Look up personal information on Google yourself, need to do this immediately!

Tram Ho

(Country) – Have you tried searching for your name on Google? If so, you’ve probably seen social media accounts, personal websites or more personal things like email, phone number or even home address pop up. At least it’s annoying because personal information is compromised, at worst it can be harmful, depending on who is looking for that information and for what purposes.

Why is your personal information on Google?

In the past, people used to use the phone book, a postal publication anyone could buy, to look up the phone numbers of friends and people around. It’s just that it’s not digitized, so it takes a little more effort to ‘find’. There are things that seem public but are actually highly personal, like home addresses or tax identification numbers. Now, when everything is digitized, this information is included in electronic invoices, online tax documents or other public records. Once there, the barrier becomes lower and almost anyone can access.

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In addition, sometimes online users themselves have shared their personal information through actions such as posting CVs, scanned copies of identification documents or sales contracts on certain platforms. Due to disregard for restrictions on access and sharing, sometimes for a variety of reasons, these documents and information are passed on to unwanted parties.

What risks may occur?

The risk of information theft (‘ doxing ‘ or ‘ doxxing ‘) occurs more and more. That’s when the personal information of you and your loved ones is collected and posted online for the purpose of harassment and intimidation. A recent example is the assassination attempt of US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh which occurred a few months ago. The perpetrator confessed to finding his home address on the Internet.

Currently the main audience of this behavior is celebrities, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen to ordinary people. Although they have never been threatened with direct attacks, many people have also had their addresses and photos of their whereabouts posted online just to cause confusion and fear. That can’t help but make people worry about greater dangers, especially when it involves family members.

What to do when anyone can look up your information?

Besides increasing security and verification steps for online accounts, users can use Google’s search results hiding tool, called ‘Delete information from Google’. This is a newly developed Google tool. Information that can be hidden from search results includes credit card numbers, hand-signature photos, ID photos, and more.

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First you need to visit Google Search Help page (support.google.com) to select ‘Delete information from Google’.

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Next, you can choose which form to remove, for example:

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Then press the ‘Start sending deletion request’ button.

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Here you can follow the step-by-step instructions to fill out the request form, specifying what information you want to delete, from where, and so on.

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Currently, you are required to provide a link to the website that publishes the information you want to hide. However, Google said that, in a few months, this tool will also allow self-listing of websites that contain information to be hidden, making things even more convenient.

What to do when Google declines a request to hide information?

After receiving the request, Google will consider whether the search results come from websites of a public nature. It is known that they will normally refuse to hide search results from official government websites or public news sites.

Remember, this information is not actually removed from the website, but only hidden by Google from the search results. People can still access them if they know the website address or use other search engines. Then you have to contact the website owner directly. Tools like Who.is can help you find out some basic information like the server, contact information to the server for further work.

The need to be ‘hidden’ online has grown so much that it has become an opportunity for third-party services to emerge, for example in the US there are tools like DeleteMe or NortonLifeLock, to help users who do not have too much. processing time for these procedures.

References: Wall Street Journal, Google Help

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Source : Genk