How To Check Your Digital Footprint (with Free Scanner)

Is It Dangerous To Have Too Much of a Digital Footprint?

A digital footprint is the traceable data you create when spending time online. Your digital footprint contains everything from the websites you search for and visit to data taken from your social media pages and online shopping history.

But what is your digital footprint used for, who can find it, and what are the risks involved with having too large of a footprint? 

While your footprint is mainly used by advertisers who want to target you with online ads, a digital footprint can also be used by:

• Hackers and scammers can use your information to target you with spam emails or gain access to your online accounts. 
• Potential employers and recruiters may check your online presence when considering whether to offer you a job.
• Telemarketers could use your contact details to send you spam or sign you up for unwanted subscriptions and services. 
• Stalkers and online trolls could tarnish your reputation or blackmail you by using old content from social media profiles to skew public perception of you or your business.

Removing a large digital footprint is a lengthy, complex process — but it’s worth seeing how much of your information is publicly available. By periodically checking your digital footprint and taking action to reduce the amount of sensitive data online, you can protect yourself and your family from hackers and fraud. 

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How To See What’s In Your Digital Footprint

Unless you don’t use the internet or online services, there’s always going to be some sensitive information about you available online. 

This includes information you’ve actively shared (called your active digital footprint) and data scraped or collected by websites and apps as you use them (known as your passive digital footprint).

Periodically checking your digital footprint for private information that you don’t want easily found can help protect your digital identity and reputation. 

Use Aura’s free digital footprint checker

Most online resources about digital footprints offer limited advice, such as telling you to do a Google search of your name. However, your digital footprint can exist in many places that search engines can’t find — including the Dark Web, some public records, and many data broker databases. 

Aura has a free digital footprint checker that scans for your personal information across multiple sources to give you a more complete picture of your digital footprint:

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How Aura’s free digital footprint checker works: 

• Enter your email to start a search of online and Dark Web databases. If your email address is linked to any known cybersecurity incidents or data breaches, you can find out more information with a quick scan.
• Verify the information that Aura finds — including your full name and location. The scanner may prompt you for more details, like your name, date of birth, or hometown. Don’t worry — this data is not stored and is only used to narrow down your results. 
• Take responsive action. If your email is compromised, you can find out which accounts are at risk. This insight gives you a chance to update your passwords and privacy settings before it’s too late. 

Search for your name in search engines

The easiest place to search for your publicly available digital footprint is by entering your name in a search engine such as Google or Bing. 

Enter your name, and hit search. If you have a common name or the same name as a public figure, you may need to add a qualifier, such as your profession or location (for example, “John Denver, lawyer”).

While the first few results will mostly be social networking profiles you’ve set up or other content you’ve created, you can go deeper by adding different search operators: 

• To find email accounts or addresses attached to your name, enter Search: First Name Last name@ 
• To find web pages showing your name anywhere in the text, enter intext: First Name Last Name‍
• To find Word documents that contain your name, enter Look for: First Name Last Name filetype:doc into the search engine. You can swap out the file extension with other popular file types, like PDF, JPG, and XLS.

Look for your profile on data broker websites

Data brokers, such as Spokeo, WhitePages, and Radaris, scrape public data — including your browsing history and personally identifiable information (PII) — and sell it to advertisers and government agencies. 

Unfortunately, scammers, also, can gather information about you this way, which is a serious threat to your identity.

To remove your information from data broker lists, you have two options:

1. Manually opt out. Most data brokers will remove your data if you send them a formal request — but this process can be complicated and time-consuming. Also, there is no guarantee that brokers won’t simply collect and share more of your data in the future.
2. Use an automated service. If you want to skip the manual work, use an automated data broker opt-out service. Aura scans known broker databases for your information and lodges removal requests on your behalf.

Check your social media privacy settings

Much of your digital footprint is composed of the information you share on social media. Many of us share too much online — from photos to geotagged posts to personal information about our friends, family, and personal lives. 

To ensure you aren’t oversharing, disclosing sensitive data, or potentially damaging your online reputation, it’s wise to tighten your social media privacy settings. Ideally, your social media posts shouldn’t be visible to anyone outside of a small trusted circle of friends and family.

• Facebook: Use the Privacy Checkup Tool.
• X (Twitter): Protect your posts and block unwanted direct messages.
• Instagram: Change your account to private and disable tagging.
• LinkedIn: Stay anonymous while browsing, and regularly clear your history.
• Snapchat: Block the sharing of location data and limit your visibility in “quick add.”
• TikTok: Manage your permissions, hide your following list, and filter your DMs. TikTok also lets you set all of your previously posted videos to private with a single click.

Review app and browser data-sharing permissions 

Many apps on your mobile devices are guilty of storing and sharing information even after you stop using them. Not only is this a privacy concern — if these companies are targeted in a data breach, your information could be leaked. 

