What Is a Digital Footprint? How To Reduce Your Presence Online

Have you ever googled yourself out of curiosity, and found out way more information than you thought? That’s because many companies, social media outlets, and apps, create a digital footprint of you anytime you visit a website or service.

What is a digital footprint, you ask? It’s the data you leave behind whenever you visit a page online. The amount of data will depend on the service, but no matter what kind of data is collected, companies or data brokers can still use it to target you with personalized ads.

This article will answer these questions to help you cover your tracks online: What is a digital footprint? What is an active digital footprint, what data do companies collect, and how to prevent or delete your digital footprint completely?

We will offer you some tools, websites, and other advice on how to clean your digital footprint with Internxt, so keep reading to find out more.

Table of contents

• Digital footprint definition
• Types of digital footprint
• How a digital footprint is created
• What information is in my digital footprint?
• Why managing your digital footprint is important
• How to manage your digital footprint with Internxt
• Frequently asked questions

Digital footprint definition

Much like in real life, where you leave traces of your presence behind, your digital footprint is the data you create and leave behind from your online activity on websites, apps, etc.

This footprint can be collected and analyzed by AI algorithms for Machine Learning and is also used by companies to create a profile from your digital footprint for target advertising, behavioural analytics, or data monetization.

Unless you monitor or remove your digital footprint, a build-up of this collected data increases the risks of your personally identifiable information (PII), which increases the risk of identity theft, data leaks, location tracking, or doxing.

Types of digital footprint

Now that we understand the basics, we will examine a digital footprint in more detail, first by examining the two different types: active and passive.

What is an active digital footprint?

Your active digital footprint is your online presence that you are fully aware of, meaning you actively and knowingly submit or publish this information on the Internet.

For example, your active digital footprint includes social media posts and comments, emails, filling out an online form, job applications, or creating accounts.

What is a passive digital footprint?

In contrast, a passive digital footprint is data that is collected from you that you don’t actively provide and may be collected without your consent. This data is generated in the background through systems that monitor your online behavior.

Because of the passive nature of how this data is collected, it's harder to monitor and control a passive digital footprint. Websites may automatically track your IP address and device type and use browser fingerprinting to collect details on your browsing habits and preferences without your knowledge.

How a digital footprint is created

You create active digital footprints, so anytime you enter your details in online forms or make comments, this data is stored on the company’s server.

However, as you are consciously adding this data, when you’re searching for answers about what is a digital footprint, you probably want to know what data is collected and how.

Let’s say you visit an e-commerce site. Your digital footprint is created as soon as the page loads, regardless of whether you click on anything on the page or log in to the website. The browser automatically sends information to the website’s server, such as IP address, device type, OS, browser version, and language settings.

This happens from the code used to build the website, and your digital footprint is most often created by JavaScript, which runs in the background of the website. JavaScript might place cookies on your device, either from the original website or third parties, to remember who you are and build your profile from there.

These tracking scripts can record which products you view, how long you stay on each page, what you click, and whether you add something to your cart. The longer you stay on a website and browse the products, the more data can be collected.

This behavioral data is collected and sent in real time to analytics and ad platforms through network requests. These platforms assign you a unique identifier and update your profile with targeted ads based on what you seem interested in.

What information is in my digital footprint?

Your digital footprint will depend on how actively you manage your cookies on websites, what privacy or anonymity tools you use, and how active you are in protecting your data online.

This digital profile may or may not include the following information:

• IP address and geolocation data
• Browser type and version
• Operating system and device type
• Screen resolution and system fonts
• Language preferences and time zone
• Visited websites and browsing history
• Search queries and keywords used
• Mouse movements, scroll depth, and clicks
• Pages viewed, time spent on each page
• Products viewed, added to cart, or purchased
• Social media activity (likes, shares, follows, posts)
• Comments and reviews left on websites or apps
• Emails opened and links clicked in emails
• Content watched or streamed (videos, music)
• Forms filled out (contact forms, surveys, signups)
• Uploaded files and images
• Login and account activity (usernames, timestamps)
• Mobile app usage and in-app behavior
• Device identifiers (IMEI, IDFA, Android ID)
• Cookies and tracking IDs (e.g. Google Analytics ID)
• Third-party pixel or tracker data (Facebook Pixel, etc.)
• Device fingerprinting information (hardware and software data)
• Voice commands or interactions with voice assistants
• Location history from GPS, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth
• Payment and transaction details (in anonymized or tokenized form)
• Wi-Fi networks joined and MAC address logs
• Subscription and newsletter preferences
• Crash reports and app diagnostics data
• Facial recognition data (from biometric apps)
• Cloud backups and synced data (photos, files, contacts)

Keep in mind, some of this is active and passive data, but the more data that’s collected, the bigger your digital footprint will be.

