that you’d like them not to share your location on social media.

It’s Impossible to Completely Disappear

You can’t totally scrub yourself from the internet, but you can reduce your online footprint to a fraction of what it currently is. You can also seriously shore up your security and make it extremely difficult for anyone but a very dedicated cyberattacker to find you.

It’s best to start with the basics and move up, as big tech doesn’t make it easy to move around online with strict privacy measures in place. Tighten your privacy settings on your browser and social media accounts. Consider encrypting your text and/or emails and using private mode.

Read up on exactly what data companies like Google, Meta, and WhatsApp are collecting from you. Sign out of your accounts when you’re done using them, as it makes you harder to track. As you learn more about VPNs, encryption, and security, upgrade your methods.

Doing all of this is a pain, and that’s exactly what big tech is counting on — you being too overwhelmed or annoyed to follow through. But if you want to be as close to anonymous as possible, it’s worth putting in the effort.