Taking Control of Your Digital Identity

This article is the third in a series on digital safety for trans people. Read the articles on Digital Privacy for Trans Folks and on How to Spot and Remove Apps Installed to Spy on You.

If you’ve ever googled your name, maybe feelings of surprise and anxiety sprang up after seeing the first page of results. There’s a chance that information that you didn’t share or maybe even forgot came up. For example, many of us can’t remember all of the places we have lived, but it seems the internet can. If you’re trans, this could be true for more than one of your names.

Especially as trans people, there are many valid reasons for wanting to limit others’ access to your personal information online, including:

  • I don’t want strangers to know my business, including details like where I live.
  • I’m being harassed online.
  • I don’t want certain family members, former friends, or former partners to be able to contact me.
  • My former name or the name I no longer associate with is connected to my chosen name and/or images of me.
  • I’m applying to jobs, and my online history could affect that, or out me to a future employer.
  • I’m worried about doxxing. Doxxing is discovering the real identity of an online user and broadcasting their private information, like addresses, personal phone numbers, or birth names, data, and/or photos online, with the intent to do harm. Doxxing is a strategy used to silence activists and members of marginalized communities.

All of these reasons impact how we navigate systems like access to employment. To tackle cleaning our online identities, it’s important to understand how our personal movements and relationships—family and otherwise—and our government-documented life events end up searchable online with or without our consent. We’ll explore that plus a few steps to minimize personal information.

Data Brokers

Information like phone numbers and addresses is often publicly available. This is because there are companies known as “data brokers” who make their profit procuring that information. Data brokers gather personal information and contact details from public records to sell as lists. If you’ve ever been arrested, gotten a traffic ticket, gotten married, or purchased a house, that information is public. If you have any social media accounts, your handle is public, and depending on your privacy settings, certain information like your name and profile picture are always public. Data brokers sell this to anyone, but they also share some of that information for free to encourage people or companies to buy complete profiles of a person.

Most data brokers offer a way for people to opt out and remove their listing from that data broker’s directory. Some make the opt out process harder than others, but here are a few of the most popular data brokers opt-out pages:

We suggest tackling one per week to not be overwhelmed. There are paid services like DeleteMe and Incogni that opt you out of hundreds of data brokers in the market, but their prices can be out of reach for many people.

That site I was mentioned in…

There are times that information you want to be hidden or deleted involves a site that you don’t have control over. Perhaps a blog mentions a name you don’t use, includes a pre-transition photo, or affiliates you with an organization you’re no longer a part of.

One option is to contact a site administrator, but often that doesn’t work or isn’t safe. If that blog or site includes your social security number or credit card information, you can contact Google directly to take down that information. Google will only take down a page from its search if the content “creates significant risks of identity theft, financial fraud, or other specific harms.” Remember, you will need to reach out to other search engines, and the website with that information will unfortunately still exist.

Finally, if you’re able to delete personal information from a site, but after a few months it’s still being displayed when you Google it, reach out directly to Google to take it down.

Deactivate and Delete Old Accounts

Another important action is to delete old accounts. Having dormant or rarely used accounts is not inherently bad bubad,f those accounts experience a breachbreach,could be a route to accessing other accounts. Either through a shared username and password combination between different accounts or if you have used that old account to access other accounts.

Take that time to close your old Livejournal, Blackplanet, and MySpace accounts, as well as that TikTok account you used for one week. If you don’t use it, deactivate, remove, or close those accounts. If you can’t delete the accounts, change real account details to fake information. The reason for that action is to minimize the kinds of personal details used to access more sensitive accounts, whether it’s your address or last name.

Use (More) Secure Tools

Using tools like Signal, BlueSky, and ProtonMail enhances online privacy and safety by prioritizing secure, decentralized, and private communication. Signal encrypts messages end-to-end, protecting conversations from interception. BlueSky offers a decentralized social media platform, reducing the risks of centralized data collection. Brave blocks trackers and ads, ensuring safer browsing and faster load times. ProtonMail secures emails with strong encryption, keeping your correspondence private. Together, these tools help you regain control over your digital footprint.

Here are additional tools to enhance online privacy and safety:

  • Password Managers: Tools like Bitwarden or 1Password help you create and securely store strong, unique passwords for each account.
  • Secure Cloud Storage: Options like Tresorit or Sync.com provide encrypted cloud storage to keep your files safe.
  • Privacy-Focused Search Engines: DuckDuckGo or Startpage avoid tracking your searches or profiling you.
  • Encrypted File Sharing: Services like OnionShare or Firefox Send allow for secure, private file sharing.
  • Ad and Tracker Blockers: Tools like uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger block intrusive ads and online trackers.
  • Secure Operating Systems: Tails or Qubes OS are designed with privacy and security in mind.
  • Alternative Messaging Apps: Apps like Threema or Wire offer encrypted messaging as alternatives to Signal.
  • Secure Video Calls: Platforms like Jitsi Meet or Whereby provide encrypted video conferencing.

Make Amazing Content

This may seem to be the antithesis of the previous suggestions. However, a lot of us are people who do public things. One way of leaving the kind of digital footprint that represents our authentic selves is to create amazing content. Writing Medium articles or building a website that represents your work helps you self-determine how you’re represented online and doesn’t leave it solely up to companies or other actors.

This doesn’t remove old information but can help push things that you’re having a hard time getting rid of further down in Google search results.

Digital Security Staples

Many of these steps take time, but this list outlines practices we should incorporate into our daily routines to manage our digital identity effectively:

  • Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on any digital service that offers it. This adds an extra layer of security by requiring a code, typically sent via text message or generated by an app, in addition to your username and password when logging in. Even if someone gains access to your login credentials, they won’t be able to access your account without your physical phone. Visit twofactorauth.org for a list of supported sites and step-by-step instructions to set it up.
  • Minimize the amount of personal information that you include in your social media profiles. Remove contact information, birthday, and location.
  • Use secure passwords with a minimum of 16 characters. You may want to use a password manager to store and generate passwords. A few that are popular are 1Password, which doesn’t have a free option, and Bitwarden and LastPass that do.
  • Check haveibeenpwned to see if your password has been in a data breach—and then change it if that happens.
  • Take time to review privacy settings on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites. Do this every few months, as sometimes they sneak changes in.
  • Be careful about the kinds of personal info you share in status updates on social media.

Trans people deserve to move through the world with security and self-determination, which includes all the digital spaces we occupy and connect with others. We should have the right to control the way we’re represented online. That’s why it is important to lean on your support network in this clean-up. Seeing old pictures or former names online can stress a person out. Reach out to a trusted friend or family member to help with the situation. We hope this is a good start to helping you move in that direction.

Additional Resources

This article is the third in a series on digital safety for trans people. Read the articles on Digital Privacy for Trans Folks and on How to Spot and Remove Apps Installed to Spy on You.

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