What’s Your Digital Footprint? Understanding How Your Data is Collected

Your digital footprint is essentially a data trail of all your online activities. It includes social media posts, emails, banking information, online purchases, medical data, GPS location, and more. A larger digital footprint can mean an increase in spam messages, scams, phishing attempts, and a greater risk of hackers targeting you.

If you want to learn more about your digital footprint and how to protect or regain your privacy, we’ve included everything you need to know in our guide below. We’ve also included our recommendations for the best data removal services you can use.

What is a digital footprint?

Everything you do online combines to create your digital footprint. If you post to your social media account, web crawlers capture that almost immediately and save it somewhere in the internet’s vast expanse and that site’s servers.

However, the intentional things you post online are only a small part of your digital presence. Cookies saved by your visited websites show where you’ve been. These hidden trackers follow you around, view what you look at, and know what you buy.

Everything you do is tracked, viewed, and collated to create an image of you online. It’s like a private channel looking at every site you’ve visited, every internet search you’ve made, every purchase you complete, and more. Are you creeped out yet?

Types of digital footprints

Considering there are multiple ways to leave an imprint online, there are different types of digital footprints. Most markers are sorted into the following four groups.

Active

Active content is always initiated by the user. Whether you’re sending an email, posting to social media, or updating a blog, you, the user, initiate the data transfer. There’s a saying that once you put something online, it can never truly be deleted. Because of data collectors and web crawlers, this is very true.

Examples of active digital footprints:

• Emails
• Social Media posts
• Blog updates
• Video uploads (YouTube)
• Product and service reviews
• Interactive comments

Passive

A passive digital footprint is something the user may be aware of, like accepting cookies on a website, but may not realize how extensive a record is being created. Some websites are transparent about their data collection, while others may try to be sneakier about it.

Examples of passive digital footprints:

• Cookies
• Trackers
• GPS data (from phones and location services)
• Browsing history
• Device type
• Metadata or EXIF data on pictures and videos

Private

Some information about you online, even if password-protected or securely guarded, still contributes to your digital footprint. Data like bank info, wearable health devices, and private chats may have limited accessibility, but it still contributes to your footprint.

Examples of private digital footprints:

• Financial information
• Health data
• Doctor portals
• Private chats
• Online purchases
• Job applications

Commercial

People aren’t the only ones creating a profile of themselves online. Businesses also leave a commercial footprint across the web via marketing campaigns, social media, online reviews, internal business communications, and more. If you interact with these types of activities, you’ll be tied to the commercial footprint left.

Examples of commercial digital footprints:

• Internal company documents and actions like emails or Slack messaging
• CVs and resumes
• Marketing campaigns
• Social media posts
• Online reviews
• Customer databases
• Order and fulfillment records

Where your digital footprint is kept

Here’s an overview of the main ways your digital footprint is stored.

• Browsers: Even after deleting your browsing history, your online activity records are still located somewhere on a server.
• IP address: This device information is easy to snag and grab without a virtual private network (VPN) to hide it.
• Social media: Social media platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Twitter all save your online data. Even profiles set to private have their data collected.
• Online banking: Your payment information may be located behind a secure wall, but it’s still saved online and attached to you. Actions such as applying for a card, signing into your bank, or even checking your credit score are all saved.
• Online shopping: Purchases, bill payments, online betting, and other financial transactions are recorded.
• Trackers: Smartwatches, music playlists, glucose monitors, reading lists, and various other services track and collect data about you and add to your footprint.
• Subscriptions: Online subscriptions, streaming services, and physical subscriptions that you register for online are all part of your online footprint.
• Emails & other messages: Even though your email, private messages, group chats, and other communications might be password protected, they’re still part of your footprint.
• Data brokers: These sites collect information about you including your name, age, address, phone number, possible relatives, cities you’ve lived in, and more.

Why your digital footprint matters

We often hear the phrase, “I’m not doing anything illegal, so why do I care about my digital footprint?” Digital footprints aren’t just used to track criminals and illegal activity. Data brokers collect information about you from around the web, aggregate it, and then sell it to anyone who wants it. Sites like PeopleFinder and The White Pages will sell your data to regular internet users, which means anyone can find a way to contact you.

Even more egregious, Kroger recently announced facial recognition technology that could be integrated into its grocery store shelves. It would recognize you and then show a price for a product based on what it thinks you would pay.

Your digital footprint is also tied to your online reputation. For example, everything you post on social media can be seen by your current or future employers. That’s why you should try to create a positive digital footprint, something that gives you a good reputation.

What are the dangers of a digital footprint?

We can all agree that someone else watching what you do is uncomfortable. It’s creepy if someone peers through your window at night, and it’s creepy if someone looks at your online activity. But more than being disturbing, a large digital footprint can leave you open to all sorts of vulnerabilities, scams, and even the possibility of being charged more at the store.

Examples of harmful real-world repercussions:

• Bad reputation
• Phishing vulnerability
• Data breaches
• Job screening
• Fraud
• Scams
• Surge pricing
• Online creeps
• Reduced physical privacy
• Targeted ads

How to protect your digital footprint

There are a variety of tools you can use to reduce your digital footprint, delete already stored data, and protect yourself from future data collection. There are also actions you can take like rejecting all possible cookies and cleaning up your social media profiles.

You can’t remove things like banking data or health records, but protecting those accounts with multifactor authentication (MFA) and complex, unique passwords will help to secure that data from potential leaks and hackers.

Track your own footprint

The first step to protecting your digital footprint is to be aware of how much of your data is already saved. Knowing that social media saves your information is different from seeing how much of your personal data is available online.

Some ways you can check your digital footprint include:

• Use a footprint checker.
• Search your own name/handle.
• Review your social media presence.
• Set up alerts with your name.

Clean up your footprint

When you’ve looked up your footprint, you’ll probably want to clean it up a bit. While some information can’t be removed, you may be able to remove part of it.

• Clear cookies.
• Delete old or sensitive social media posts.
• Delete old accounts.
• Request data removal from broker sites.

Practice good digital hygiene

On top of cleaning up your footprint, you should make sure you’re practicing good digital hygiene. Here are some tips you should follow to prevent your digital footprint from growing.

• Update your software.
• Deny unnecessary cookies.
• Use privacy browsers.
• Use a password manager.
• Use ad and tracker blockers on your browsers and internet-connected devices.
• Share only necessary information.
• Be careful what you post on social media.
• Use different devices to access work and personal accounts.

Use an antivirus

A good antivirus program can keep malware, including adware and spyware, from downloading onto your device and following you online. If your antivirus includes ad and tracker blockers, that provides even more protection. Below are some of our favorite antivirus solutions.

Use a VPN

A VPN is one of the best defensive measures against online tracking. It encrypts and hides your internet activity, including from your internet service provider (ISP), and disguises your true IP address and other device data. Below are three of our favorites.

How data removal services can help

A data removal service, such as Aura or DeleteMe, can help you with the data removal process and shrink your digital footprint.

These services track down the data brokers who have your data saved and get your data removed. While data brokers are legally obligated to delete your data when asked, some may refuse. Using a data removal service can help put legal pressure on those data brokers.

FAQs

Bottom line

Your digital footprint is a collection of all your online activities that creates a detailed picture of you. Similar to a peeper looking in your window at night, the idea of another person looking at everything you do can weird some people out.

There are tools and online hygiene practices that reduce your footprint and help keep your online privacy. By using a data removal service, you can reduce the size of your digital footprint and reduce your spam, lessen your chance of encountering scams and phishing attempts, and make it harder to track you down.