Protecting Your Personal Data Online: 5 Essential Actions to Take Now

لبنان اليوم

Experts have revealed a set of effective measures that help erase the digital footprint and enhance online privacy, allowing users to have greater control over their personal information and reduce the possibility of tracking their activities.

The account “Patrick’s AIBuzzNews,” known for its discussions on artificial intelligence and technology, shared a series of tweets under the title: “I deleted all my digital footprint.. you can do it too.” These tweets have gained wide popularity, providing clear and easy steps to erase the user’s digital traces.

The first step is to delete the activities recorded on Google services by visiting myactivity.google.com and logging into your account. Here, you can view all your past activities on Google services, such as Maps, YouTube, image search, and videos.

To delete this data, choose “Delete activity by” and specify the required time period, whether it is the last hour, today, or all time. You can also select the applications or products whose data you want to erase.

To improve the level of privacy, it is recommended to disable the feature of saving browsing and search activities, location, and YouTube history from the “Activity controls” section. This action prevents Google from tracking your future activities, making you almost “invisible” within the Google system.

After deleting the old data, it is best to prevent the recording of any new data through the account settings in the “Data & Privacy” section, and disable all activity tracking options. This ensures that your use of applications, websites, and YouTube history is not recorded in the background.

To avoid repeating these steps manually, you can activate the automatic deletion feature via myactivity.google.com/auto-delete, and choose to delete activities that have passed 3, 18, or 36 months automatically. This keeps your account clean continuously without the need for manual intervention.

Finally, “Patrick” recommends using a virtual private network (VPN) with a browser or search engine that focuses on privacy such as “DuckDuckGo” or “Tor” or “Firefox” with privacy settings enabled. In addition, it is preferable to change passwords every three to six months to ensure security and protect accounts from hacking.