This tool stops people from finding out where you live after Googling your name

If you’ve ever Googled your name (don’t worry, we all have) then there’s a good chance you’ve seen your email and even phone number pop up.

The reason for this is data brokers, companies that flog people’s personal information to anyone willing to pay, from advertisers to cyber crooks.

Data brokers also scavenge for addresses and information on the victim’s friends and family, with the market worth about £250billion worldwide.

But Google has updated a little-known tool that allows users to, well, Google themselves to find and remove their personal info online.

What is Results about you?

Results about you generate reports about sites that might have your personal information by, well, Googling it.

You can then click a button to flag it for it to be removed from search results, with Google reviewing the request first.

When Metro gave the tool a whirl, we found our name and email mentioned in obvious places – Metro author pages, social media profiles and online directories, for example.

But it was also publicly available in more unexpected places, like a French photography studio’s website that now redirects to a shady dating network.

Google will email you when it finds your information and give you the option to remove it from Google search, the idea being that it’ll stop data brokers from finding it, too.

Chris Yule, senior director of threat research at the cyber defence firm Sophos X-Ops, told Metro that Results about you is for the privacy-conscious.

‘Say you’re a doctor or a policewoman and you don’t want members of the public you’re interacting with finding your address from a quick Google search,’ Yule says.

‘Google will review requests to remove results if people search for you.

‘What it doesn’t do is stop your data being made available or sold online. Your information will still be available on the site it’s being sold on, but Google won’t link to it in results anymore.’

Why should I be worried about data brokers?

Yule warns that Sophos X-Ops has seen a 1253% increase in the volume of personal data for sale on the dark web over the last five years.

The shady corner of the internet uses technology that allows both sides of an online interaction to hide their identity and location.

‘Data brokers will steal and gather personal data with the sole objective of selling it on to people who can use it to make money, whether that’s personal data for identity theft and fraud, financial data for payment fraud, or technical data like usernames and passwords that can be used for ransomware and other cybercrime,’ Yule adds.

In a blog post, Google said it’s beefing up Results about you in the US, so users can hunt mentions of their passport details or social security number, which is used to apply for welfare.

Expanded monitoring will soon be available in ‘additional regions’.

To find any of this information, you do need to hand it directly over to Google – the company said the tool uses ‘rigorous security protocols’.

Yule says the irony in giving Google your data for it to find your data isn’t lost on him.

‘Ultimately, Google is the arbiter of search results for most people, so if you want their help in taking down things you don’t want people to see, then you need to give them something to work with,’ he says.

Not everyone ‘plays by Google’s rules’, warns cybercrime expert

The tool is part of a growing number of paid data removal services, which keep your information out of data brokers’ hands on your behalf.

But such services still struggle to keep up with identity thieves, who can use an increasingly sophisticated array of tools to pretend to be you.

Jake Moore, a global cybersecurity advisor at software firm ESET, tells Metro that commonplace AI systems ‘don’t play by Google’s rules’.

‘AI is far more powerful at researching, so it’s important to be aware that some of these platforms can also share personal information sometimes,’ Moore says.

‘It is much better to attempt to remove the data from its origin than rely on the search removal tool.’

If you’re wary of what information about you is out there, Marijus Briedis, chief technology officer at NordVPN, has some tips.

‘Privacy should be approached in layers,’ Briedis says.

‘Adjusting account settings and managing what appears in search results can reduce exposure, but tools that protect your connection – such as VPNs – can also help limit how much of your browsing activity is visible to networks, advertisers and other third parties.’

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected].

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