• Review all third-party app connections. While it’s convenient to log in to other services by using your Google or Facebook account, these API connections offer hackers more entry points to your digital life. Check what’s connected through Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and Slack.
• Remove unused or untrusted services. If you no longer use an app (or any other online service), remove the integration. Generally, it’s best to minimize these connections and avoid using lesser-known services that may have outdated software or security vulnerabilities.
• Adjust data-sharing permissions on your browser. Web browser cookies store your information as you use apps, social media accounts, e-commerce sites, and smart home devices. Go to your browser settings to adjust your preferences. You can also enable anti-track browser extensions to stop unwanted sites and companies from tracking your activity.

Monitor the Dark Web for your sensitive information

With a dedicated Dark Web monitoring service, you can scan for the harder-to-find trail of data created by data breaches, hacks, and leaks. Dark Web marketplaces may contain personal details ranging from your Social Security number (SSN) and phone number to images of your driver's license and passport.

Dark Web monitoring services continuously scour known marketplaces, forums, and data breaches for your sensitive information and then notify you if anything is found. 

How To Reduce (or Even Delete) Your Digital Footprint

Many sources of your digital footprint can’t be modified easily — especially anything that’s been leaked to the Dark Web after a data breach. However, knowing what’s been compromised can give you a headstart against cybercriminals and would-be scammers. 

As you search for your digital footprint, take note of the sites and services where that information is being hosted. 

Here’s what to do next:

• Contact website owners. A direct message to site owners or administrators may help you quickly get your personal information taken down. However, be aware that not all site owners will be responsive.
• Remove Google search data. File a content removal request with Google to hide sensitive or private personal information (like IDs and bank details) from the search results. You will need to provide details about the websites and specific information to remove your information from Google.  
• Blur map visibility. You can get images taken down or blurred on Google Maps Street View if you believe they put you at risk. For example, photographs of your home, vehicles, and property images could share unwanted details about your life. You can make a request to Blur Street View Imagery here.
• Delete dormant accounts. With a thorough audit of old accounts and apps, you can erase or hide some of your personal data online. If it’s not possible to delete the accounts, you can reduce your digital footprint by manually deleting profile information and removing linked bank accounts or credit card numbers. 
• Stop Google tracking. If you want to limit the growth of your digital footprint, halt data collection of your web activity, locations, and YouTube history by using MyActivity page controls.

📚 Related: How to Remove Your Personal Information From the Internet →

Minimize Your Digital Footprint To Protect Your Online Privacy

Left unguarded, your digital footprint isn’t just a record of your online activity — it’s a threat to your finances, credit reputation, and identity. 

While the risk depends on how much and what information is easily available about you, it’s undeniable that you will be much safer with less of your data online in the first place. 

Here’s how you can secure your online privacy to stop giving hackers and fraudsters what they need to target you:

• Share less information with online services and apps. Only disclose essential details when you open accounts online. Don’t share your full name, home address, phone number, or email address unless it’s mandatory. Even then, you should query why anyone needs your details and whether you can trust them.
• Consider using fake information for online accounts. Using an old phone number or secondary email address can prevent your main accounts from being exposed to threats. This tactic makes it harder for services and scammers to combine data from different sources and create more robust “files” about you. 
• Use a virtual private network (VPN) when browsing online. Enabling a VPN will hide your IP address, online purchases, and browsing activity from prying eyes, including hackers and data brokers.
• Tighten your social media privacy settings. Fraudsters can use geotagging, stolen photos, and snippets of your publicly accessible profile to launch convincing phishing scams. It’s good practice to disable location-sharing and set your visibility to private so that only trusted connections can view your content across social media platforms. 
• Turn off search engine tracking. Search engines like Google and Bing collect a huge amount of your personal data. Thankfully, you can adjust the settings on Google, Microsoft (both Edge and Bing), and Yahoo!
• Use a privacy assistant (or private browser) to block ads and trackers. Online privacy-focused search engines like DuckDuckGo or Brave block third-party ad trackers, cookies, and fingerprinting. 
• Sign up for an automatic data broker opt-out service. When data brokers sell your information online, it exposes you to spam, robocalls, and other unwanted advertising. Aura’s automated opt-out service scans known databases and sends requests to remove your information, reducing the risk of spam and phishing threats.

While you can try to reduce your digital footprint, it’s getting harder and harder to remove information from the internet once it’s been posted. 

Aura is an all-in-one solution that helps to protect your digital identity, prevent hacking, and warn you if your credentials have been leaked. Key features of Aura’s award-winning identity theft protection platform include Dark Web monitoring, a military-grade VPN, a secure password manager with data breach alerts, and 24/7 U.S.-based support to help you recover from fraud.