“What goes on the internet, stays on the internet.”
If you’re young, you’ve probably heard your parents say this, or something like it, many times. There’s a good reason for that. The stuff you post online sticks around longer than you’d like. This idea is called “Digital Permeance.”
When you post something online, it doesn’t just stay where you put it. Once you submit a forum post, blog content, a Tweet, or a Facebook post, it gets picked up by search engines like Google, archive sites like Archive.org, and web scrapers like Spokeo.com. This means that even if you delete the original post, copies of it can still exist in various places on the internet.
Before this year, you couldn’t remove indexed data from Google’s results unless it misrepresented a business, shared illegal content, or you had a court order. Now, Google lets people take action against the indexing of their data. This doesn’t stop your data from being collected and shared, but it makes it far harder for less motivated people to find. At the very least, it’s a step towards giving individuals more control over their online presence.
What you can do:
Google’s new “Results about you” tool will search for any content that links your name, address, phone number, and email addresses. This lets you take control of your search results and indexing status. The initial scan takes about 6 hours and will also provide future monitoring and notifications when new content with your information appears online. This ongoing monitoring can help you stay aware of how your personal information is being used and shared.
The tool will ask for information like your phone number, address, legal name, and other email addresses. It’s up to you to decide if the benefits of the tool outweigh giving Google more data. For me, it was an easy choice since I use Google Maps they already have my address, and my emails are public. But for someone with limited content indexed by Google, it might not be worth sharing their data. Only you can weigh those risks. Consider your own online habits and the amount of personal information you are comfortable sharing with Google themselves before making a decision.
Thanks for reading; let’s stay safe out there!
