How to Remove Private Personal Information from the Internet

Now that the Facebook privacy firestorm has, for the most part, eased up a bit, people seem to be a little more concerned about internet privacy. The scary thing is that of all the things that should worry you, Facebook probably has the least amount of information about it. When it comes to personal information, who your friends are, what your hobbies are, and how many hours you spend on Farmville are the icing on the cake. The cake itself is made up of your actual personal details (name, address, age, social security, emails), your purchasing behavior (where you shop, when, and what you buy), your borrowing behavior (loans, credit cards), and other juicy bits.

You can buy a lot of that data from data brokers and marketers. For example, through the Ameridex Information Systems Nationwide Index you can find someone’s address and date of birth through a search that requires only a first and last name (it’s more accurate if you have DOB and or city/state/ZIP) for $1.95 cents each. They also have a Death Index that lets you search for death certificates that will return their name, social, DOB, date of death, state of issue and state of death for $1.95. If you have a bunch of SSNs to process, they cost a nickel or less and the results are available online through an Excel file.

And that’s just the beginning…
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