by
Block Party
April 15, 2025
When you leave your home, you lock the door – a basic precaution to protect your space and your belongings. In the online world, the specific practices of good safety hygiene look a little different, but it’s still the case that a few simple precautions go a long way towards keeping you safe.
The set of recommendations here is the digital equivalent of installing locks on your doors and getting you in the habit of securing them when you go out. It’s not setting up Fort Knox level protections, which you probably don’t need and would be a hassle to fuss with every time you come home; it’s putting in place basic safeguards so that bad actors don’t have an open door opportunity to cause harm.
In this guide, we outline three essential steps to kickstart your foundational digital safety:
1. How to remove your address, phone number, and other sensitive personal information from the internet
2. How to secure your privacy and safety settings across social platforms and clean up what you’ve already shared
3. How to use a password manager and two-factor authentication to protect your accounts from breaches and takeovers
Why it matters: Personal details like your home address, phone number, email, and even family members’ names and contact information are often publicly listed on data broker websites and people search engines without your knowledge or consent. These listings can be easily found through a quick Google search.
This can expose you to various risks, including financial—like someone impersonating you to open accounts or take out loans in your name—and safety threats, such as your address being used or shared for harassment, doxxing, or even physical confrontation.
How to do it manually: You can request removal of your information from data broker sites by following their opt-out procedures. There are various lists of these sites that you can find online; the Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List is a good one to work through as it highlights high-priority sites to handle first if you have limited time. Requesting removals is indeed a time-consuming process that must be repeated regularly, as your data can reappear over time since these brokers are continuously scraping and pulling in information.
Additionally, you can reduce the search visibility of data broker sites with your information by delisting results from Google with Google’s free “Results about you” tool, which also notifies you if any new pages pop up with your personal details. This doesn’t erase information at the source – so we recommend doing this in addition to, not instead of, requesting removal from data broker sites – but it significantly limits how easily someone can find it. As a bonus, Google delisting can happen much more quickly than sites will process your data takedown requests.
What we suggest: Use a data broker removal service.
These subscription services continually monitor and remove your data from hundreds of data brokers and people search engines to make sure your information doesn’t reappear over time. The most popular options include DeleteMe, Optery and Kanary, and pricing typically ranges from $100-200/year; many also offer family plans so you can protect multiple people under one account.
These services aren’t perfect, but they do significantly reduce your exposure with ongoing scans, opt-out requests and removals. Some people even utilize multiple services for more coverage.
Why it matters: You may be surprised by how much of your personal information is publicly accessible online—and even more surprised by how it can be used against you and the people you’re closest to. Seemingly harmless posts, photos, and profile details can expose where you live or work, your personal relationships, political or religious beliefs, and your family members' identities.
And it’s not just social media. Other accounts with social identity layered in, like Venmo, Strava, and Google, can also leak sensitive information through normal usage. For example, posting your runs or rides to Strava, where profiles are public by default, or writing reviews for local venues on Google Maps, can expose your home neighborhood and regular routines.
How to do it manually: Each social platform has different settings, defaults and risks. You can follow guides from The New York Times or USSOCOM to get insight into what you should update across your various online accounts along with instructions to do so manually. Heads up – it may take a while.
While you’re at it, consider making your profiles less identifiable by using different handles across platforms or opting for a nickname or pseudonym instead of your real name. Small changes like these can help make it harder to link your accounts together or trace them back to you.
What we suggest: Use an automated social media cleanup tool.
Block Party is the most encompassing tool to clean up your social media, recommended by industry experts like The Washington Post’s tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler and affinity groups for at-risk populations like the Coalition Against Online Violence and the Global Investigative Journalism Network. It automates 250+ privacy and security updates across 11+ major platforms (including X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and more) helping you lock down your settings and limit unwanted exposure.
Beyond settings, Block Party also makes it easy to bulk clean up old posts, photos, and connections so you’re not left manually combing through years of content to minimize your digital footprint.
A yearly subscription is $50/year.
This recommendation differs from the others because it requires a tool and some behavioral adjustments to implement. You’ll need to set things up initially and get used to a new way of signing into your accounts.
Why it matters: Using the same password across multiple sites, relying on weak passwords, or skipping two-factor authentication (2FA) makes it much easier for attackers to access your accounts, especially if any of those accounts are compromised in a data breach.
If someone gains access to critical accounts like your email, they may have the "keys to the kingdom," granting them access to other services you use, including social media, banking, or cloud storage. This can lead to serious financial losses or unauthorized actions on your behalf, which may not be covered.
What we suggest: Use a dedicated password manager.
Password managers are widely recommended by security professionals for a reason: they make it a lot easier to implement best practices for your account security.
They help you generate strong, unique passwords for every account, autofill them for ease of use when needed (on desktop, tablet, or mobile), and prompt you to update passwords if they’re at risk. They can also act as your trusted authenticator app for 2FA, similar to Google Authenticator or Authy, a more secure option than using SMS.
The most popular paid password manager is 1Password ($36/year), the most popular free one is Bitwarden, and built-in solutions like Apple’s iCloud Keychain or Google Password Manager are acceptable if you only need basic functionality and don’t need cross-platform support, e.g. if you use both Windows and iOS, or Mac and Android.
If you’re using a built-in manager and want to upgrade to a dedicated tool, most services offer guidance on importing your existing passwords to get started. Once you're set up, it’s a good idea to turn off the built-in manager to avoid saving passwords in multiple places.
