What the internet knows about you

Any search engine can quickly reveal your phone number, address and family information with a surprising level of detail. This information, combined with social media posts, can be used by anyone to intimidate, harass, or stalk high-visibility people like politicians, business leaders, celebrities and journalists. However, going through smart opt-out processes can reduce your online footprint, making it more difficult for malicious actors to target you. Here’s how: Go to one of the lists of people aggregator sites, like the one provided by IntelTechniques, and go through the opt-out steps. Don't provide any additional, optional, or new information like a driver's license or phone number, and consider making a burner email just to receive opt-out confirmations. Opting out of all of them is harder than unsubscribing from an email. So aim for reducing the amount of information available, rather than attempting to go completely off the grid.