What is findable about you

Almost everything an opponent finds about you is already public, and somebody else put it there: an employer, a former club, a public register, a relative who tags photographs. An hour spent now is worth more than any amount of reacting later.

This is not paranoia and it is not a reason to stay quiet. It is checking where the exits are in a building you have not been in before. Nobody has to approve it, there is nobody to ask, and you do it once and then stop thinking about it.

One warning first. Asking for something to be removed has two costs. You usually hand identity documents to a company you have never heard of, and the request sometimes draws attention to the thing. Part four says this again where the decision sits, and it names no service, app or register, because all of that changes within months.

Part 1. Search yourself the way somebody hostile would (15 minutes)

A vanity search is your name alone, signed in, on your own device. It returns a personalised result and tells you almost nothing. Open a window signed out of everything.

Search combinations, because a name on its own rarely identifies anybody:

• your full name with the town you live in
• your name with your employer, and your employer’s name with campaign, letter or protest
• your name with your school, university, society, union or place of worship
• your name inside quotation marks, and any former name
• your phone number and your email address, each as plain text
• every username you have ever used, one at a time

The username is the one that catches people. A handle reused across a hobby account, an old forum and a campaigning account ties all three to one person. It is the most common way somebody is connected to an identity they believed was separate. Search each one on its own.

Image search your own photograph. Put your profile picture into a reverse image search and see where else it appears. Then try a picture of your face you have never posted, which tests whether the face alone is enough.

Write what you find on paper, in two columns: what it is, and where it came from. The second column saves you time later.

Part 2. Put what you found in order (5 minutes)

The order is home address, workplace, family members, children’s schools, daily routine. Work down it and stop when the hour is up.

That order tracks what somebody can do with each. An address lets a stranger arrive or send something, and it is the one item you cannot change in an afternoon. A workplace lets them apply pressure through the people who employ you. Family members are reached through you. A child’s school is handled by talking to the school, not online. A routine matters least alone and most alongside everything above it.

Part 3. The places an address leaks from (10 minutes)

Hardly anybody’s address leaks from the thing they were worried about. Check these kinds of source.

• Public registers. Many countries put a name and address on a register anybody can search: company directors, charity trustees, property ownership, electoral rolls, professional licences. Some allow you to apply for an address to be withheld. Find out which of them list you.
• Old posts. A forum thread asking for a plumber near a named road. A marketplace listing with a collection point.
• Property listings. Sale and rental adverts survive long after the sale, with interior photographs and a floor plan.
• Delivery photographs. A picture of a parcel on the doorstep, posted to complain about it, shows your door and your number.
• Route-tracking apps. Anything recording where you run, walk or cycle usually starts and finishes at your front door. Most offer a privacy zone around a chosen point. Turn one on, then hide the existing history.
• The background of photographs you posted yourself. A house number, a school uniform logo, a street sign, a distinctive view from a window, a parcel label on the table.

Fix what ten minutes allows. Privacy zones on. Old listings deleted. Photographs showing a house number taken down.

Part 4. Ask the removal questions (5 minutes)

Before you contact anybody. A removal request commonly asks you to send identity information to a company you cannot check. For some people that is the wrong trade, and not starting one is a legitimate answer.

Some companies exist to compile personal records: addresses, ages, relatives, phone numbers. What they owe you when you ask differs enormously by country, and this page names none of them. Five questions instead, each answerable by somebody who looks.

1. Which of these companies hold records on people in my country? A national data protection regulator or a digital rights organisation will have a current list.
2. Do I have an enforceable right to deletion here, or am I asking a favour?
3. What identity documents does each one want, and am I willing to hand those over?
4. How long does it take, and does the record return? Many are refilled from the original source, making this a repeating task.
5. Who told me this, and when? Write both down.

The list of companies, and what each requires, goes stale fastest. Assume your notes are out of date within a year.

