Your digital footprint
What else can be found about you?
Every website can read your browser, and anyone with a search engine can find far more. Here’s what this page worked out about your device, what a stranger could find in ten minutes, and how to close each gap.
Worked out in your browser · nothing you tick is sent anywhere · free
Live · your browser, right now
This browser’s fingerprint—
- Graphics chip
- —
- Installed fonts
- —
- How it draws a test image
- —
- Screen
- —
- Colour depth
- —
- Time zone
- —
- Language
- —
- Processor cores
- —
- Built-in PDF viewer
- —
None of this was sent anywhere. In many browsers the code stays the same in a private window and after clearing cookies, which is how fingerprinting follows people. Browsers such as Brave and Tor Browser change or hide it.
What anyone can find
Ten minutes of searching. Do it before a stranger does.
Seven checks anyone could run on you. Work through them, tick what turns up, and your clean-up plan builds itself beside them.
1
Search your own name
Put your full name in quotes, with your town, into a search engine. Look past the first page, and try a second search engine too.
What it can show: Old profiles, reviews you’ve written, club and school pages, news mentions, and directory listings with an address or phone number.
2
Look up your email in data breaches
Type your email address into Have I Been Pwned. It’s free, and it says it doesn’t keep the addresses people look up.
What it can show: Which breaches included your address, and what was taken with it: often passwords, phone numbers or dates of birth.
3
Check where your usernames are used
Put a username you use into WhatsMyName, a free tool that checks hundreds of sites for it.
What it can show: Forgotten accounts, and how one username links your hobbies, work and personal life together.
4
Reverse-search your profile photo
Upload the photo you use online to TinEye or Google Lens.
What it can show: Every site that photo appears on, which can connect a work profile to a personal one.
5
See your profiles as a stranger does
Use Facebook’s View As, and open your other profiles in a private window while signed out.
What it can show: Your friends list, workplace, school, family members, and photos that show where you live or go.
6
Check what your photos give away
Look at a photo you’ve shared as an original file, by email or a messaging app, and check its details for a location.
What it can show: Phone cameras can save where a photo was taken inside the file, and some ways of sharing keep it.
7
Look yourself up in business registers
Run a business as a sole trader in Australia? Search your name or ABN on ABN Lookup.
What it can show: For a sole trader, the entity name is your own name, shown with the state and postcode of your main business address.
These checks use free tools run by other organisations, and what they keep is up to them. General information, not personal advice: read the disclaimer.
Close the gaps
Six habits that shrink your footprint for good.
An email address for each purpose
Aliases for shopping, newsletters and sign-ups mean a breach at one shop doesn’t expose your main address. Firefox Relay, SimpleLogin and Proton Pass can make them.
Passwords you never reuse
A password manager makes a different password for every account, and two-step sign-in means a leaked password alone isn’t enough to get in.
Less shared by default
Profiles set to friends only, location off for photos, and birthdays and phone numbers kept off public pages.
A browser that blocks trackers
Trackers collect what data brokers sell. Firefox with uBlock Origin, or Brave, blocks known trackers as you browse.
Less to fingerprint
Brave and Tor Browser change or hide the fingerprint at the top of this page. Firefox and Safari have protections that make it harder to build.
Ask what they hold
Organisations covered by Australia’s Privacy Act generally have to tell you what personal information they hold about you if you ask, and correct it if it’s wrong. Your privacy rights
See how the rest of your digital life is doing.
Good to know
Questions about your footprint
Something else on your mind? Ask it in the form below. Every enquiry gets a personal reply.
Is this page tracking me?
No. Everything this page works out stays in your browser, and nothing you tick is sent anywhere. The site counts visits without cookies or IP addresses: see the privacy policy.
What about my IP address?
Every website receives it when you visit. It usually reveals your internet provider and roughly where you are. A VPN hides it from the sites you visit.
I found a lot. Where do I start?
With breaches and passwords, because they’re quick to fix and they protect everything else. Then your profiles, then the rest.
Can you do this with me?
Yes. The full audit covers your online footprint along with your devices and accounts, and you get a written plan with the fixes in order.
Get in touch
Tell me what’s going on.
A short form and a personal reply, wherever you are.