This article is sponsored by Incogni. Product choices and opinions expressed are from the sponsor and do not reflect the views of How-to Geek editorial staff.
Believe it or not, your address may not be as private as you might think, which means that both you and your family are potentially at risk. If you’ve just found your address freely available on the internet, then that means that any stranger can easily come to your house or use your location, whether that be for identity theft, burglary, or worse.
Fortunately, there are steps that you can take to protect you and those you love in order to remove your address from the internet, including using tools like Incogni.
Find Out Where Your Address Is Listed
The first step to take in removing your address from the internet is to locate where it is currently visible. If you’ve already found your address on one website, then this is a good starting point, but it’s always a good idea to look around so you know if your address is listed on any other websites as well.
You can start by simply doing a Google search of your name and address and seeing what comes up, though it’s not a bad idea to also go directly to people search websites such as Spokeo or Whitepages in order to look for your address there as well.
Request Removal From Those Websites
From there, you’ll want to request your removal from these websites. This process differs greatly from website to website, so there’s no one-size-fits-all set of instructions that will help you opt out of your data being used by these websites.
Instead, you’ll want to look around each website for any sections that talk about opting out, privacy, or security. These will often lead you to the proper procedures you can take to have your address removed from these websites, though it’s worth mentioning that you’ll want to check back regularly to ensure that your data is actually gone and stays gone. It’s not uncommon for people search websites to re-add your personal data such as your address at a later date.
Opt-Out From Data Brokers
You’ll also want to opt out from data brokers as well. Data brokers are companies that collect and sell your personal information to businesses to help them with their marketing, risk assessment, and other aspects of their business.
However, data brokers also often sell your personal information to individuals or other agencies, meaning that your address or other personal data is far from safe with them. To this end, it’s a good idea to try and reach out to these data brokers and opt out of their services.
Again, this process varies from data broker to data broker, so there are no real specific instructions that can be given that will fit every data broker. It’s a good idea to simply reach out to these data brokers through their websites or over the phone in order to try and have your data removed.
Use a Third-Party Service
Incogni: Online Data Removal Service
Incogni is a subscription-based service that maintains the online privacy and safety of its customers by working with the world’s top data brokers to have their information removed from the web.
Alternatively, a third-party service such as Incogni can handle this process entirely for you. These services automate the data removal process, including the time spent finding your compromised data, sending opt out requests, and following up with both people search websites and data brokers for you.
This means that you don’t have to worry about having missed a website that might still have your address publicly available, nor having to check back with a website that you’ve already had your address removed from to ensure that it hasn’t been added again at a later date.
Some of these services, such as Incogni, allow you to keep track of this process as it happens through a dashboard, where you can see the third party actively identifying, opting out, and following up for improved peace of mind.
Incogni
To make this even better, Incogni is currently offering a 58% discount if you use the coupon code HOWTOGEEK at checkout. Combine this with flexible plans that can cover just yourself or you and your family, as well as the fact that Incogni users can add up to three phone numbers, three emails, and three addresses to ensure greater privacy online than ever before.
Additional Steps You Can Take:
Remove Your Address From Social Media
One of the main ways that people search websites and data brokers gain access to information such as your address is through your social media. With this in mind, it’s a good idea to find and adjust your privacy settings on pretty much any social media platform like Facebook, Instagram, and even LinkedIn.
This isn’t always enough, however. The photos that you upload often include location data, as can your social media posts. This may not be as severe as giving away your exact address, but it can still help data brokers to build a profile of your location, so it’s a good idea to turn it off.
Set up Privacy Safeguards
In this same vein, it can be a good idea to set up some safeguards to protect yourself going forward. One important thing you can do here is opt out of new listings made by data brokers by regularly checking for them and ensuring that they don’t go up. A third-party service such as Incogni can handle this step for you.
On top of this, it can be a good idea to use a virtual address or a P.O. box when giving out your address, especially if it’s an address that will be used frequently. As this isn’t the address that you live at, even if it does somehow slip through the cracks, it won’t actually impact your security.
Additionally, it’s a good idea to be constantly aware of the information that you share online. This means making sure that you don’t give out your address on social media, and being careful when online shopping.
Take back Your Privacy
As you can see, just because you have found your address listed on the internet doesn’t mean that you’re out of options. There are plenty of things you can do to regain your privacy, from manually reaching out to have your address removed to using a third-party service like Incogni to ensure your ongoing privacy.