Part 5. Secure the account that resets the others (5 minutes)

Most people secure the wrong thing first. They protect the campaigning account, while the email address that can reset it keeps a password used on three other sites.

Start with the email address that can reset everything. It is almost always best to do four things on it before touching any other account:

• Two-factor authentication. Use an app or a physical key rather than text messages where you have the choice, because a phone number can be taken over.
• A password used nowhere else.
• Recovery details that are current, with no abandoned backup address still listed.
• Recovery codes saved offline, on paper, somewhere you will find them.

Then the same on anything holding your home address, usually shopping and delivery accounts. The campaigning account comes last, the reverse of what most people do.

Part 6. Photographs, yours and other people’s (5 minutes)

Photographs you take. Look at the background before the subject. Many photograph files record where and when they were taken. Posting to a site usually strips that. Sending the original file to a stranger usually does not.

Photographs of you. At a public event anybody may photograph you, including people who are neither press nor friendly, and usually nothing can be done afterwards. That is part of the trade you make by turning up. Where you have strong reason not to be identifiable, standing away from the platform beats anything you can do later.

Photographs posted by other people. Tagged pictures, a club page, a workplace newsletter. Ask once, politely, starting with anything showing your house or your children.

The separate identity question

A campaigning identity kept apart from your own name is a real option with real costs, and people worth respecting land on both sides of it.

What it buys is distance. Somebody who finds the account does not immediately find your home, your employer or your children.

What it costs is more than people expect. It breaks on small things: a reused username, a reused photograph, the same recovery phone number, a friend who tags you, telling four people because they seemed safe. Treat it as raising the cost rather than as a wall.

It also costs the credibility that comes with your own name. A named person saying this happened to me at work carries weight an anonymous account does not. For many readers that decides it.

What is worth avoiding is the middle: an identity you treat as safe when it is not.

Before you close the laptop, the conversation at home

One short conversation, and not a frightening one. Say what you are doing publicly and why, then agree three things in advance: what nobody posts, what happens if somebody telephones or arrives asking about you, and what happens if something arrives at the house.

These are the sentences. Saying them once, calmly, at a kitchen table, is worth more than any setting you can change tonight.

“I’m going to be doing this publicly. Nothing’s happened, and I’d rather we agreed a couple of things now than after something does.”

“Nothing about the house goes online. Not the front of it, not the school, not when we’re away.”

“If anyone rings or turns up asking about me, don’t confirm anything and don’t argue. Take a name and tell me the same day.”

“If something comes through the door, tell me that day. Even if you think it’s nothing.”

The honest limit

This reduces your exposure and does not remove it. Anybody with enough determination and time will find a great deal about you, and a guide promising otherwise would be lying.

What you are raising is the effort required. Most of what happens to campaigners is done by people willing to spend ten minutes rather than ten days. Moving from a ten-minute target to a ten-hour one removes most of that.

It works, and you can do it. Somebody doing this before a first letter to a local paper typically turns up two or three things. An old club page with an address. A running route starting at the gate. Being nervous while doing it is normal.

If something is already happening to you, this is the wrong page. Read when it comes at you instead.

Fifteen minutes tonight

Fill in the blanks210 words

Two questions from memory. Which single account, if somebody got into it, would give them every other account you own? And what did you find in part one that you did not know was public?

Set up first, tonight: open a signed-out browser window, put paper next to you, and do part one. Fifteen minutes.

If I have finished the search list, then I will turn on two-factor authentication on my main email address before doing anything else.

If I find my address somewhere I did not expect, then I will write down which source it came from before trying to remove it, because the source will put it back.

If I run out of time or patience, then I will stop after the address items and put Sunday morning in the calendar for the rest.

If somebody at home asks why I am doing this, then I will tell them I am checking the exits, and have the three-point conversation there and then.

And the obstacle to expect is not fear. It is finding something unpleasant in part one and going flat. If that happens, then I will do the email account first and leave the rest until tomorrow, because that one step is worth more than the others.