In a world where privacy in the digital world is getting extremely hard to maintain, one needs to take its privacy and security concerns into its own hands and keep tabs on who is storing its internet activity and how it is being used against his will.
With further digitalization, the world is becoming a severe mess. Each day, a new data breach issue occurs, and many user identities get stolen for personal and professional advantages.
Take the example of Google. Google stores users’ personal information, browsing activity, search habits, emails, where the user lives, where it goes, what the user watches, everything, and uses it to build users’ secret identities.
These identities are then used to target specific groups with personalized ads. It’s how Google works with user data. It’s how our data is stolen and sold to third-party advertisers.
While personalized advertisements sound like a fantastic idea, it’s done based on your personal information sold to third parties. Scary, isn’t it.
If you want to prevent your data from leaking, then you need to opt for some protection. The best solution to go completely anonymous is to use a VPN. To learn more about VPNs & online anonymity.
Quick tools to conduct an online self-background check
Did you know that many online background check tools exist to keep tabs on yourself? Employers use it all the time when they need some background details of a potential employee. But it’s not just for them. You can use it too to check if someone has created your secret or fake identity or not.
To keep a record check upon yourself, you can use these software:
To check data breaches
1. Have I been Pwned?
A popular website named ‘Have I been Pwned?’ allows users to check if their data has been ever compromised by data leaks and breaches.
This service allows users to check up on their data and if it has been breached by entering minimal information like their username and email address on the site. This site then collects and studies data dumps that contain information about all the user’s data that has been leaked with continuous updates.
Users need to register themselves to the site. If their data gets leaked, it will be found in the database dump by this website, and the users will be notified on their email address about this data breach.
2. F-secure:
Another website that informs users about data breaches is f-secure. This website claims that using a user’s email address will expose all data breaches and identity threats that have taken place with his data and account information.
This is yet another great website to use for this purpose. It also claims that it will not store users’ email addresses or breach information to facilitate the users.
Although Have I been Pwned was a free service to use, F-secure is not. It offers a free trial for five days to users, but then you need to pay for the service.
This service requires you to sign up and create an account. Once you’re done, you’re free to enjoy its benefits and keep continuous logs of your data theft.
To search for social media and same usernames
1. Knowem:
Knowem is a social media search platform and does not take data breaches into concern. It is, however, a different tool that is equally important for users. Knowem offers users to search for their username, their brand name, company name, or product name on a directory of 500 social media sites by just typing it into its search bar.
Knowem calls itself a social media management system and a protection service and lives up to what it claims to be. If you desire to check who is using your name, your business’s name, or your product’s name and where it is being used, you can easily do that through this trademark protection service.
2. Instantusername:
Instantusername.com is another effective website that offers similar features to Knowem. This service offers to check its 100 social media sites database as you type your username in the search box. It’s that quick, effective, and accessible.
If you want to know that your username is being misused or used anywhere without your will, the instantusername service will locate it for you without any problem.
A data breach is an issue that you need to curb yourself. Therefore, you should keep yourself completely anonymous over the internet. To secure your online activities, you should consider using a VPN.
Quick tips to remember after running a self-background check
Well, running a background check on yourself today is significantly essential. You have no idea who is using your identity and for what purpose. Following are some tips for you when you run a background check on yourself:
1. All background checks are not accurate:
If you run a background check on yourself and it turns out that you find yourself on multiple social media ids, don’t panic. Background checks are not 100% accurate. You need to take a deep breath and confirm whether it is the case or not. Once you’re done, you can focus on resolving the problem.
2. Frequent background checks are the key:
Once you’ve conducted a self-background check, do not consider that you’re completely secure, and the threat is now over. With digitalization, the threat evolves and grows each day. You should conduct frequent background checks on yourself to stay up-to-date about your data and personal information. If that’s impossible for you, then a VPN is the only practical solution.
Conclusion
In this world, data breaches and misuse of personal information have become common scenarios. Therefore, regular data and online background checks upon yourself should not be considered a once-in-a-lifetime thing.
A study claimed that Google collects 11.6 MB data from an Android device after a day of usual internet activity. For complete online privacy and security, one needs to keep logs on itself regularly if any data breaches or issues are taking place. Personal protection is the only solution.
