How to delete information about yourself on the Internet

Hosting services, social networks and hundreds of thousands of websites collect users’ personal data. Some use them for targeted advertising, while others use them for fraud.

Every click, like and comment we make online leaves a digital trace. We trust the Internet almost our entire lives – photographs, bank cards, geolocation, home address and the route we take to work every day. Before using services and marketplaces, we give permission to collect and process personal data – we enter into a user agreement. The services claim that they care about data protection, but nevertheless, information leaks occur regularly. This way, your personal information becomes available to third parties, including attackers.

Sensitive information can be leaked online by a person who wants to harm you. For example, a former partner. Or, for the sake of political ambitions, Deputy Lugovoi may post your home address on his Telegram channel. In the age of AI, someone can make a deepfake that can ruin your reputation. In addition, law enforcement agencies like to initiate criminal cases due to old posts and photos.

Is it possible to remove information about yourself from the Internet to avoid sad consequences? You won’t be able to completely “erase” yourself from the Internet, but there are chances to slightly reduce the amount of available information. How to do this – read our instructions.

1

Remove everything you can yourself

You can clean up your profiles on social networks – delete old photos and posts that are now subject to criminal charges. Almost all social networks provide the opportunity to make your profile private; this minimizes access to your personal data. You can even remove it completely. Resource owners will most likely still have cached copies of your data, but Russian security forces will no longer be able to access them.

On Vkontakte, you can delete the data archive and the profile itself. But Russian social networks are transparent to security forces, and it is almost impossible to truly remove yourself from there. It's better to just not create accounts with them.

2

Stop data brokers from collecting information about you

Data brokers or information brokers are companies that collect, process and sell your personal data. Data is usually collected from government registries or purchased from IT companies willing to share it. In addition, brokers may collect information from your social networks. They are primarily interested in demographic, behavioral, contact and financial information.

Data brokers' clients include companies engaged in targeted advertising and analysis of consumer behavior, banks and other financial institutions. Selling such information is big business: the industry is worth $200 billion a year. But your data can also fall into the hands of security forces and scammers, or simply leak into the network.

Brokers can be prevented from collecting information about you. This is a long process – there are about 4,000 data brokers around the world, but you can start with the largest ones . You will need to contact each organization, verify your identity, and complete an opt-out form.

3

Contact administrators and support

If services or social networks provide such an opportunity, you can ask them to delete your personal data that is no longer relevant, threatens your reputation or safety, or was posted by third parties without your knowledge.

For example, in Google you can fill out a deletion request form, and in Yandex you can contact support. If your intimate photos or videos are uploaded to Pornhub, the video hosting site also provides the ability to delete data. The main thing is to prove that they were distributed without your knowledge. Meta, together with 50 non-governmental organizations, created the StopNCII platform, which fights the spread of “revenge porn”. You can submit a request on the site by attaching photos and videos that you want to remove from Meta services.

In March 2021, amendments to the federal law “On Personal Data” came into force. According to them, you can contact any data controller and ask them to delete your personal information. The service has three days to comply, but if this does not happen, you can file a complaint with Roskomnadzor or a statement of claim in court.

For violating the legislation on personal data, data operators may be fined:

• for citizens – a fine of 6 to 10 thousand rubles;
• for officials – a fine from 20 to 40 thousand rubles;
• for legal entities – a fine of 30 to 150 thousand rubles.

By the way, large entrepreneurs and officials like to abuse this. Alisher Usmanov sought through the court the removal of three articles about himself. In them, journalists talked about Usmanov’s connection with the crime boss Shakro Molodoy. Yandex.Zen deleted the investigation of the Baza channel about the connection between Russia 1 presenter Naila Asker-zade and VTB head Andrei Kostin. The platform first notified Baza's authors that they must remove the article themselves, and then removed it themselves following a court order.

Keep in mind that data deleted in this way can still be secretly stored by the owners of the service and available to security forces.

4

Contact Roskomnadzor

If the service refuses to remove data or information that discredits your honor and dignity, you can file a complaint with Roskomnadzor. You need to correctly compose your request and send it through the feedback form . However, the department often rejects such complaints due to incorrect formatting or disputed data. RKN may also refuse to contact the data operator without a court decision.

5

Go to court

Perhaps the most labor-intensive way. First, you need to take screenshots of the defamatory information and contact a notary to obtain a conclusion that your identity can be identified. Then you will need to write and send a pre-trial claim to the site owner. And then file a lawsuit. In any case, it is best to consult with a lawyer or hire a lawyer.