There are quite a few data brokers around the world, with some of the biggest including Acxiom, PeopleFinder, Radaris, Equifax and Experian. These can then be packaged and sold to advertisers or other companies that want to target specific demographics.

Data brokers collect PII (personally identifiable information) and can piece together a frighteningly accurate summary, gathered from various sources such as quizzes on social media, online accounts, competitions you’ve entered and other seemingly innocent pursuits. It’s remarkably easy to build up a complete picture about someone if you know how. How to delete your details from data brokers The Revenge Porn Helpline is a good source of information for those dealing with this upsetting form of online abuse. Sadly, it can be quite difficult to eradicate this kind of content as it’s often moved to other sites, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. If the content you’re trying to remove is criminal in nature, such as revenge porn, doxing information or deepfake sexual images, then you should contact the police if the site owner proves uncooperative when asked to remove the items. How to remove potentially criminal content

It works in the US but not the UK, but Google says that it will be rolling out very soon. The tool doesn’t seem to be universally available at the time of writing. In 2022, the company introduced its ‘Results about you’ tool that can help make it easy to request the removal of listings that show your phone number, home address or email address. The main place people search for things is on Google, so this is a good place to start when you want to reduce your online presence. How to remove yourself from Google Search results

Bear in mind that a lot of this stuff is very far from instant and that it is virtually impossible to completely delete yourself from the internet. Here we’ll explain how to go about doing this, which methods are free and how much it’ll cost you to use those that aren’t. The good news is that your data might be protected by GDPR or another privacy law, and it might well be possible to remove your information from those databases or websites. Recently we’ve also seen the emergence of disgusting things like revenge porn, where people create fake images of people in compromising sexual positions or share private videos/photos never intended to be seen by the world.

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