Small Mistakes

I succeeded in removing our PII from search engine results after two years of tedious work. It takes commitment to privacy to keep our names and other PII out of search results and most data mining websites.

I’m obsessively careful and distrusting of everybody when it comes to my information. My husband is not exactly the same. He’s sorta there, but I have to nag him. A LOT. It’s not that he doesn’t care. He’s not as familiar with how many ways data can ‘leak’ online.

For example, last year he went to a convention involving one of his hobbies. He purchased some items from a vendor at the convention and gave the guy our address to ship them. A month or so later, I did my regular maintenance online searching for our names and an EBay-type sales website popped up with his name and our location. The vendor uses the site to manage his sales and the transaction created an account in my husband’s name. A few emails later to the vendor and the information was removed, but it demonstrated to my husband how easily our PII can show up online.

He also signs up for road races and cycling events. Almost all of the results are posted online. The organizers include different pages and lists, as well. Sometimes the information includes his t-shirt size and even our location. I contacted the hosting websites and explained why we want the information removed. They all cooperated and removed or changed his listing. Unfortunately, some of the information was already scraped by other websites.

Every time you set up an account, share your real name, address and other data, they can be shared and leaked through websites, scraped by data brokers, and then become almost impossible to remove. The lesson is that we always need to ask where the information will be shared, stored, and how it can be used. If possible, provide incorrect or partial information. Ship items to work. Use your initials. Create junk emails. There are many ways to obscure your information.