How to protect your personal data online in 2026

Most people have far more personal information online than they realize: a home address on a people-search site, a phone number in an old forum post, an email in a leaked list, photos reposted on sites they have never visited. Each piece on its own seems harmless. Together, they make stalking, harassment and scams much easier.

Step 1: find out what's out there

Search for your full name together with your city, your phone number and your email address. Look through several pages of results, not just the first. Note every site that shows your data, and check image results for your photos.

Step 2: remove what you control

• Set social profiles to private, or remove personal details from public ones.
• Delete old accounts you no longer use.
• Remove your phone number and address from public pages, listings and CVs.
• Check the privacy settings of apps that share your location.

Step 3: ask others to delete it

Under the GDPR, you can ask any organization that handles your personal data to erase it, and it must answer within one month in most cases. The same right reaches people-search and data sites, and in the EU you can also have search results that show your personal data removed. Praivon files these requests for you.

Step 4: protect your accounts

• Use a different password for every account and a password manager.
• Turn on two-step login everywhere it is offered.
• Be careful with messages that ask you to confirm personal details, even if they look official.

Step 5: keep watching

Removing data once is not enough. Data sites often republish information from new sources, and new leaks happen regularly. Checking again every few months, or having someone check for you, is what keeps your data off the internet.

Your photos are personal data too

Photos and videos of you are personal data under EU law. If they are used without your consent, in fake profiles, reposts or edited content, you can ask for their removal like any other data.

Praivon finds your exposed email, phone number and home address, and your face in photos and videos, across the major platforms plus thousands of websites. We file GDPR erasure requests on your behalf, stay on it until it's resolved and keep watching for anything that comes back.

Data breaches: we check whether your email appears in leaked databases and tell you what to change.