Free Tool
Digital Footprint Checklist
Your digital footprint is everything about you that exists online — accounts you opened years ago, posts you forgot, data brokers listing your details, old photos in other people's albums. This checklist walks you through finding and tidying it, one step at a time, without asking for your name or email. Everything you tick is saved only on your device.
No email, no scan, no sign-up. This checklist never asks for your name or email address, and it never scans anything. You do the searching yourself, with the steps below. Your progress is saved only in this browser, on this device.
What this tool does
Most footprint checkers on the internet are funnels: they ask for your email, run a shallow search, and then try to sell you a monitoring subscription. The honest alternative is a self-audit — a list of places to look and things to tidy, done by you, at your own pace, with no data given to anyone. That is what this checklist is. It covers the four parts of a footprint that matter most: what search engines show about you, which accounts you still have, what you have shared on social media, and what data brokers hold about you.
Each item is a concrete action, not a vague instruction. Search your name in quotation marks and note what appears. List your accounts from a password manager or your email inbox. Review your social media posts from three years ago. Check the data-broker opt-out pages for your country. Review the privacy settings on the accounts you keep, and delete the ones you do not. The checklist saves your progress in your browser as you go, so you can do it in stages rather than in one sitting, and it offers a printable version when you are done.
The goal is not to erase yourself from the internet — that is neither possible nor necessary. The goal is to know what is out there, to remove what is wrong or unnecessary, and to lock down what remains. A smaller, cleaner footprint is harder to use against you in phishing, identity theft and impersonation, and it is the foundation of the privacy work the guides on this site describe.
Try it
Work through the list. Your ticks are saved in this browser only — nothing is sent anywhere. Print the list when you are done.
Progress: 0 of 12 done.
How it works
The checklist works in four passes, and the order matters. The first pass is discovery: search for yourself the way a stranger would, with your name in quotation marks, your name plus your city, and your email address and usernames. Write down what you find, including anything that surprises you — an old forum account, a photo you forgot, a data broker listing. Discovery comes first because you cannot fix what you have not seen.
The second pass is accounts. Most people have far more accounts than they remember, and each one is a place their data lives and a door into their identity if it is breached. List them from your password manager and your email inbox, and for each one decide: keep or delete. Deleting an unused account removes a copy of your data and a possible way in. For the ones you keep, the rule is a unique password and two-factor authentication, which is the password guidance this site gives everywhere.
The third pass is sharing: your social media profiles, your old posts, your photo tags, and the data brokers that collect and sell personal information. The fourth pass is maintenance: review the privacy settings on what remains, delete unused apps, and set a reminder to repeat the audit in six months. A footprint is not a one-time clean-up but a habit, because new accounts, new posts and new data-broker listings appear all the time.
Limitations
This checklist helps you find and tidy your footprint; it cannot find everything, and it cannot erase you from the internet. Search engines do not index everything, data brokers do not all accept removal requests, and other people may hold photos or information about you that you cannot delete. A smaller footprint is safer, but a zero footprint is not a realistic goal — and this page does not pretend otherwise.
- The checklist never asks for your name or email, and it never runs a scan. Any tool that promises to find everything about you in exchange for your email is selling you something.
- Data-broker opt-out pages differ by country. The checklist tells you to look them up for your own country, because the right pages depend on where you live.
- Progress is saved in your browser's local storage, on this device only. It is not backed up, and it disappears if you clear your browser data.
Examples
Example 1 — the forgotten account. Searching your email inbox for welcome messages turns up an account on a shopping site you used once in 2019 and forgot. It still holds your name, address and phone number, and its password is one you reused elsewhere. Deleting the account removes a copy of your data and closes a door; changing the reused password protects the accounts that still use it.
Example 2 — the public birthday. Your social media profile shows your full date of birth to the public, because you filled it in years ago and never checked the setting. A date of birth is one of the facts used to verify an identity, so it should not be public. Changing the setting to friends-only or removing it takes a minute, and it removes a piece of the puzzle an impersonator would need.
Example 3 — the data broker. Searching your name turns up a people-search site listing your address and phone number, collected from public records and sold to anyone who pays. The site has an opt-out page, and requesting removal takes a few minutes. It will not remove every listing — there are many brokers — but it removes the one you found, and repeating the search in six months catches the next one.
Frequently asked questions
How do I check my digital footprint for free?
Search yourself: your name in quotation marks, your name plus your city, your email and usernames. Then list your accounts, review your social profiles, and look up data-broker opt-out pages. This checklist walks you through all of it without asking for your email.
Can I remove myself from the internet completely?
No — and do not trust any tool that promises it. Search engines do not index everything, other people hold information about you, and public records exist. The realistic goal is a smaller, cleaner footprint: delete what you do not need, lock down what you keep, and check again in six months.
What is a data broker?
A company that collects personal information from public records, purchases and other sources, and sells it — often as a people-search listing. Most have an opt-out page where you can request removal, and the process differs by country.
Should I use a footprint scanner that asks for my email?
No. A tool that asks for your email before it will tell you about your footprint is collecting a new piece of your footprint in order to show you the old one. A self-audit — searching yourself, with this checklist — gives you the same information without giving anything away.
How often should I audit my footprint?
Every six months is a good rhythm. New accounts, new posts and new data-broker listings appear all the time, and a regular check keeps the footprint small instead of letting it grow back unnoticed.