Why managing your digital footprint is important

As we can see from the types of digital footprint section, managing your digital footprint is essential to keeping your personal data private and preventing your personal information from leaking online. This can lead to hackers stealing your identity and committing financial fraud.

In addition, you should monitor and control your digital footprint in your personal life. Universities or future employers will want to know more about you before enrolling or recruiting you, so if your social media posts are full of things you don’t want others to see, you will need to reduce or delete your digital footprint from these sites.

How to manage your digital footprint with Internxt

Internxt is a GDPR compliant cloud storage solution, so data protection is built in, as it adheres to strict European data regulation laws. It is also an open-source platform, so you can check and verify the source code to ensure there are no backdoors or unauthorized data collection.

Use a VPN

Internxt VPN can help protect your digital footprint by encrypting your connection, keeping it safe from external attacks, and preventing hackers from accessing your connection and information.

It will also connect you to up to 5 different locations, keeping your IP address private, and in turn preventing location tracking. A VPN is highly recommended for online privacy, and prevent websites from building a profile on you.

To get the Internxt VPN plus cloud storage, Meet, Mail, and Antivirus, you can check out our Essential, Premium, and Ultimate plans, starting from €3/month, or get lifetime access with our lifetime plans.

Send files privately

Internxt Drive and Send can protect your files' metadata from being collected and used to create a digital footprint of your activity with zero-knowledge encryption. This type of encryption encrypts files directly on your device, so nobody except you can view this kind of sensitive information.

As a result, you can confidently send large videos, photos, or any kinds of files, knowing that the contents can’t be viewed by other parties, or used to train AI models.

Scan files for viruses

Sometimes, shady websites can be full of popups, or you may receive a spoofed email containing a malicious link that takes you to a website that downloads a virus to your device, putting your personal information and device at risk.

To prevent this, Internxt Drive paid plans come with a built-in Antivirus If you suspect you have accidentally downloaded a file containing malware that could put your personal information at risk, you can delete it instantly with our Antivirus.

Change your browser and search engine

Companies like Google and Microsoft, and their respective Chrome and Edge browsers, are notorious for lacking privacy. If you ever wonder why you are getting adverts or sponsored links based on your activity, it’s because they are using your digital footprint to profit from your data.

For more secure browsers and search engines, you can try companies like Brave, Startpage, or other entries we covered in our top European tech companies article.

Clean your cookies regularly

Fortunately, most browsers, even Chrome, allow you to clean your cookies regularly to reduce your online footprint. To do so, go to your browser's privacy or history settings and choose to clear cookies manually.

From there, you can choose to delete cookies for specific sites or all of them at once, or you can schedule your browser to automatically delete cookies every time you close it.

There are also some useful Chrome extensions, such as Cookie AutoDelete, which auto-deletes data from closed tabs.

Delete old accounts

For accounts you no longer use, you may want to set some time aside to clean up by permanently deleting them and their associated data. Websites such as Just Delete Me and Account Killer can help you delete your data from these sites and significantly clean up your digital footprint.

If you don’t want to delete your accounts, ensure you take a look at your social media privacy settings and change them to limit or stop your data from being collected, as some services have the least private option switched on by default, so they can make money from your data.

Frequently asked questions

Who sees my digital footprint?

Depending on whether your footprint is active or passive, which we covered in the what is a digital footprint section, many companies and services can view your footprint. It may vary, but those who can view it may include:  

• Advertisers
• Data brokers who buy and sell your information.
• Websites and social media platforms.
• Internet service providers.
• Employers or schools might check your public profiles or past posts.
• Government agencies and law enforcement can request or collect data or access cloud storage if it is not protected by zero-knowledge encryption.
• Hackers may find your information if has been exposed in a data breach or if you use weak security.
• Search engines contribute by indexing public information, making parts of your footprint accessible to anyone online.

What is a digital footprint, and can it be deleted?

Yes, you can delete or at least significantly reduce your digital footprint by using online privacy tools such as VPN, password managers, extensions to delete your cookies, and deleting old accounts.

How can I check my digital footprint?

You can check your digital footprint by starting with a search of your name, email addresses, and usernames in search engines to see what appears publicly. Look through the results, including images and cached pages, to find old accounts, profiles, or mentions on forums and websites. Review your social media privacy settings to see what others can view without logging in.

Is my digital footprint permanent?

No, your digital footprint is not entirely permanent, but removing it completely can be extremely challenging and time-consuming.

While it's possible to delete many online accounts, removing personal information from websites, requesting data removal from data brokers can be challenging.

This is because some traces of your data may remain, especially if your data has been copied, archived, or shared without your control. Search engine caches, internet archives, or reposts by other users can make total erasure difficult.

Now that you are aware of what is a digital footprint, the two types of footprints, what data companies collect, and how to prevent your data from being collected.

Don’t forget to subscribe to Internxt Drive to get a full suite of privacy products, Drive, Meet, Mail, VPN, and Antivirus for total privacy online!