How To Clean Up Your Digital Footprint?

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Introduction

Whatever we do online leaves a trace. While those crumbs of our personal information are small, they quickly start piling up, leaving us vulnerable. Fortunately, you can take steps to protect your privacy, and this article will tell you more about that.

We will talk about digital footprints and steps you can take to clean your own. Making sure bad guys don’t misuse your personal information.

What Is My Digital Footprint?

A digital footprint is a term used to describe all traces of online activity a person leaves while using the Internet.

Everything you do online gets registered somewhere on a server. You can find examples of digital footprint everywhere – creating accounts, leaving comments, liking, sharing tweets, or simply accepting cookies or buying products. All of those activities leave a trace on the websites you visited.

However, your digital footprint can also become a privacy concern.

Digital Footprint Exploits

If you created an account on a website you rarely visit with the same email and password you use for every other website, you are at risk.

If that site goes down due to a hacker attack, and someone gets your password, they will be able use your email and password combination to log in to all of the other sites you used the same password for, wreaking havoc.

That was just one example of how your digital footprint can jeopardize your security. But, your privacy is at risk too, even without hack attacks. Websites often install tracking cookies on your browsers, which they later use to show you ads.

How Is My Digital Footprint Used?

While your digital footprint can be misused, as described above, it has benefits too. First, getting personalized information is not bad per se, as it makes web browsing easier and caters to your needs. Also, sometimes it is necessary to share your personal information to use services such as Gmail or Facebook.

Therefore, it is important to understand that having a digital footprint is entirely normal and part of regular Internet browsing.

How To Protect Your Digital Footprint

Here are some steps you can take to stay protected when browsing the web:

Create strong passwords – it’s a good idea to use a password manager, which will create strong passwords and make sure you don’t use duplicate passwords on several websites.
Clear cookies, logins, and browsing history regularly – this will get rid of tracking cookies and clear any data found on your account and local machine.
Update software and perform antivirus scans – keeping all of the programs on your computer updated and running regular antivirus scans will eliminate any loopholes that can jeopardise your privacy and online safety.
Check privacy settings on sites you use – go through the privacy settings of all of your accounts, and turn off any tracking. If you haven’t used an account for a while, delete it – you can always recreate another one later.

Conclusion

While steps from above will help you stay protected online. Browsing the Internet still leaves you vulnerable, no matter how careful you are. That’s why it is essential to have a reliable antivirus running in the background to keep you protected.

TotalAV not only protects your site from malware, but also comes with a password manager, ad blocker, VPN, and other security enhancements to make sure bad guys never compromise your digital footprint.